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June 12, 2009 - 7:32 p.m.

merritt, bridget, tamsin, rowan

names of children who are not mine

i imagine them
they will not be like the faces i see each day.

they will be a puzzle, collage, conglomerate, patchwork clich� of all the best and brightest features before me

they will not make their parent cry, quit their job, use homonyms incorrectly... or sit in a park drinking, taking pills and cutting their arms... breaking the skin good mothers spend a lifetime trying to protect.

i asked today, after remarking that we had been together quite some time now,
- what have we done all year?

- nothing.

smirk. (mine or his)

- no, that's what YOU did. WE, on the other hand ...

and then we revisited a list of things they should know by now.

mostly it is the same list,
they have been learning it forever now.
on that list is the knowledge of the right answers.
the right answer is never - nothing.

I asked why review was important.
I was sad for a moment, when i realized that some of them don't know what "hindsight is 20/20" means.

- Are you talking about us, miss?

he seems unsure whether he should be offended

- no, i'm talking about it as an expression, as a metaphor for a film which I think you just watched, unless you somehow managed to focus on none of what just passed before your eyes in the dark

- oh.

She runs against time, across the questions that are timeless. We are meant to wonder... more than nothing.

Run.

I guess that some people are running, even though it appears that they are sitting still, from some past and experience that they have not found words for. And it could be nothing. And it could be themselves. And there could be nothing I can do, except show them that I have a sense of humour and that I won't take it personally. And that's mostly true. I have to care, because I can't not. I will share space in this world with them and I only have this chance.

My week is sucked dry by cheerleading bullshit, lost novels following on the heels of lost cellphones and unreturned phone calls, which are somehow my fault. I have to teach the world to be nice, to remember its shit,-- to remember itself. Can I possibly teach you to see what I have been doing for a whole year, facing your daughter each day with more consistency than some people get from an adult in their whole life - and at the first sign of trouble maybe I am just another person who isn't good at communicating, who didn't call you back.

Really though, I have other, less about you, more about them - problems: with kids who don't eat, can't eat, cut, fight, throw fists and make me nervous because I cannot help them, and sometimes because I was the person who crossed them, black cat style, at the wrong point in their day and now I have spent a week looking over my shoulder in the cafeteria, because I know his face and I am afraid he will remember mine, but recall nothing about how it started. I am the scapegoat, high school all over again forever.

But there are moments too, when I see that if this is it, there isn't anything else like this:

bee hits window
bee falls between my thighs, struggling like a fist, fingers stretching to uncurl itself and hit back,
fighting to keep my impulse to brake, impulse to freeze or veer

when you are that close to being stung, you think about how much more painful it would be... to be the bee you are afraid to be stung by... or the body in your car wrapped around the tree after you panicked when you first felt afraid of being stung

and sometimes, in real life, you don't get second chances
you just have to know the answers to the questions we all ask,
about love, about death:
-how do you know that you love me?
-what would you do if I died?

Even Lola got three chances. Crash, crash, smile.

Trust that intention is enough, that sometimes, you have to trust - without proof. Assume positive intent. Assume that we could all be capable of something we can't imagine yet.

 

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