Plush Attachments
By Catherine Newman “You poor thing,” I say to him, after the morning blur of sneakers and lunchboxes has shut the door behind itself. “Are you already missing Birdy?” He smiles, his face pinkly gentle and unblinking, and I hug him consolingly, tuck him down the front of my shirt so that his small-eared little head can peek out over the top. This is how Birdy ferries him around everywhere she goes—everywhere except fourth grade. He’s like Mary’s ...
Release
By Cheryl Diane Kidder I’ve got her around the waist and she’s balancing OK, but I keep having to grab a pink tennis shoe, putting it up on one pedal and then the other. We’re not moving yet, just sitting still out behind the house in the big shared parking lot between our apartment buildings. It’s October and it’s cold but she’s run out of the house as soon as she saw it, wanting to ride it right away. She sho ...
This Mother’s Day, Celebrate Somebody Else
By Janelle Hanchett I am the mother who missed your kindergarten graduation. I am the mother who was drunk the morning of the first birthday party you were invited to, when you were four years old, the one who made you wrap up a toy from your own room (apologizing and promising another, though I never did a thing), because we had nothing. I dropped you off wearing my sunglasses so nobody would see the red in my eyes as I watched you walk away, wi ...
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This Mother’s Day, Celebrate Somebody Else
By Janelle Hanchett I am the mother who missed your kindergarten graduation. I am the mother who was drunk the morning of the first birthday party you were invited to, when you were four years old, the one who made you wrap up a toy from your own room (apologizing and promising another, though I never did a thing), because we had nothing. I dropped you off wearing my sunglasses so nobody would see the red in my eyes as I watched you walk away, with a gift that wasn’t a gift and blond ringlets and fear. I am the mother who let you go on a February morning, with your brother, into the arms of your grandmother, who was taking you “to the park,” but for good and I knew it, because it was cold and raining and February. I let you go because I wanted to go back to bed. You were five. Your brother was 18 months Read more …
Plush Attachments
By Catherine Newman “You poor thing,” I say to him, after the morning blur of sneakers and lunchboxes has shut the door behind itself. “Are you already missing Birdy?” He smiles, his face pinkly gentle and unblinking, and I hug him consolingly, tuck him down the front of my shirt so that his small-eared little head can peek out over the top. This is how Birdy ferries him around everywhere she goes—everywhere except fourth grade. He’s like Mary’s little lamb. I often wonder about the strangers grinning hugely at Birdy—and then I remember that they’re seeing a cotton-candy-colored monkey head smiling at them over the neck of her t-shirt. His name is Strawberry, and he’s a floppy beanbag toy, the kind designed for a baby to clutch and chew and fling. Years ago, Birdy fell in love with him at our local farmstand/tourist trap, in the candle-smelling corner of bless-this-mess kitchen plaques and overpriced stuffed animals. She bought him with Read more …
From The Archive
Black on the Inside
By Dionne Ford My daughter has decided that she is white. With her butterscotch skin and thick copper-colored curls, it’s easy to see that white is only half the story. Her father is white, with his Irish grandmother’s freckled skin and red hair and his Finnish grandfather’s long limbs and blue eyes. I am black, cocoa-colored like my grandmothers from Arkansas and Mississippi. I want Desiree, as a biracial child, to self-identify, to not let others box her into some container too small to hold all of her. I just never considered that she might not identify with me at all. I liked it better when she worked in tones. When she was four and heading off to preschool, she compared us to the colors in her crayon box. She was peach, Dad was pink, and I was brown. The kids in her school were an amalgam of different colors, races, and religions, with parents of varying sexual orientations, and Read more …
Talking Smack
By Johanna Bailey “Let’s leave the kids at home and meet up for a drink sometime!” Every time I join a new playgroup, there’s always at least one person who suggests a girls’ night out. I’m never sure exactly how to respond. Do I say that alcohol gives me a headache? That I’m on medication and can’t drink? That I’m allergic? Or do I say nothing at all and just hope that they won’t notice when I order orange juice at the bar? The truth is, I’m an alcoholic and heroin addict in recovery. Eight years into my sobriety, it doesn’t get any easier to say that out loud. Even more troubling is what—if anything—I say to my son, Nico, and when. He’s only three. When he asks why I don’t drink wine like daddy, I explain to him I don’t like the taste, just like he doesn’t like the taste of corn. And that’s all the explanation he needs. Read more …
Moment of Recognition
By Suzi Schweikert Boarding an evening flight home from a medical conference, I shuffle along in an interminable line that winds its way to the back of the plane. My thoughts of home are interrupted by a man who is seated and facing me. His manner isn’t flirtatious, but we make prolonged eye contact. Or rather, he does. While he stares, I glance at the back of someone’s head, down at my boarding pass, back up at the seat numbers. At last I arrive at my row, a few behind the man in question, and settle in with a magazine. That might have been the end of it. The moment our plane lands, though, I become aware of him again. He’s standing, hunched over, his head at a tilt between the chair back and overhead bins. He eagerly waves at me. “Hey!” he shouts over the rumbling plane engines. “Did you deliver my baby?” Heads spin around on both aisles Read more …
The Fur Berry Dilemma
By Lara Strong In Hungary, where I have lived for ten years, most schools operate with tight budgets. As a result, there aren’t a lot of toys or books in the classrooms for kids to play with or look through during breaks. In the States, the “bring-your-own lunch” concept exists; in Hungary, kids are allowed—in fact, encouraged—to bring in their own toys. This has never caused much of a problem. My eight-year-old son has always relished the morning ritual of choosing which toy to bring in: Should it be a Lego dinosaur? How about Playmobil pirates or some tiny, plastic animal figures? Now that my six-year-old daughter, Sara, is entering first grade, she is already eagerly anticipating this practice—a stuffed unicorn, perhaps? Maybe a pretty pink pony? I’ve rarely had an opportunity to witness what happens when my kids actually arrive at school, but I imagine how it goes each morning. They set down their backpacks, take off their jackets, Read more …