peevish mama

Doctor Dash and I have developed an informal way of sharing written media with each other. Basically, if there’s a novel or an article one of us reads that the other might enjoy, we stick it on the other person’s nightstand. A few days ago he shuffled the May 18 New Yorker over and directed me to this article by Jonah Lehrer about self control. The article describes a set of studies out of Stanford in the late 1960’s where young children were put into a room with a marshmallow and told that if they didn’t eat it for 15 minutes, they would get two marshmallows. They had a bell to ring if the temptation became too great and they wanted to call the proctor back in to ask for the marshmallow before the fifteen minutes was up. Most of the kids either ate the marshmallow without calling the proctor or stared at the marshmallow for a few seconds and rang the bell. Only thirty percent of the kids found a way to wait out the fifteen minutes. 

The article goes on the explain how the ability to delay gratification is an excellent predictor of academic success later in life – more so than I.Q. Walter Mischel, the researcher, argues that “intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework.” What is interesting is that the ability to wait is a skill more than a natural talent, and the crux of it is the “strategic allocation of attention.” The kids who could wait for the marshmallow didn’t want it less, they didn’t have more will power, they simply knew how to distract themselves. They looked away from the marshmallow, thought about something else, and outsmarted the “hot stimulus.” They figured out “how to make the situation work for them.” When the kids were taught some mental tricks, like pretending the marshmallows were clouds, they all improved their self control.

So of course I’m reading this article with a growing sense of alarm, wondering how my own children would fare at this experiment. When Saint James was a baby I was so besotted with him, so guilt ridden about working, so eager to make him happy and comfortable, that I remember actually running to get him stuff. If I heard him in his crib, I was in there in a flash, lest he experience even a second of anxiety. Obviously, times have changed, as I mindfully try to cultivate a culture of benign neglect in our household. But, really truly, have they changed that much?

Just now, when I sat down on the couch with the laptop to start writing, my icepack on my knee, my coffee beside me, Devil Baby emerged from the basement to demand a snack. I tried to put her off, I tried to remind her that she ate breakfast ten minutes ago, but she is relentless and I am weak. I sighed, whipped the faux fur throw off my legs and stomped to the kitchen to cut up an apple and send her on her way. Saint James never had to wait because I was a fruitcake eager beaver new mother. Devil Baby never has to wait because I’m a fruitcake worn out nub of a mother. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I basically walk around with grease cans in my holsters, quick on the draw because I can’t bear the whining. She comes at me, her round face set in a determined grimace, her little mouth moving in repetitive syllables and I crumble like a house of cards. She’s a giant, bossy force of nature so I pick my battles wisely: 1. battles that are early in the morning before I get too tired from other battles, 2. battles that involve imminent physical peril, 3. battles with witnesses. Any other battles, you’ll pretty much see me getting creamed all over the field by Devil Baby.

So when Mischel queries of parents: Have they established rituals that force the child to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage the child to wait? And do they make waiting worthwhile? I simply cringe and add this to my long list of things to “work on.” Or maybe I just fold this into my new slacker mama schtick – I’ll peel up one cucumber slice from my eye long enough to squint out my new mantra: good things come to those who wait, children.  

It’s amazing what you discover when you change things up. Doctor Dash is out of town for my little brother’s bachelor party, so I told Saint James and Supergirl they could sleep in our bed with me. I didn’t sleep a wink until I finally picked up my pillow and beat a hasty retreat to Saint James’ bed. Holy Moses, he sounds like a cross between an obese man and a wild boar. He sounds like the Industrial Revolution is unfolding up his nose, with cadres of child laborers slaving away at top speed in a tin cup factory. I had to keep opening my eyes to make sure all the snoring and sniffling and snarfling and clanging was coming from one small eight year old boy. Mystery revealed, it is no small wonder he wakes up every morning, his hair on end, looking like he’s been up all night popping No-Doze and writing a paper on Kant. He puts the grog in groggy, the phlegm in phlegmy. First thing Monday morning, I’m calling the ENT. Something tells me we’re going to be wrangling some adenoids this summer.

Hail Monti, full of grace 

Toucan Sam is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst Cocoa Puffs and

Blessed is the fruit of thy loops, Tony the Tiger.

Holy Monti,

Mother of Trix Rabbit,

Pray for your teeth,

Now, and when you ask for cereal again for lunch.

Amen.

