Black Santa or A Very Non-White Christmas

This was the first Christmas in a long time that I didn't utterly hate. BC, aka, before Clementine, I found every holiday after Halloween pushy and inconvenient at best & greedy and depressing at worst.  The pressure of getting family members gifts was as much fun as simply burning the money I didn't have to spend on other people's presents.   When tradition simply becomes expectation- it's not 'the spirit of Christmas'- it's a pay off, a bribe with a bow.

But this Christmas some deeply buried, long-cold pilot light was re-ignited in my coal-black holiday soul.  I craved a cozy tree with charming decorations, lights in the windows, mistletoe over head and Johnny Mathis coaxing hope and love back into my heart.  I forced the husband to go along with my Grinch re-awakening and he lit the place up like Vegas.  And I remembered, in a shocking fit of sentiment, my childhood Christmases.

We had no money growing up and my parents struggled mightily with multiple jobs and each other but something came over us all right after Thanksgiving.  We decorated our little run down house within an inch of it's life. By the time we finished, the decorations and lights probably held our house together. We wore out Julie Andrews' Christmas album until the needles turned to stubs and Julie started to sound like she was begging us to give her a break.  

Even worse, we were such nerdy little theater fags, my sisters and I would rehearse Christmas Eve. We'd write scripts, complete with dialogue, lines like- "Elizabeth, wake up! Do you hear what I hear?".  We'd practice how we'd sleep on the narrow staircase leading down from our rooms to the living room, where our ceiling-scraping tree groaned under the overdose of shedding satin-wrapped Christmas balls, which were buried under layers of cotton-candy-esque gobs of 'snow' draped over the branches, which turned out to be asbestos-laden fiberglass or something equally carcinogenic. They don't make that stuff anymore... perhaps not even in China.

I've played along with Christmas ever since then, but begrudgingly so- as if it was a relationship I was too lazy to end, so I just phoned it in year after year, wondering if I'd ever be brave enough to just ignore Christmas until it went away for good. Until I became a mother.

While I knew that my kid was still too young to understand Christmas or even simply grasp the concept of an older, bearded man in belted red lounge-wear breaking into our home while we sleep,  I wanted to create traditions for us as a family to feel pressured to honor year after year, no matter how much we all would eventually grow to hate them. One of these traditions is a visit to Santa, which more resembles a torture rite of passage that parents exact on their kids, with professional photographers dressed as elves conveniently on hand to commemorate our children's agony.  When I really think about it, it's insane how otherwise devoted and proud parents laugh and coo as their children scream and sob in terror on some oddly bearded stranger's red velour lap while someone photographs the whole sordid mess. 

And then I got a kid, and I joined that club of parents who simply must do this.  As a child we'd get all excited and dressed up, go into the city, marvel at the store windows and the tree at Rockefeller Center and then go and weep on Santa's lap at Macy's in Herald Square, then go to the Rockettes and Nativity show at Radio City.  We'd freeze and cry and be exhausted- our beater car would inevitably break down on the way home, once in the actual middle of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, our furious dad would swear this was the last effing time, ever. Then we'd do it again the next year.

Christmas in LA in 2013 means you go to the Grove, try not to let the falling man-made snow get in your mouth or eyes then wait for four hours to sit on Santa's knee. If you are white.  As a white person, I am not slogging white people for doing any of this, it's what you do when you have a kid and you want them to have a feel for Christmas despite the golf club weather.

So we did it. We dressed up Clementine and let her wear her red rubber boots with her tights and dress and we showed her all the lights and decorations and trolley cars full of musicians and we waited to see Santa. She found it all underwhelming and really only enjoyed the fountains.  Until she met Santa- a truly incredible man who took the time and care and knew exactly how to not make a baby cry.  I wanted to tip him for his sweetness towards her, but that felt creepy.  The photo is fine, she just looks a bit annoyed and baffled at the whole crazy scene. 

Then something came over me and I simply had to take her to Black Santa. Perhaps it was because I read about the beloved Black Santa at the Crenshaw mall but mostly it's because my daughter is black and because Megyn Kelly, the Edward R. Murrow of Fox News declared that Santa is white.  That inspired me, my sister, husband and nephew to get Clemmie all dressed up again and head on down to Crenshaw Mall on Christmas Eve.

It was hard to find a parking spot, it was crazy hot out and a long walk to the front door. It probably took 45 minutes to navigate Macy's, find the up escalator, walk deeper and deeper into the mall where we finally spotted the big-ass tree and massive white leatherette chair surrounded by elves on the clock.  Clementine couldn't have cared less about any of this, except for the escalators. She wanted to ride them up and down over and over.

The biggest difference between Crenshaw Mall's Santa-land and the Grove's Santa-land was access to Santa. At the Grove, Santa is ensconced deep inside a massive cottage-shaped lair made entirely of fake candy, baked goods and ice cream and of course tons of wrapped presents, in case we forgot we were inside a shopping mall conveniently full of crap to buy. You don't see Santa until you are asked which photo package you are willing to shell out the dough for. Signs everywhere warn you to keep smart phones deeply hidden. No stealing selfies with white Santa.

At Crenshaw mall we could see clearly see Santa, since he was completely exposed to the mall elements... as we descended on the down escalator.   And that was when I easily saw that Black Santa was not black. Maybe Megyn Kelly was right after all. My heart sank as we got closer to Santa-land, despite the slight concession that under an obviously fake white beard, this Santa was more of a South American brown. 

By this time my sister and nephew were laughing so hard they were crying as they asked what I wanted to do now. We quietly discussed that it seemed pretty racist to come all this way and not get a photo with Santa because he wasn't black enough.  As I tentatively approached the head elf, my mind raced with how exactly to ask for Black Santa without sounding like a reverse-racist.

"Um, hi. Is there... another Santa... somewhere else in this mall?" 

The head elf, a black man in his 50s eyed me quickly with no emotion.

"You mean Black Santa? He doesn't come on until 1:30."

It was 11:30 and the clock was winding down to Clemmie's iron-clad naptime which is at noon. We could wait until 1:30 but she'd be such a raving banshee by then that we'd probably get kicked out of Black Santa-land.  

So, I ponied up the 15 bucks and walked her over to Brown Santa who spoke no English and had zero baby savy. He just grabbed Clemmie, plopped her in his lap and she FREAKED out. I even sat with her and put my arm around Santa as if to indicate he was okay after all but she screamed holy hell, reaching for her father who froze beside the camera, smiling inexplicably at her misery, which only compounded her fury. 

