I really am quite close to losing my temper. Tired of holding back this big fucking dog, tired of the struggle, ready to watch whatever comes next.
On the other side of this, I have had quite a sentimental weekend. Gavin is sick. A fever, and then vomiting, and then utter collapse. When he is ill, I trace back through my favorite moments, the treasure. How he used to call flamingos mangos. As in, I like those pink flying mangos.
Or how he’s pathologically literal.
Me: What are you doing?
Him: Breaking this toy with a hammer.
Me: Why are you doing that?
Him: I don’t know.
Brooke gave him two pinwheels on Friday, and yesterday, on the phone with my mother, he told her about these pinwheels. My mother asked where he got them. “Brooke,” he said. “She gave me them because I’m her favorite boy in the world.” I looked up to find that Brooke had heard him, and was crying. You know, treasure.
If I keep those moments in my head, I’ll probably be fine. Probably not send flaming emails into the world. Probably not do anything rash or righteous.
Memory might be approximate, but time isn’t. If I tell you, four months ago, that I’ll get right back to you, what do you think I mean? If I say that you’ll hear from me by the end of the week, when will you hear from me? If I say Friday morning, what the hell am I telling you?
Gavin told me yesterday that he’s going to drink Kitten Juice and turn into a kitten. Sometimes our imagination is all we have, so it had better be the best of us.
I love these little stories about your son. I can’t tell, though, if it’s a kid thing that he’s like this, or if he’s just a really cool little kid.
“I like those pink flying mangos.” Thank you, little Gavin, for the pink flying mangos in my brain.
I sometimes think I’ve really fucked up by not having kids. I really missed the whole point. I recently told a particular baby-obsessed friend of mine that I might have one, if I could just be sure they would be a really cool little kid.
She replied, “Oh, you mean like you?”
Yeah, the jab wasn’t lost on me.
But then, I think, I will end up having a strange, unrelatable child who wants to play Barbie dolls all day and contemplate shades of nail polish. I’m not sure if I could take it.
And I know, I know. I know already what you’re going to say. It’s okay, I know. And it’s funny that you hinted at this, because sometimes I think half of the joy in raising a child must be to reacquaint yourself with that thing that Wordsworth wrote about — whether it be books or Barbie dolls, nail polish or magic — that “primal sympathy, which having been must ever be.”
Treasure, indeed.
I was absolutely terrified that I’d have a little kid who wore high heels and wanted to have Barbie tea parties. Turns out I have a little boy who loves to play princess and says his favorite color is pink. And you just love them. Whoever they are, whatever they’re into. You love them. Because from the very first moment, from that initial grip, they needed you to.
I used to think that nothing would be as cool as reading him bedtime stories, but now we sing songs too, and that might be even better. “Blah blah black sheep” and “Where is fumpkin” just blow my mind.
My feeling is that he’s just wicked cool. But I’m willing to say that I’ve known a couple of other kids that were pretty cool as well. (And your odds are good, seeing as genes are a factor.)
Heh. Well, thanks for that. It’s a very tidal thing for me, the drive to bear children. My partner and I go back and forth; I go back and forth. It’s different when it’s not an “accident” or an inevitability.
I’m commenting on this now because it happens to have reappeared as something relevant. Made me re-examine how deep this goes:
One of my very dearest friends is bipolar. Absolutely batshit crazy, in fact, without medication. (And I’m glib about it because we all are; what else can you be?)
We have all known for years that she and her husband could never have children of their own; she could never go off of the (horribly birth-defect inducing) medication long enough to consider it.
Recently, though, it’s come to light that there are a number of additional genetic issues between the two that forbear the possibility of them procreating. Even after all the odds, this realization hit her like a sledgehammer.
“I feel like I’ve lost something fundamental,” she said.
And I, after exhausting ever other line of hope I could offer, simply said, “You have.”
Most all of my friends are in their thirties, in various stages of baby-making angst. I have always put that aside, really, thinking it’s either a thing that happens or it doesn’t. But I felt what she was saying deeply. I knew it.
They can adopt, surely. Will make great parents, either way. But I knew what it was, this thing she felt, and realized I’ve felt it for a long time. Any child my partner and I have “naturally” would be “half hers” or “half mine.” I know that if we could have a child that was “ours” in that way, I think we would have done it already.
Does that sound monstrous? I suppose it does. It is. I know that love isn’t about genetics; love is about need, proximity, the inexpressible thing that melts away in the face of vulnerability.
It’s a petty concern. A very petty desire, but one that is still, I think, deeply lodged within us: the want to create from what we know, from what we already love.
This may seem a bit off topic, but your post hit me squarely on the nose. I’ve finally had my manuscript back from my editor, and am in a mad rush to rework certain aspects of part one. It seems I wrote the beginning of the relationship—-the joyous, drug-high pleasure of newness—-from the vantage of a relationship already worn down.
I know why I did this; it’s a habit I have, protecting my characters from love. I knew certain scenes weren’t working, that they just didn’t quite add up, but it was my editor pointing out that I hadn’t written the joy that finally clued me in to the problem.
I think that I forget sometimes to create from what I already love. Sometimes I create from conflict instead of vulnerability.
I am glad that I did not have to choose pregnancy. I never would have. I’d convinced myself that I didn’t want kids. But I tell you, nothing sends me like Gavin. This weekend he asked me if I wanted to stir the cake mix (imaginary cake mix, of course) and when I said yes, he showed me how. “Mix it like this. Round and round like your eyes.” Round and round like my eyes. Yes. Exactly.
Do you suppose that “create from what you already love” is the deeper meaning to the tired adage “Write what you know”?
I not only create from conflict, but I find conflict infinitely easier to write. Vulnerability is instinctually a thing to be avoided. Sometimes vulnerability, to me, feels like a sickness.