Supergirl came home today and announced that her favorite show, Zoey 101, is over because Zoey is pregnant. Shit. Shit. Shit. How did she find out? Curse those too-wise-for-their-years-kids-with-older-siblings! When she and Saint James started watching the show, Jamie Lynn Spears’ indiscretions were old news to this pop-culture vulture, and I actually considered banning the show. I decided against it, ignoring the feeling that this might come back to bite me in the ass. I suppose I deserve this for letting them watch crap TV, but no one can be highbrow all the time – and if you are, you’re an asshole. The show is harmless and Jamie Lynn, despite her sad, misguided older sister, is actually rather cute. As long as her abdomen remained innocently flat, I saw no reason to pull the plug.

But the jig is up and Supergirl wants to know exactly what Zoey did to get this baby when she was so young. Oh dear sweet patron saint of child rearing, whoever you are, and I’m sure you exist because there are patron saints for everything, including mice and dysentery, help me, I beg of you! Supergirl is only six and not only is she fishing around for the birds and bees talk, she’s treading on teenage pregnancy issues – the urges, the hormones, the fumbling, the peer pressure, the danger. No way, man. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. I was utterly flummoxed and said something which I fear came out sounding like babies are nothing more than TV show squelchers. I know this was one of those “teachable moments” everyone is always nattering on about, but I’m the one who needs the teaching. What am I supposed to say? How much is she ready to hear?

I begged off in a panic, telling Supergirl that we would talk about it when we had a little more time and Devil Baby wasn’t around to bug us. I need to come back to this with her. I need to close the loop, clarify, make sure she is not left wondering and confused. I need to begin the conversation about sex and sexuality which, hopefully, will go on for a very long time. I feel pressure to make sure I get this right – I want to be the one she comes to when it really matters. I’ve got no problem with the biology part – I think she wants to know the truth. I have trouble with the fact Supergirl has connected pregnancy with this sweet little girl on TV. Were all those judgmental, conservative alarmists kind of, I can’t believe I’m going to say it, kind of, sort of, right?

I don’t think so. No. No. They weren’t. This is why I didn’t ban the show to begin with. I think the atmosphere of witch hunts and sanitization we live in is totally counterproductive. My kids need to learn to separate entertainment from real life. They need to know that you don’t make heroes out of TV characters. They need to understand fallibility and consequences. They need to know that everything is not black and white –  they need to see the gray and learn to navigate it with care, with confidence, with open minds, with a strong moral compass, with humor, with humility. Celebrities shouldn’t be their role models. Dash and I are their role models. Their sweet babysitters who play soccer and musical instruments are their role models. Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy is not teaching little girls that it’s ok to get pregnant. With the right conversation, it could teach quite the opposite.

I just.

Need. To think.

A bit more.

This was a Mother’s Day I will not soon forget. It was the Mother’s Day that fell five weeks into my sentence on crutches, the Mother’s Day I wasn’t feeling like much of a mother. Notwithstanding everything, my little family rallied around me and made me feel like a queen. A lucky, lucky queen with some ridiculously cute constituents. I got glazed donuts and hot coffee for breakfast. I got painted frames and water colored cards. I got little pots of flowers and a gift certificate to Cliché. I got hugs and sloppy kisses. I got a picnic in the Rose Garden, some time to lounge on a blanket in the sun, watch them play through sleepy, slit eyes, and breathe Spring. Best of all, I got a little concerto in the basement at the end of the day. They played piano for me in their pajamas, their hair still wet from their baths. Saint James wrote me a song called Rain. It was short and beautiful and pierced my heart like an arrow. 

1. About three days after my knee surgery, all hell broke loose deep down in my guts. Frantic calls were made, hasty plans drawn up, and copious amounts of overtime were doled out in the frantic construction of a patience factory. This factory, while built under duress and fly-by-night circumstances, has been churning out brand new patience at top speed, and although the quality has been less than consistent, the very existence of this heretofore unknown commodity has been both a blessing and an improvement. 

2. I am actually looking forward to stepping back into my life and doing all the things that, a few weeks ago, I felt were chores especially designed to wear me down into a nonsentient nub: groceries, laundry, cooking.

3. My children, Devil Baby included, no longer rely on me for every little thing.

4. The love I feel for Doctor Dash has swelled to weepy, hormonal, postpartum proportions when I would look at him and look at my new baby and think thank you for helping me do this. Dash, thank you for helping me do this.

5. Because of some really sweet people in my community, I have a new understanding of what it means to be aware, to be kind, to follow through. I will never again assume someone is OK. If I have an inkling I could help, I will help.

6. My knee is going to kick ass.

Saint James scored his first header goal today in soccer. It was gorgeous. Be still my beating heart.

I promised myself I wouldn’t post again until I could post about something other than my knee, but sadly, I’ve got nothing. My knee still rules. I am its simpering bitch. I pamper it, strengthen it, bend it, medicate it, hydrate it, coddle it. Curse it behind its back.