For some reason I grinned like an idiot, as if to compensate for the howling grimacing Clementine, forever commemorated kicking out of her red rubber boots and reaching futilely for her father's arms. The photo elf showed me the photos, all of them ridiculous and heart breaking. I picked the one that was most flattering to me.

At least we had four escalator rides before getting out of the mall. Those wild mechanical rides made her forget all about Santa... until next year.

Why didn't her real mom want her?

Anna is a woman I met years ago at a Mexican Wedding. We had a late night tequila fueled chat on a hill above the warm ocean. Years go by and our names get tossed about with fondness but little or pretty much zero facetime. Finally we just remet days ago at a baby shower.  The Mexican wedding has now resulted in a baby shower for the knocked up bride.  Anna saw me and Clementine and marched over in a jumpsuit- she's the only human I know who makes a jumpsuit look smarter than it is.  She's a supergoddess. And on Sunday she upbraided me for not updating the blog more frequently. Since she is a paying customer and 6 feet tall, I instantly agreed.

And I do have an update but I've been ruminating on how to dominate this story with a Spalding Gray-esque New England buddhist brilliance. But it isn't coming. Perhaps it's just a scary snapshot of the future.  And it was a timely reminder to get my story straight.

So, I'm standing by this trough, which is around 20 feet long and narrow and silvery- like a gutter that one might put above a garage door.  But this trough, resting about 2 feet above the grass, was filled with scoops of sprinkled and whipped creamed ice cream. It was also surrounded by intense toddlers, resembling a team of little people working an assembly line where the job is to taste-test ice cream with pink plastic spoons.  If you squinted it looked like the kids were clearing leaves and debris from a gutter.  Clementine was eating and laughing  and not dropping any ice cream on her dress. A feeding trough instead of a high chair was making all sorts of sense to me.

Suddenly, The Lovely Girl was standing beside me.  Slender, lovely, pale, with glossy wisps of golden wheat-colored hair surrounding her face. She was probably seven but exuded the world weariness of a fourteen year old. Either her dad is old or her mom's a supermodel or both. She was the kind of seven year old who's too old-souled to even be a child actor.  Like Charlotte Gainsbourg but in Crew Cuts clothing.

She was watching Clemmie hoover 7 simultaneous scoops of ice cream with suspicious glee, as if waiting for to someone to yell- "Hey, you, stop eating ice cream outta my gutter!" 

The too-wise child studied me with huge expensive blue eyes and an expression not unlike what an agent looks like when she needs to drop you from her roster.

'Why did you have to adopt her?"  

Even though I kind of wobbled from the question, I love how abrupt kids are. They suffer no tedious propriety.  No wind-up. No, "Hi, I'm Lulu and I'm curious about this child you are acting like a parent to."

Of course explaining my entire life for the past five years, or an invitation to read my blog didn't seem appropriate chatter over the ice cream trough, so, I smiled too hard like a grown up does at kids that don't belong to her.

 "I couldn't have a baby of my own, and I wanted to be a mother, so I adopted her."  

Lovely Girl didn't nod or smile back. She just went on, like a journalist digging beneath the talking points.

"Why did her mother give her away?"  

I blanched, looking instinctively at my kid, who was entering Sugarland Express, and unaware she was being discussed.  And my mind coughed. What's my smart, pat polite party line about what compels a woman to give a baby up for adoption? I had the answer for grown ups, but not for kids, and not in front of my kid. I inhaled, thinking hard.

"Why didn't her real mom want her?"

I didn't realize how California I had become, but when I opened my mouth, I was sooooo the Center for Non-Violent Parenting.

"Well, her mother-- I'm her mother, but her birth mother loved her very much and, and, and wasn't able to take care of her so she made the awfully difficult decision to give her up for adoption. That's how much she loved her. And we met and liked each other and she gave her, the baby to me and I'm raising her like my very own child. She is my child."

I didn't know I could sound like a brochure, but I can.  While I was relieved in the moment, I was starting to feel slightly anally probed. I casually reached for a spoon and started sipping at the melted ice cream. It was fairly clear that everyone either felt gross or was going to at any minute.

Suddenly I had an idea. I turned on Lovely Girl. 

"How old are you?"

"Seven."

"Do you know any adopted kids?"

And from there we had an actual conversation. About her school friends who were adopted and what that was like and how not a big deal it really was. There was no mussing of hair or even awkward fake hugs, where you gingerly hug from the collarbone up.  I didn't even get Lovely Girl's name or meet her parents and she wafted away and it doesn't qualify at all as a teachable moment for anyone except me.

I have to get my story straight and I have to do it soon. We are going on three playdates this weekend and as my kid grows and her language grows, so will her ability to understand the questions from other kids.

Right now she beams at me with the purity that sees no difference between us.  But that will change. And it's coming soon.  Goddamn it. 

Here you go, Anna. Thanks for the nudge.
 

Bad and Good Dreams.

I'm so used to not getting what I want that almost every morning I automatically wake up about 30 minutes before anyone else, including my dogs.  I lie there, as still as I can, cherishing the alone time, wondering if my new life is really just a dream. 

I look at my unconscious husband, equal parts impossibly hairy and handsome, and our two dogs hogging much bed.  And I wait and assess what hurts and what's slid even further down the maypole of encroaching middle age.  I run down a mental checklist of what must happen on this day, and convince myself it can all get done.  Then I wait and worry.  And wait to see if my dream is real. 

Soon enough, a tiny little voice pipes up over the baby monitor, calling for me.  And I exhale happily.  Yes, someone did give me a child. This actually happened. Then the voice on the monitor changes.  I can interpret the baby speak. 'Mama, get down here and change the soggiest diaper you've ever seen, next to Siberian orphans at the end of a long holiday weekend.'

Even as I type this sentence about my life it feels like I'm making it all up.  Even my fantasy life as a compulsive liar wouldn't dare dream of me ending up as a mother of a sweet and fierce toddler.  

Due to the complications of advanced age coupled with serious Momnesia, I'm astonished by what I forget and even more astonished by what I'm able to remember.  The Bad Dream will last the rest of my life, no matter what becomes of my over 50 year old brain.

And yes. I do have internal conflicts about being an old mom. I feel guilty almost constantly when I realize what my daughter will be grappling with when she's 20. Parents who are 70 years old. To combat that reality and mitigate my guilt at the prospect of her pushing my wheelchair to her own college graduation, I do yoga daily, brain exercises (when I remember to) and drink more Kombucha and chia seeds than anyone really should ever have to.  I want to earn my daughter's devotion by truly and fully being there for her, as opposed to her being weighed down by obligation to me. I don't want her life to be a sacrifice to my accomplishment of becoming a mother despite the odds and my age.

