On Motherhood
remembering at 8:42 a.m. on 2003-05-10
The hostile California sun blares down on my blonde hair, bleaching it slowly into a fine white mane. I'm sitting in the hot car, my thin, scabby legs dangling over the bend of cheap vinyl upholstery. It's hot....like the inner workings of a clothes dryer...draining the earth of all moisture and vitality.
My mother, whom is driving, pulls slowly down the cul-de-sac against the fiery curb to greet the tired, mousy though proud smile of our neighbor. This woman, my playmates mother, who stands here in flip-flops and whose body is loose from pregnancy, is holding her new son...wrapped oddly in a blanket and cuddled deep into her thick arms.
I peer across to her, listening thru the rolled down windows with half interest, unaware of the mechanisms and dramatics of a new baby. Their voices dancing up and down in the hot sun.
It's just all too meaningful for a six-year-old girl. Carrying around dolls with no attention span....little mothers training with full force for the day we too will stand in the hot son...sweat glistening on our plump figures as we worship the little life bound to us.
This moment was fixed in me permanently...
Two days later, in the same car, I am starting up at my father's blank inattentive face as my mother's words are quiet...as if she is keenly
aware of the fragility of my innocence.
But its too late to walk me away from the scene. She reports to my father that the same little life I had peered over earlier had been found dead in his crib by his mother.
Somehow, things just were never the same, between my dolls and I.
never was � never will be