Here in Minnesota we are breathing in the first of spring – with great inhalations of relief, we are greedy for the smell of green – sweet, sweet chlorophyll. This week has been but a string of days that feel like sun-kissed gifts from Mother Nature. I have taken to sitting in my adirondack chair in front of my house in the afternoons. I feel like a proper invalid from the olden days taking my fresh air, my sun, my constitutionals – minus the white blanket, the buxom nurse and the Swiss Alps in the foreground. I am a feeble convalescent – outside of everything – nothing more than a passive bystander as an orgy of bipedal existence flaunts itself in front of my eyes.

I sit in my chair, my crutches glinting in the grass beside me, and I watch Devil Baby ride her tricycle on the sidewalk. We amuse ourselves by creating elaborate dinners, with her riding her tricycle to the little tree to get each ingredient. Yesterday she went to the “lake” and caught some fish, which I cleaned and breaded and fried in a cast iron skillet. Then she raced off to the little tree to buy blueberries. Then back to get spinach, carrots, cream for the berries, sea salt, a baguette. She is a tireless food shopper. It’s a game – part charades, part pretend, part fetch.

As she pedals away, her little blue rain boots pushing like mechanical pistons, I slip into one of my infamous calamitizations – my reveries of doom. I imagine a rusty van stopping and someone jumping out to pluck my Devil Baby off her red tricycle. What would I do? Normally, I envision leaping out of my chair and running like the bionic woman until I catch the van – my reflexes so cat-like that they wouldn’t have gotten far. I lunge and grab hold of the side of the van, working my arms into an open window while the culprit tries to shake me off, thwacking my legs against the side of the van like a rag doll. I rip off the rear view mirror and bludgeon the driver in the face until he swerves, swearing and crying, and hits a tree. I am thrown from the van, but I jump up and grab Devil Baby from the floor of the back seat, collapsing into the grass. I cradle her, a trickle of blood snaking down my temple, as the camera zooms out and the music swells. Cue the distant sirens.

But now, NOW, I’m on crutches and I won’t be able to leap out of my chair and put the smack down. Now, I must rely on my wits, my keen eyesight. I, who couldn’t tell you the make of most of my friends’ cars if you offered me a million dollars, will have to get my shit together and start to identify all those amorphous sedans and suvs with the precision of a trained detective. 1997 Buick Lesabre. Sage-mist metalic. The brake rotors are shot, passenger side wiper stuck at 30 degrees, I will rattle off through gritted teeth. Crucial, above all, I must memorize the license plate number. Gotta get those plates. Suddenly, it feels irresponsible to be sitting outside alone with Devil Baby and no cell phone. So exposed, helpless. I know every second is critical.

Tick. Tick.

I decide to practice.

Devil Baby is buying a peach pie at the little tree. A maroon minivan snakes by, a bit too slowly for my taste. Downright predatory. Soccer ball decal in the window. Check. I squint into the sun and – Mother Mary – I can’t make out the license plate! I can’t even read it, let alone memorize it, let alone make a lightening quick phone call to alert the authorities so they put out an APB and smack a tail on that van faster than you can say crazy.

So I put my head back and close my eyes, the sun thumbing dancing sparks against my eyelids. I take a deep breath and wait for my peach pie.

This morning when I opened the laptop, last night’s final search popped up: penguin trainer jobs. Good God, I hope Doctor Dash isn’t looking for a new line of work.

This morning Supergirl awoke glassy-eyed, groggy, and harboring a hacking cough. I could tell the cloud would lift and she would be fine if I sent her to school, but I thought I’d give the kid a break. Everyone deserves a mental health day from time to time and plus, if she stayed home, we’d have a little time to ourselves while Angel Baby was at pre-school. I stood over her at breakfast and decided to feel her out. Do you think you need to stay home from school today? Do you feel that sick? She nodded as she arranged her features into her best impersonation of a baleful street urchin and coughed feebly but incessantly into the crook of her elbow. Oh she’s good. Not over played. Nothing cartoonish about her portrayal of a sick girl. Workin’ those enormous eyes. Yep, she nailed it.

I felt her forehead for show, as I already had a plan for her little day of rest. If Supergirl stayed home, we could go to Galoony’s for steak and cheese subs before picking up Angel Baby from school. Hurrah for me – I love a partner in crime. My only stipulation was no TV for her – no computer for me. She nodded solemnly.

Lunch – what can I say about lunch? It was the best. I can’t remember the last time Supergirl and I had a meal by ourselves. Sitting in a two person booth enjoying our sodas, our conversation meandered in unexpected fits and starts – like a kid dizzy after spinning around in circles. Galoony’s has huge grafitti-inspired wall murals and that got us talking about grafitti. Why it can be bad, why it can be beautiful.