And yet, the guilt persists. Do other adopted moms feel the guilt of rearing the child of someone who couldn't provide for the baby they gave birth to?  At times I feel myself numbing out or lingering at the grocery store, staring down the aisles of a CVS, deepening my time away from her- not because I need a break but because I can't stand the guilt of actually having this stunning little person who I desperately love and who loves me so much.  Why did my happiness have to come at the expense of someone else? A question for which there is no answer is a question I just keep asking. Over and over. And I remember that dream. It was a really bad dream.

To call my bad dream a nightmare is to insult what a nightmare my bad dream actually was.  About three weeks after we brought Baby Girl home, our in-laws came to visit. They took her out for lunch and a long walk so I could get my first real alone-time nap.  

To call that nap sleep is like calling heroin a recreational drug.  I have never been so deeply asleep in my entire life- probably due to being a bedwetter... yes. I wet the bed until I was 8 or 9- and still never truly sleep deeply, most likely due to the fear of  a deep, hard sleep leading to a soaked husband.  

And during this one nap, in the almost death-like depths of sleep I will probably never enjoy again, I had a dream. 

The baby was with my mother-in-law, being sat and cared for and doted on. And someone took her.  The grief, the loss and the sadness all tumbled around us, for a long, long time. We never got our baby back- the crime became a wound, which became a scar and we somehow moved on while continuing to grieve- and my grief was Anna Magnani-like in it's fierce wildness. I grieved HARD, in the way that dreams drop you into the deepest well of an emotion and leave you there- weeping and keening and wailing and crying, heart torn asunder amid vivid unimaginable pain- yet all of this happening in a tiny but rough neighborhood in my brain, while the rest of me just lay there, unable to defend myself.  It amazes me that I didn't thrash myself awake from the horrors of losing my newborn in my dream, but I stayed asleep. 

And in that cinematic way that dreams do, decades passed.  And I was someplace fancy, like a beautiful old department store, or restaurant or University with marbled floors. It was an event and everyone was dressed up and on their best behavior. And my long lost daughter was there.  

She was 25, had a different name than the one we gave her, was eye wateringly beautiful, lovely and spoke French fluently. I don't know why I knew who she was, but I did. She didn't know me. She had been taken from me at 3 weeks old, and had clearly been raised with love and care and respect.  

I never told her who I was and when we spoke I was deeply saddened by how polite if distant she was, treating me the way any well raised young woman would treat a stranger. As I watched her walk away and go back to her very full life, I was devastated but proud. The well of my grief was the deepest I'd ever felt- and I dream-cried endlessly.  When I tried to put words to my sadness, all I could say was, "All I wanted was to be a participant in her life and to watch her grow up."  

Then I woke up.  The in-laws returned with my baby girl and I was so happy to still be her mother.  And I was stunningly well rested.  But the dream kept wafting back into my memory for days and weeks after. Even now I think about it, like a scar from an old accident.  It's taken me over a year to write it down and in doing so, I hope to exorcise it.

It finally occurred to me that I dreamed what my birth mother must have experienced in giving up her baby.  In one nap I felt the full force of her grief and loss and helplessness.  And it was awe-ful and awful.  Of course I have zero idea of what it truly felt like to grow a baby inside me and give her up for adoption, but now that I've been lucky enough to be this child's mother for 18 months, I have a tiny idea of just how much it must ache to have given that opportunity up.  

So my guilt is the price I willingly pay for the happiness I feel as a mother.  And my ongoing if tender relationship with my birth mother is something I will nurture and support as long as my birth mother wishes it to. It's the least I can do.

Whitney, Trayvon & Me. Or, Why Beyonce Makes Me Cry.

I can't watch Beyonce without crying, especially if my daughter is sitting on my lap at the same time.  Baby Girl caught me crying at the video for "If I Was A Boy" just this morning.  I tried to hide my tears from her, and I tell myself she's too young to be traumatized by seeing her mother cry. But she did look baffled. Hell, I'm baffled. 

I'm not ashamed to be impressed by Beyonce's talent- she opens her stunning mouth and her golden soul pours out, but I'm baffled that she makes me cry every single ding dong time I hear her sing.  I even sobbed at her Superbowl half-time performance, which was stupendous and kinda goofy at the same time.  I don't own any of her albums. 

Well, that's a lie. 

I own one. 

And a half. 

Maybe 2. 

And admitting that is painful for a self proclaimed music snob.

I can and do listen to Ann Peebles, Sharon Jones, Aretha, Ella, Billie, Nina Simone, Azalea, Santigold and Gladys Knight without busting into tears.  It's singly a Beyonce-induced crying jag. Each time I leak this salt water of self-embarrassed out of my eyes I'm holding my tiny black baby daughter, so that must have something to do with it.

Our baby was born on February 8, 2012. The precise text my baby mama texted to me after she was born was "She so white".  And Baby Girl really was quite white for a fully black baby.  I even sent photos to family members back home and a niece and a nephew both replied, "I thought she was supposed to be black." They sounded disappointed, not that this needs pointing out, but... I am aware that even writing about race is a tricky thorny deal.

 As Baby Girl began 'browning up', as her birth grandma said she would, I held a secret fear deep inside me that I was terrified to utter, and still haven't said aloud.  I was afraid of my child becoming too dark, and wondered if it was because I was secretly racist. But the more I thought about it, I feared (and still do) that the darker she is the more people will prejudge her. And by prejudge, I mean be prejudiced.  Hell, even some black people are prejudiced against their darkest brethren.  While we were waiting in the hospital for Baby Girl, our birth grandmother told us all about how her own family held her apart since she was darker than anyone else. 

Read "Outliers" if you think I'm a clueless white racist about this. Malcolm Gladwell writes about his own mother's personal success being partially due to the lightness of her black skin.

The oddest thing is, I forget my daughter is black until I see another white person holding her.  Which is a lot...

I wish I had a 401K for every woman who, upon seeing my baby, lowers her voice, grabs my forearm conspiratorially, and almost whispers, "I always wanted a black baby."

My inner smart-ass wants to say, "Well, I had no choice, because none of the white baby mommas would have me." But the truth is, we went to the transracial parenting workshop, we got scared by what could happen, we endlessly discussed it, and we came to the conclusion that we just didn't care what color our child was going to be. 

