Mom.me

I roll down the wind.Ow!  Another harsh earful of text.Your voice vacillating in uneven textures.  Can’t wait to get out of the car.  Slam the door in your face. Full of anger.  You may be my ex.‘Cept I am not lone.Lee and I are together now.

I come home to my yellow house, see my kids playing, their hands full of mush.Rooms full of fun. Guys walking by the window in gray suits, hands in their pockets, walking without blinking.  My son imitates them with exaggerated color.

My youngest is pulling on the cat’s tail.  Again and again.  Round and round. Listening to the cat purr.Sue stop that.  Don’t pull on that.  Just let the cat be. Come over here. I watch my little girl Dee twirl.  So quiet, such poise.  She is up on point, tip-toeing around, spinning around like a ball.Eh, you talking to me?  It’s the guys in gray staring through the window.  You want a piece of this?  I grab a bat. That’s what I thought.  One word and bam! Boo! You’ll have black eyes slanting downwards, sad as a panda.

I take my kids to the park. Throw some breadcrumbs at the ducks.  My youngest is  chasing after them, bees chasing after her.  She wants to pet the ducks, yet she mustn’t. Yet she must.Terd on her shoe.  Loon, duck, who knows? Both are yell.Ow!  It hurts to get stung by a bee. The pain so yellow. She’s screaming.  Shhhhh.It’s so awful!  Sounds awful.  Sounds as bad as shit does smell.  I don’t let her talk like that, no sir.Reel them cuss words back in and pretend you never said them, like they were just apart of the scenery.

I walk holding hands with Dee.Scent of the leaves falling in autumn. So lovely yet musty. Like the smell of our basement. On our way home, we walk past the grocery store. We can’t stop now.  My daughter Dee has got to pee.  We hurry down the boulevard, into our house and down the hall.Low on time, I don’t even say hello to my sister who has come for dinner.  I choose tomato soup and open up a can.O’ pee, my daughter screams from the bathroom, is yellow, yellow like the trees bending over the boulevard.

After dinner I read my son a story. A war story he picks. What happens during a war I ask my son. His answer was smart, curt.Tens of thousands of men will stand behind drapes of darkness, like soldiers hiding in the night.

When the kids are in bed, I hire a sitter and my sister and I play bridge at this little café downtown.  A quiet place away from the bright, neon streets. It’s where I met him.  He was in the jazz band.  I was playing off my sister’s trump.It was brassy and bold how he approached me.  Whistling at me through his front trump teeth.

He is a real gent, Lee is.  He comes over to tuck the kids in bed.  Softly, slowly singing a lullaby to Dee.Lighting her face with his warm melody.  Then Lee and I go for a midnight hike.  Climb the mount.Tens of hundreds of pine. Cones and seeds littering the trail, guiding us like a fairy tale. Bundles of needles arching in a bow. Kay, would you stay with me tonight, Lee grabs my hand, tender. Lee, I can’t tonight.  I squeeze his hand, his knee, his butt.Cheeks flushed, pulse rapid, but I can’t.  I have my girls and my son. Day after next, Sunday, I could.  We kiss for awhile until the dark starts to break.Fast down the mountain we coast to a diner for breakfast, which I should be making.  Feast on upside down eggs and cheesy potatoes, that I should be serving.  Trying to separate my self from motherhood.  Trying to become mom.Me.

Contributor: Karin L. Becker