We talked about grafitti artists having to work in the dark, on the fly, with eyes in the back of their heads, always on the look out for the cops. So if it turns out really pretty, it’s worth it, she said. Not a girl who needs to be fed lines in black and white, I stepped into the gray with her. Absolutely. I happen to think so, anyway.

Then we played a couple rounds of build-a-man (incidentally, they no longer call it hang-man. Also banished from the playground of political correctness are sitting Indian-style and giving Chinese-cuts).

Our subs came and we talked about our mutual love of meat sandwiches. There is totally no way you are happier eating this sandwich than me, she murmured. I will remind her of this meal when she goes through her vegetarian phase someday, God forbid.

And then, because Supergirl is obsessed with albinos we talked about albinism – which led to a creaky discussion of genetics as I stumbled around the dusty boxes of my mind trying to remember and explain how dominant and recessive genes work. There is a small colony of albino squirrels on our side of the creek and when we saw that one had been hit by a car last summer, our family let out a collective moan as we drove by the small white splotch on side of the road. She wanted to hear all about the albino boy I saw in Florida when I was a young girl. How his skin was as pale as paper. How he only came out at sunset and waded into the ocean, bending his lanky frame into a question mark to dip the tips of the his fingers into the water. How he wore sunglasses even at sunset because his eyes were so fragile, so susceptible to the light we take for granted. She wanted to know if he was scary. She wanted to know if he was friendly.

I don’t know, I said. He was older than me. I didn’t try to be his friend. 

Maybe you should have.

Maybe I should have.

Here’s a well kept secret. There is no better lunch partner than a kindergartner. They are as pure hearted, honorable, and wise as they will ever be – the kind of wisdom that comes from having no pre-conceived notions, no biases – only the ability to question, to reason, to see that next step in a logical sequence and jump to it with enviable agility. They are aware of gender differences, but as of yet completely unaffected and they inhabit their bodies with absolute joy and freedom. They are curious and unjaded. They are learning to read – to decode the ultimate mystery – the key to everything. They see beauty and humor in places we don’t even bother to look anymore. Kindergartners are magic. Pure magic.

I am so sad this year is almost over. I am so glad I let her stay home today.

I don’t know what squeezes my heart more. To realize one of my children sings in perfect pitch or to realize one of my children is tone deaf. I’ve got one of each. I’m not saying which is which, because everyone has got to sing.

Supergirl has been begging, begging, to go to Circus Camp for two years. When she was four, I told her she was too young. When she was five, I told her she was too young. Now she’s six and she can go. Good Lord. Flying trapeze, balancing balls, bungee trapeze, high wire, clowning, German wheel – what the hell is a German wheel? I don’t like the sound of that – sounds sinister. As I read through the website, I feel a lump in my throat. It all sounds so . . . dangerous. It all sounds so . . . perfect for Supergirl. Sigh. What else can we do but try to follow our children’s bliss? So I’m signing her up and she’s jumping out of her skin. Her response when I told her? “Aw, sweetness!” uttered with the face and voice of a six year old girl, but the ‘tude of a fifteen year old skateboard rat.

“Circus Juventas, a performing arts circus school for youth, is dedicated to inspiring artistry and self-confidence through a multi-cultural circus arts experience.” We are lucky enough to have this place just over the river in St. Paul and on Saturday we went to their big open house celebration. I was curious and I figured, what the hell, let’s give Supergirl a little teaser of what’s to come this summer.

I can honestly say that there is nothing I did not love about it. They had all their equipment set up in the Big Top and after collecting a waiver, the kids were allowed to try their hand at the trapeze, the swinging rope, the trampoline, the high wire and all sorts of other cool things. We caught two performances while we were there and there was a moment when, I swear to God, I got choked up watching this beautiful girl soar through the air on a trapeze. We were practically underneath her and I could see every one her muscles working and straining to gain momentum before she draped herself into poses of breathtaking precariousness. It was poetry to watch a body performing so fluently and so beautifully. Later some contortionists crawled out in freaky green leotards, looking like really buff amphibians. These three girls were healthy, which is to say that they were by no means skinny, which is to say that they had big glutes and breasts and were a joy to watch as they bent their spines into almost unimaginable positions. I do yoga, I do back bends. Holy shit, these girls made my back bends look like paltry hillocks to their acute Mt. Kilmangaros. They were fantastic.