And to be even more scarily honest, when Baby Mama and I first spoke she asked me if my husband would be okay with a black baby. She didn't worry about me, but she was worried what he'd think.  If he would love the baby enough.  And I don't even really know how to comment about that. It made me sad that she asked. Sad for us all. I wanted in that moment to be able to push some magic button so all people would never even have to think, much less say something like that to other people.

In fact, to fully fall on my knee jerk liberal knees, it took me a lot of practice to even say "black" as opposed to "African-American".  But my beloved baby-gramma corrected my even more knee jerk liberal mother in the hospital waiting room. My mother was taking elaborate pains to say "African-American",  when baby-gramma said, "You don't have to call me that.  I'm not from Africa, I'm from Louisiana. I'm black."

That led to a thick little pause as my sister, my husband, my mother and I all adjusted our progressive radars and silently thanked baby-gramma for sanctioning the use of the great shortcut word "black."  After all, we call ourselves 'white", not "Caucasian", or "Irish--Catholic-German-Jews"- unless we are drinking and/or joking or in therapy.

By the time we were able to leave the hospital with our three day old baby, Whitney Houston drowned in a bathtub in Beverly Hills and the world mourned (and judged).  Whitney and I were the same age when she died and I became a mother. 

We spent another week in Akron, waiting for the adoption papers to fly from Ohio to California, get signed, approved and fly back, before they'd let us leave the state, and all we could really do with a tiny baby in February was stay inside and watch TV, which was bursting to share with us the senseless details of Whitney's tragic succumbing to her prescription and top shelf demons. 

For those of you who only know Whitney from her manic and messy Bobby Brown years, fact is- Whitney was the Beyonce of the 80s- she was as physically perfect as she was talented. Whitney's voice held her soul and maybe that's why she died young, sad and empty- she sang her soul right out of her body.  Once your soul is gone, you become an addict or nobody or Donald Trump.

I can't say that I took Whitney's death terribly personally but whenever I heard a snippet of "And I Will Always Love You" I would tear up despite myself, because it might be a seriously overcooked and chewy love song  (and I seriously prefer Dolly Parton's version) but I was falling in love with my baby and that's the kind of song you find yourself singing at 4am to a bald 6 pound being peering up at you with deep dark eyes full of pre-verbal soul.

A few weeks later we had Baby Girl home with us in Los Angeles when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed.  I was beyond devastated by his murder. I took it so personally that even I knew it didn't make sense to me. Then I blurted out to my sister what I didn't even know what I was thinking/feeling-  "If we took home a baby boy instead of a girl I'd be terrified every day he went outside just to do anything."  I felt racist for even thinking this but it's true. I'm simultaneously thankful and heartbroken I have a girl because she has a better chance of making it to college. Alive. 

Oh, and I'm very white- translucently so, and as I age my hands are quickly resembling Vietnamese spring rolls- you can easily see my veins and bones through my rice paper skin.  And I love right now in my life and my baby's life because she has no idea we are different colors. She screams with joy when I come home and we cuddle in front of the mirror in her room. She loves looking at us in the mirror, and I can see that she sees no difference between us.  And I treasure this ignorance because I know it will change, forever. Some day soon.

I know the day will come when someone else informs her that she is different than me in ways that mean absolutely nothing and absolutely everything.  And we will have conversations about it, probably more than a few, and my job will be to make sure she understands that even though our skins are different, it's what lurks beneath that really matters.  But as she grows and learns and is categorized, she will have to learn this for herself over and over and over. And she will have to be tougher and braver and wiser and forgiving because of it.

And I will have to let it happen since it's her life, and not mine. And I will never ever know how it truly feels to be her.  But I am lucky enough to know her soul and I will protect and nurture that soul so that she can share it with the world, like Beyonce, without the fear of it ever running on empty.

What Kind Of Mother Are You?

Seeing my one year old child love me because she doesn't know much about me but she does know she needs me to live makes me finally understand how things like Scientology can happen.
Two things seemingly happened at once in my kid's brain development.  The milestone where all babies cling desperately to their mother hit her hard, after months of crawling to and enjoying the lap of oh, just about, anyone.

Yet, at the same time, I saw her recognize that I don't actually appear to be her mother, but since I've acted as if (as if having a person's fresh warm drool fill my belly button and not instantly dry-heaving could ever be considered 'acting') I were her mother.   Baby Girl eyeballed me, compared the facts as she was to know them at that point in time, and then-- and I swear on this- I saw my kid decide that I must be her mother because I am the person who is always up in her cornflakes.

I read her mind as if I could see right into her hairless skull, "Something here isn't completely adding up, but you'll have to do. For now." As for her father- she accepted him immediately.  It must be his hair. She pets his furry chest like he is her pet cat. And her father is content to purr in return.

Being a parent is not unlike leading a cult or pulling a Patty Hearst.  These babies are so effing helpless, and since you primarily are the ones to feed them, change them, turn them, dress them, bathe them, control what they wear, hear, eat, who they see and when, when they sleep, and when they better perform on cue. They are not your baby, they are your hostage.

And while early parenting resembles a hostage situation, it's an intimate one, so you get a little close, perhaps too close with the prisoner.  Stockholm Syndrome happens to you both.  Every time you flip on the light switch, and enter their cell and free them from their crib, they squeal with delight or hand you their teddy bear.  It's cute and it proves one thing.  Babies aren't as dumb as they look. They play us like Words With Friends.

Babies have no choice but to be cute and all adorable to their captors- since we provide them with three hots and a cot.  But babies know that there are two people (if they are lucky) who basically keep them alive.  And they better play dumb, smell good and act super cute and adoring or their high-maintenance factor will wear off toot-sweet. For true.

But right around that singular moment when you see your months old child accept you as their parent (after all, you are who they came in with) - it is also at that time in the mother-child continuum, that you (a new mother) decide what kind of a mother you are and will be-- and it's not because of how  you feel about your child.

A woman chooses what kind of a mother she is based on other mothers.  Sure, a woman's DNA and mothering instinct guide a lot of common sense mothering, but meeting other moms and vowing to never be like them has completely shaped my mothering.

And if I'm not mistaken, and I'm sure I am, mothering the species really is a process of elimination- Darwin on diapers.  I definitely needed that non BPA, silicone baby bottle molded to resemble and feel like a breast full of warm, grassy milk from AmazonMom.com but I didn't need to take hormones to force my ancient breasts into lactation so I can experience the 'breast feed' and basically feed my adopted daughter milk laced with fun, bouncy hormones.  I'm not above formula when the donated breast milk runs out.

I am the kind of mother who buys and wears the BPA-free silicone teething jewelry from fab.com but I am not about to pre-chew her food and spit it into her pre-toothy mouth.  I'm not the mom who refuses to let my child have sugar and gluten but feeds her Kombucha which then makes the baby as drunk as Lindsay Lohan on a low speed police chase.

I am not the mom putting Fanta in her baby bottle, but I am the mom who lets my kid pick up her sucked over toothbrush off the bathroom floor and stick it back in her mouth.

Babies demand you to be present every moment they are awake.  Being that awake and alert must be as draining as performing neurosurgery or taking care of a criminally insane person, because baby-reality makes you make challenging, split second parenting decisions all day long.  In baby-reality, you pull the iPhone out of your baby's mouth even if it means they will dump a pot of hot coffee on your head.  In baby-reality the three second rule of dropping food on the floor and still eating it becomes regular old meal time. Baby-reality allows you to allow your precious being chew on baby wipes if it lets you get her diaper on her in a few fleeting seconds of peace.

A friend found a nanny after interviewing five highly recommended women.  When I interviewed my nanny, I asked her what I should be asking her. I had never hired a nanny or anyone ever in my life before.  I felt it rude to ask if she had ever, I don't know, lost a baby somewhere.  So I hired her. She's a great nanny.  I was and remain desperate for her to love me as much as I love her. I'm not jealous that my kid loves her nanny, I'm jealous that my kid gets to hang out with my nanny.

When I was around eight, and struggling with bed-wetting issues,  an older female relative suggested I be forced to parade around the neighborhood with my wet underwear on top of my head. That would learn me.  While my mother drew the line at that, my secret shame wasn't as fiercely protected by my family members as it was by me.  I distinctly recall Amy Brent asking my mom if she could diaper me before bed, as if I was a larger than life baby doll.  I believe she was watching my mom pin my cloth diaper on me at the time. That might have been my mother's version of letting me chew on baby wipes.

But bed-wetting taught me about bigotry.  I learned early that if you have one weakness or difference from other kids; be it skin color, weird religious affiliation, buck teeth, or bed-wetting it will be the first thing you are made fun of for when the chips are down in a sibling fight or a whole-block-kids-only street fight.  I learned early to have no secrets. They are the easiest weapons that can be used against you.

My current parenting style?

The kid has a fancy air filter in her room but we don't know how to change the filter.

She'll live.

And I trust she'll do a lot more than just live.

In and Out of Jeopardy

In and On Jeopardy


You become a parent long before you have a child. I have done more than my share of chronic parenting, with damaged animals, men, friends and complete strangers. I wasn’t even especially hellbent on being a mother, especially a single mother, but when my sister got picked to be on Jeopardy, I discovered just how much my mother-leakage was beyond my ability to stanch and cauterize. Truth be told, I was a parent before I really knew I wanted a child.

Little Sister or LS, lives in CT with her husband and four daughters, who blow me away consistently with how unbelievably awesome they are. My nieces were the first truly unconditional loves of my life, because from the moment I laid eyes on each of them, I had no choice but to love them without question for the rest of my days. My nephews fall into this category as well, but they came well along after my first two nieces, who hooked me into the whole 'babies create immense love, duty, family and belonging' concept. Despite how much I love my sisters and their offspring, I still wasn't one of those "I gots to get me a baby!" kind of women, which is probably why I became a mother only after my lady parts quit the scene.

Back to Jeopardy, the game show (as opposed to the quality of endangerment). LS, a Ph.d. in clinical psychology, who defended her thesis between baby one and baby two- was already impressive to me. She married her college boyfriend, went on to graduate and then post graduate school and had her first child while her husband was in law school. Not one of these things ever occurred to me at all. A real education with 3 degrees aimed at helping others. Married by 25. To an actual person. Baby before 30. "What?" and "Why?" was all I could think as my beloved LS just went about amassing degrees and having kids. She had a plan, and it was called a life. I had no plan, hence no life.

She was too busy raising her four delicious daughters to actually therapize anyone else. But people needing therapy sorely need people like my LS because if how she raised her four divine girls is any proof of her abilities, she could heal the world. Not only that, but since she is also a major musical theater fag like all the rest of us in the family she routinely kicks ass at Jeopardy. Her daughters convinced her to audition. The bummer was when she got on. Jeopardy (the game show) films in Los Angeles.

LS is many things. A flier is not one of them. She regularly drives thousands of miles to avoid having any part of herself leave the ground. We have all tried everything to get her to fly, to no avail. And the irony of being a clinical psychologist who is terrified of flying is not lost on her.

When it became clear to the whole family that LS was not going to go on Jeopardy unless she could be live-feeded (fed?) from from her couch in Ridgefield CT, and we kinda figured Alex Trebeck wouldn't go for that, someone came up with a crazy solution.

As I was the only un-encumbered person in the family which means I didn't have a child or husband, or a real job, or a life, it was cooked up that I would fly to New York, get to Ridgefield, pack up LS and fly her back to Los Angeles and get her to Jeopardy then force her to fly back home. Yes, we were traveling first class, but to a deeply phobic person first class is still on an airplane, which has a nasty habit of flying around 30,000 feet above LS's comfort zone.

I found someone to care for my damaged but hanging-in-there cat. Flying to NYC first class was great fun, except that while waiting to board, an older man tried to chat me up. His best way of impressing me while bragging that he was in Los Angeles for 'show biz meetings' was to gently put down my actual writing job, which while at Disney, is show biz speak for 'sweat shop pay scale'.

I was happy to pre-board with the other first class passengers, if only to get a break from this man and his need to impress someone, anyone at all. I tried to bury my face in my People, but managed to look up and see my unwanted friend squeeze his down coat past me and sit in coach. I felt awful for him, when in fact he truly deserved the cosmic slap. The flight and ride to Ridgefield was jaunty. I was happy to see my family, if only for a few hours and had a host of fun ideas for LS and me to make the flight pass easily.


By the time I got to Ridgefield, LS was white knuckled and barely able to speak. My cargo pants full of fun ideas melted in the face of primal animal fear. But LS's strength, her daughters, was also her weakness. She worked and still endeavors, to not have her girls witness her fear. She doesn't want her phobia to influence her girls' life choices. So, as long as we never left her alone, I figured we, as a group, were going to get her on that damn plane. If only all of us could have flown with her, in a big unrelenting group hug, it might have worked. We got her packed and her bags in the car. The hard part was her good bye to her girls. She sobbed and hugged her girls as if I was going to air drop her over Afghanistan.

I faltered. Why put her through this, drag her onto a plane, for a game show hosted by an arrogant Canadian? But her daughters wouldn't hear of it. They wanted to root for their mom on TV. LS was sweating, pale, weeping and shaking, but she walked out to the waiting Town Car and got in. On the eternal ride to JFK, I tried to woo her with candy from our childhood that I had hunted down. She just looked through me, then peered back out the window, as if I was the Death Row nun walking her to her noose. What do you say to pure fear? Nothing as I recall. You can't feed fear, either. Fear might seem to have an appetite, but it really doesn't.


We are not an affectionate family. Sure, we hug, but not tightly. We kiss, but lightly and on the cheek. We say "love you" and leave off the far too intimate"I". I tried to hold LS's hand and while it felt wrong, the only part that felt worse was her letting me. She endured my hand in hers the way she was enduring her anxiety- by surrendering to the horror of her fate. I let her hand go. It seemed the less cruel thing to do, since I couldn't promise her we weren't about to crash and die.


We made it through bag check, security and waited to board, quietly for our plane. I snuck off and bought every cheesy gossip rag I could find, in the hopes that chuckling at the personal or professional demise of random unworthy celebrities would give LS's fear a bit of a holiday. It didn't work. She steeled herself and contained herself, as if trying to keep me from catching her infection of grief and anxiety.

Once on the plane the attendant offered us endless glasses of lovely California wine. Since I was ragged, drained and worn from dragging poor LS to her fate (and couldn't help but wonder- what IF we really actually do crash?! Good thing I'd be dead or I'd never forgive myself for killing my sister) I guiltily drank heartily. I begged LS to drink with me, but she refused. I offered her Xanax, Ambien but she had her own pills and refused to take them. I wondered if it would be rude to take one of her relaxants and decided it would. The plane barely heaved during take off, but LS felt every gear shift and and exhale from the cockpit. She grabbed my hand and squeezed as hard as she could. This is a woman who gave birth four times. She knows how to squeeze a hand. I drank with my free hand.

I offered to test her with Jeopardy questions. No. Fun candy from our childhood? No. Warm wet washcloth to gives oneself a whore's bath at one's first class seat? No. More wine? Not for her. More for me.

To take her mind off death, I opened People and searched for a story that I might read aloud to amuse her. To my horror I opened People precisely and accidentally to a story about famous people who pretended to serve in Viet Nam. And there was our father. In the story. Now I was nauseous, from eating fun candy from my unfun childhood, drinking by myself, pretending that LS's fear was just a simple feeling, and the realization that our famous but messed up dad's messings were famous too. Suddenly, in the emotional playpen that being suspended in air in a long metal humming iron lung, with 300 other lives in limbo caught up with me. And while we didn't crash, I did. The failings of other people, even the randomly famous, suddenly filled me with deep whirlpools of woe. So I continued to drink, knowing that LS wouldn't approve. At least me drinking would take a fraction of her mind off of her imminent tragic demise.

After five interminable hours of lovely first class that I was hard-pressed to enjoy due to the window seat full of agony to my left, we landed artfully and subtly. LS turned to me, "That was so fucking turbulent!" It wasn't. We never felt like we left the ground, but I just nodded. At least we were on the ground and I would get my now numb left hand back. The color only returned to LS's face once we left the plane. What I didn't realize until later was that LS was already scheming how best to get back home to CT without ever stepping foot back in LAX.


Our other sister greeted us, excitedly at LAX. LS had nothing good to say about the flight- actually she had nothing good to say, period. Older sister, or OS, cheerfully reminded us that we made it there alive, as if that was 99% of why people fly- to not die.

OS had lots of fun plans for Pre-Jeopardy make overs for LS. And that's what we did. Eyebrow shaping at Anastasia, clothes shopping at The Grove, Burke Williams for facials, massages, and Jacuzzis. But not once did it occur to us to watch Jeopardy. Perhaps if we had we would have known what we were to be exposing poor little LS to.


We drove onto the Studio Lot and were separated from LS- who went off to join the other chosen few, the brave and happy contestants. We sat in the studio audience, which was the approximate temperature of a meat freezer. I stared at the Jeopardy stage and became paralyzed with fear. This was awful. This was cruel. This Jeopardy Game Show stage was designed to intimidate even the most sober and confident trivia buff.

The big light up subject board was a good 50 to 70 feet from the Contestant podia. So, since everyone watches every single episode of Jeopardy on TV, the second you are on a massive stage built from ice and steel and the big light up board is 800 feet away and the buzzer is the size of a hummingbird's eye- you are designed to look stupid next to Alex Trebeck, who has all the answers on cue cards but acts like he knew it anyway. Aside from those three areas, the rest of the stage was plunged into gloomy blackness.

Alex's podium was between the subject board and the contestants, and we learned, among many other horrible facts, that if a contestant hits their buzzer before Alex finishes reading aloud the question, that if you are even remotely intelligent, you can read in more than half that time, if you buzz before he finishes speaking, you get locked out of being able to answer. No wonder Jeopardy seems so easy when one is lolling on their couch or in their bed- it's all so close and warm and safe on TV. Of course everyone thinks they have what it takes, because when one is eating ice cream in their pajamas they think they can do anything. And they can't. It's designed against you in person but shot and edited to make you feel smarter at home. Devious game show trickery.

They tape about 5 shows in a day. Which means, yes- Alex Fucking Trebeck works one whole day a week. He can kiss my Long Island Ass. I've never hated a game show host more. And I know it's not his fault, but I need a good scapegoat and he'll do. The rest of the day was sheer and utter hell.


LS was picked via some strange, unholy lottery to go in the 4th or 5th taping. We in the studio audience were expected to watch all the games taped that day. We soon realized that LS and all the other hopefuls were going up against some young, chipper, eager and paper-white Mormon who was on an eleven game gosh darn winning streak that must of had Joseph Smith tap dancing in his grave. Oh wait, Mormons don't dance. But they sure know how to hit a goldarn buzzer.

I was wracked with fear and loathing. After all I put my poor, sweet LS through to drag her here, and have a Persian woman spray paint eyebrows on her forehead, all just to compete against Ken Jennings, the winningest slice of Wonder Bread in Jeopardy history. Of course this dude is good at Jeopardy- he's never had alcohol or Diet Coke, so his memory is that of a 14 year old who reads nothing but Encyclopedias all day long. For fun. Not only that, but he had 11 other chances to master the far away board, to understand how to wait for Trebeck to finish his question and he knew how to ring that god damn bell. And the cold and the dark of the stage held no fear for him. He was invincible. It was excruciating.

I sat in the audience the way LS sat in the plane. Completely horrified and utterly terrified about basic human survival. I turned to OS and said, "We are dragged our sister out here, I tortured her on a five hour flight and now we sit here and watch her get thrown to the Mormon Lion?" It's a televised public spanking. It's being caned in public, with hair and make up. It's barbary dressed up as daytime TV. I fully became my sister's mother at this point- aching for her hardship, fighting the urge to run up on the stage and pull her away, freeing her from the heedless bloodshed of trivia jousting.


To her credit LS gave it her best. She even beat Ken Jennings in the Final Jeopardy question but he had amassed more funds in previous rounds and, just like a Utahan bet cautiously, so even in losing, he still came out ahead. I will never forget the final question wherein LS cleaned his already Swiss-clean clock.


"The Shakespearean Romance characters whose names are also used in the International Civil Aviation Organization's Alphabet." Ken said something stupid like Othello. Third Place Guy who had walked around all day with a Bic pen he held like a buzzer (or like Bob Dole) said something like "Smokey The Bear". But LS knew. "Who are Romeo and Juliet?"


This final question combined her vast love of theater and her deep hatred of all things Aviational. Even as my heart broke, I was proud of her. Just like a mother. And it sucked. I hated not being able to save her and protect her. But it was her shot. It was her Jeopardy, her preferred form of putting herself in harm's way. And it was hers to win or lose. I might have preferred a turbulent plane ride, but I couldn't use my fear to erase hers. I had to sit back and let her be in and on Jeopardy. I had to watch her lose and then I had to force her back on the plane to take her home to her waiting and proud family.

Driving home, trying to erase the image of LS's sobbing face as she walked alone to her gate and her imagined but still painful demise, I finally understood why Hockey Moms run onto the ice to attack mean players, why Stage Moms exist and what having no boundaries feels like. As a parent, you can't take away their pain, you can't make them pass the test, nor can you make their team win. You just sit on the sidelines with a grim smile and crushed juice boxes.


A smart mother recently said to me, "Prepare your children for the path, not the path for your children."

No wonder it took me another ten years to become a mother.

Botox for my Babymama

I got Botox before meeting my Babymama. Andrew shaved his gray beard off and came perilously close to using Grecian Formula on his chest hair. I just went right ahead and dyed my hair and Juvedermed the hell of out my mug.  We live in LA, and basically it's harder to live here and scrupulously avoid plastic surgery then it is to give into it.  Letting yourself just age naturally and letting your hair go gray is like choosing to live in LA and eat toast.  No one does that. 

All my other potential Babymamas broke up with me before I could even make or mail them a "Give Us Your Baby" Book.  And I could hear the exact moment in their voices when they emotionally hung up on me, even though we kept chatting uncomfortably for a few more minutes.  And the more I could tell they were over me, I became the ex-girlfriend or that AOL customer service person from purgatory (which is worse than hell because it's limbo forever)- I simply and cheerfully wouldn't let them break up with me.

They all would be super-friendly or wary but trying to be nice until they asked me how old I was.  And I could hear in their silence they were just waiting for me to finish ranting about what a "young 49" I am. I knew that in their young, pregnant minds, I went from sounding fun and energetic and exotic because I lived in LA to having a wattle, a tight perm and wearing taupe pantyhose with my Easy Spirit pumps. Basically, I became their moms. Or older. Because in every other place in the world, I'm far too old to be a first time mom.  
 

After each birth mother passed on me, my lawyer would explain why they didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me.  Three of them went with gay couples.  Heather went with Christians, Cresta changed her mind and wanted to keep the baby.  After seven birth mothers dumped me, I ranted to our adoption lawyer that I was going to lie about my age. I was going to shave off eight years. 41 sounds reasonable, kinda cool and on the hind end of still being young-adjacent.  Our adoption attorney strenuously encouraged me to not do that.  And he is the boss, or more like the coach, (not unlike Burgess Meredith in "Rocky") in this awful, painful process.

Let me paint the full picture here. The adoption lawyer puts ads in Pennysavers, Thrifty Nickels, Classifieds and free local papers in the states that allow him to. “Loving Professional Couple looking for child to adopt.”  If a scared and knocked up girl happens to see that ad, she calls our lawyer, who interviews her, then if she sounds straight and determined, puts her through a rigorous (hopefully) screening process to make sure she really is pregnant and not just trying to get a new roof from some desperate people with a little money saved up. 

Once the birth mother produces medical records, sonograms, photographs, and completes an exhaustive eleven page personal history, the lawyer calls his clients and says, “I have a potential match for you.” It is much more like matchmaking than like babymaking, but it’s how families are made when sperm and egg just aren’t up to the task.   

Then I’d have to screw up my courage and call a complete stranger and politely try to get them to give me their kid.  It’s pretty much as awkward and awful as it sounds.  Top that off with knowing you are competing with around five other couples, as the lawyer calls all his clients to tell them that he has a potential match for them as well.  So, not only are you trying to win over a most likely traumatized and terrified young girl, but you also have to beat out adorable gay couples who actually like Disneyland. See you on the ice, Tonya.

But this Babymama didn't get distant on the phone when I told her my age.  Maybe it was because when I said I was 49, I paused, stuttered and coughed out the truth in such a way that she might have thought I said 41.  But she didn't ask me to repeat myself and I didn't volunteer to, so we moved on. 

She had a feathery, quiet voice that sounded like it was used to not being listened to. She sounded much younger than 21, and had a slight lisp.  And her two children were screaming and playing in the background.  I was even annoyed by the kids screaming and playing and laughing and begging for her attention while I was trying to impress her with what an awesome mother I'd be.  

Now that I think about it, her kids probably helped her think I said I was 41, because they were making such an unholy racket.  I suggested she call me back at a better time but she said there was no better time. Her kids were always with her. And she didn’t have a job. In hindsight, her noisy kids probably helped her think I said I was 41.

I had been given a great hot tip from a friend who had successfully and happily adopted with our same lawyer. She told me to wait to call the babymama, because the other adoptive hopefuls probably all called as soon as the lawyer gave them the phone number, which was first thing in the morning.  Imagine these girls being inundated with phone calls from six or seven hopeful adoptive mothers. The lawyer told me I’d have to be the one making the phone calls, because the birth mothers didn’t want to talk to men at all. Unless they were gay men. 

Being far too used to not getting what I want, I didn't see each new bio-mom as an opportunity to become a parent. I saw each new young woman as the hurdle I would famously shatter my pelvis on, and live on in infamy as representing the tragedy of defeat in the title sequence of "The Wide World Of Sports". 

I wish I could say I waited to call Bio-mom because I was listening to my friend’s advice. But mostly, I dreaded calling another woman just to be rejected for my age. So I waited.  And then I ran into my ex-husband who was expecting his second child. Not that I’m competitive, but seeing this man who dumped me now with almost two children inspired me to give less of a shit about being rejected.  

I called her in the car on the way home from work.  She and I awkwardly, but calmly chatted for my entire commute home, through me unpacking my car, getting in my house, kicking off my shoes and socks and sitting outside on the back porch with a glass of wine. We spoke for well over an hour. 

She asked if I wanted a girl because that’s what she was having.  My arm hairs stood up as I told her a girl would be delightful.  She asked if my husband was okay with the baby being black.  I told her he was more than okay with that and resisted adding how sad my husband is that he never got to bang a black chick.  So this would be almost as good- that was the joke I was swallowing with my wine.  

 She said she wanted a closed adoption. She didn’t want to see us or meet us. I asked if I could still send her a book about us, so she could see how we looked and lived. I was determined to make this goddamn book for one birth mother, because we had spent the entire fall staging Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas to take photos of ourselves to sell ourselves as perfect, stable, fun, loving and parental, just missing that one pesky ingredient- a child of our own. I had the color photos, the glitter, the glue sticks and the construction paper all at the ready- all I needed was one mildly interested Babymama.

She said she thought I was the one, because it felt so easy to talk to me and because I didn’t sound all judgy and tense and weird.  I instantly pitied the five other women (or gay men) who called her within minutes of each other this morning.  She told me her mom would have to talk to me because as she said, my mom and I are in this together.  I tried not to get my hopes up but stayed up until 2am making a fantastic “Give Us Your Baby” book while drinking a bottle of wine.  I Fedexed it to Akron.

Her mother called me the next day. Her mother is 7 years younger than me.  We chatted, had each other cracking up a few times and she said it. “You’re the one.”  After Babymama saw our “Give Us Your Baby” book, she wanted an open adoption.  She wanted to meet us. And to know us. And to stay in touch. All of this was fine with us.

And when we found out the baby was being born in a month, we had to get 5 months of adoption paperwork completed and processed in Ohio and California in three weeks. Babycare classes were taken, fingerprints, medicals, water safety classes, and income taxes, income statements and a battery of Social Worker visits, compounded by huge, down payment like checks being written. By us. We were stressed, exhausted, and looking for a house to move into at the same time, since two weeks before meeting Babymama and deciding to date, we had been given notice to move out of our house.  Landlady’s daughter had been relocated to LA, and wanted her house back.  So we were dating a babymama, and looking for a house at the same time.

So, right before we left for Akron, we looked at ourselves and found ourselves wanting. We were terrified that we’d fly to Akron, meet babymama two days before the baby was due and have her reject us as being far too old for her baby.  We underwent makeovers not unlike what Dorothy and her Yellow Brick Road compatriots endured before meeting the Almighty Wizard of Oz.  We had our metal buffed, our straw restuffed and I got my face shot so full of Botox and Juvederm that my frozen faced MedSpa technician inevitably hit a blood vessel outside my lower lip and I looked like I had been popped one good by my drunken husband who had warned me not to ‘keep it up, see what happens.’

The bruise was so deep and black and defiantly ringed with a brilliant puce areola that it scoffed at mere make up concealer.  Short of going to an undertaker and begging him for wound filler or bullet hole filler, I tried every cover-up and concealer in existence.    Making matters worse, friends repeatedly threw dinner parties to toast us on our big exciting journey. We might return home to LA with a whole other person.  But I might want to try a little concealer first.  Concealing facts and nasal-labial folds was what had gotten me into this pickle in the first place.

We met Baby-Mama and her mama and her two children in the Red Lobster in Akron.  The saddest, weakest meeting hug ever took place right inside the front door. None of us wanted to be there, doing this.  I’m sure she didn’t want to have or give up this baby. Nor did I want to charm her into doing it.  But the ice had to be broken and the baby raised somewhere and by someone.  To call it awkward and painful and shy is an insult to just how shy and painful and awkward it was. 

Dressing for this first face to face was so difficult that I basically wore everything I had packed.  I was shivering so I pretended I wore too many clothes because I was cold.  They were scoping us out as much as we were scoping them. When I mentioned that I had gone to art school Babymama looked at me for the first time in the eyes. “I wanted to do that” was all she said. Then she texted someone. She did that a lot. Her phone rarely left her hand. I understood. Texting is the umbilical cord of the truly shy.  And the truly young.

Preemptively, I blurted that my dog had accidentally head butted my mouth and that’s why I was black and blue.  They stared at my bruise, which they hadn’t seen until I told my tall tale.  The four year old boy punched the booth cushions and showed us his muscles.  Babymama took many calls during dinner. Her mother was conversational and tried to keep it light and fun.  Then we discovered that Babymama hadn’t told anyone, including her father that she was pregnant. She was hiding under layers of clothes, using winter as a cloak.  

But her four year old son had guessed. Maybe that’s why he was punching the booth cushions. We were baby poachers, coming for his little sister.  Her 2 and a half year old daughter obliviously chattered to herself.  I tried to impress her by drawing a cat on her kiddie menu. She eyed the drawing and then eyed me, not happily. 

I begged for dessert and the check. It was just too hard to keep it light for so long- tiptoeing on the tight rope hundreds of feet above what we all really wanted. Which was not to be here. If only my ovaries had worked and hers had taken the day off- we’d never have to be making the smallest talk ever in a Red Lobster in Akron.

But as luck or someone who some people call God (but who I see as more of a huge 8 year old boy with a magnifying glass and an ant farm, a sense of humor and a bit of a sadistic streak) would have it- her ovaries went into over drive, despite her birth control implant device and despite all my years of spending hard earned money and so much time on birth control and pregnancy tests that I probably never needed, she was having a baby and I wasn’t. So here we were. Sitting across a tiny table crammed with corn bread and crawdaddy pizza bites, eying each other daintily and wanting dinner and labor to be over. 

It was to be the beginning of a beautiful and painful and life long relationship. With a whole other person being the only thing we have in common. My bruise would heal. Would hers?