And as we clapped and watched with mouths agape, I was able to crack open why I was digging it so much. This was all about bodies – beautiful fantastic strong and limber bodies – but it was about what these bodies can do, not about how these bodies look. It was a celebration of physical prowess and artistry and it was gorgeous to watch. It was a really inspiring bookend of sorts to my recent, admittedly dour, body ruminations. 

There was also a real joyful looseness to the place in terms of what has become the overbearing strong arm of “safety”. Maybe because they are circus-types and there is a certain degree of physical peril implicit in the whole endeavor, but it was clear their focus was on set up and rigging and no one seemed to get that bent out of shape about all the kids climbing around like monkeys and perched on ladders and scaffolding watching the shows. Most of the kids were Circus Juventas kids, but of course, Supergirl shimmied her way up on to a platform for a better view and they let her be. I watched people who work there see her, expecting them to tell her to get down and they didn’t. I tell you, it warmed my cockles to see that kind of freedom and faith. Faith that a kid can manage not to kill themselves ten feet off the ground.

So Supergirl is all signed up and ready to go. She’ll go for a week this summer from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon and there will be a performance on Friday. I know she’s in it for the swinging, the speed, the height, the adrenaline. I’m just hoping this is one more way for her to realize just how much power and grace she carries in her little frame. I hope she has a blast.

Of course I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that this all doesn’t backfire on me. That ten years from now doesn’t find me clutching a tattered, tearstained goodbye note to my chest, weeping unconsolably as I blindly urge my minivan down a long dusty dirt road in hot pursuit of the circus train choo choo chooing into the dusk.

It is with a bit of trepidation that I sit down to write this post. I’m a superstitious gal (it’s the Latina in me), and I feel like the second I type these words, I’m going to regret it with a vengeance as deep and sweeping as a curse tumbling from the wrinkled lips of a bruja. But fair is fair and I once wrote that I would rechristen Devil Baby should there ever be sufficient change in, um, personality to warrant it. So here it goes. 

Devil Baby has turned a corner. She is no longer the pushy, demanding, chronic malcontent she has been since birth. She is slowly emerging from her role as the squeaky wheel who hogs all the grease and taking her position as the funny baby who’s all about keeping up, hanging out, fitting in and making us laugh. She is finally acting like those affable third born clowns I have heard so much about. And she washes windows!

Not coincidentally her language is exploding and she’s all about sprinkling her sentences with very grown up sounding “wells” and “actuallys.” She is dredging up old stories and recounting them as if she’s been holding them in her little brain for all these months just waiting to find the words with which to let them out. The other day she asked me if I remembered the bird in our house who missed his mommy and we tried to catch him with the yellow glove and he was so scared when we were screaming. I stopped chopping, turned around and there she was – a pint sized apparition in my kitchen telling me about something I had completely forgotten about with her little hand splayed out in a gesture. When we moved into this house there was a bird in the basement which, of course, caused a total commotion and yes, I did try to grab him with a rubber glove on my hand, but the first hint of disgusting birdish wing fluttering made me wretch and I ran away shrieking.

When I told Doctor Dash about it he marveled: she’s been waiting all this time to talk about it!

Aack! Brain flood! Not to put too fine a point on it, but again with the power of words! What a relief it must be to be heard and more importantly, to be understood. What a relief to be able to communicate more than the bare necessities. What a relief to be able to tell us something and have us react in a true and genuine way to her content, to her actual message. What a relief to be done with the baby bullshit where we try to appease her with a sing song repetition of what she just said or our pathetic attempts to hone in on what she wants by trial and error - What was that? You want fruit? Shoes? You want fruit chews? Fruit loops? Hoops? Shoes? You want your shoes? Croup? Hoop? Hula Hoop? My God. Talk about torture.

Maybe she’s just one of those people who needs to communicate, to tell her stories, to spread her happiness and her angst like seeds in a field. Maybe she’s constitutionally unable to hold anything in, to hold anything back. Maybe she needs to out put. And maybe she’s one of those people who doesn’t have a high tolerance for frustration or loneliness. Maybe now that she can be heard and understood, she’s feeling a little better about life. Ohhhhhkaaaay. This is sounding a bit close to home. I’m typing really slow, sort of wondering, why the hell it took me so long to have this revelation. What a fool I have been. Poor Devil Baby. All this time. All this time she was standing on the sidewalk, her nose pressed to the glass, staring at all those beautiful, colorful, delicious words. Hungry for expression. Hungry for connection.

So, Devil Baby is hereby renamed Angel Baby for purposes of this blog. I realize it is a bit of stretch, even for the new and improved Devil Baby, but there’s a nice symmetry to it.  Also, it will be easy to go back should this turn out to be nothing more than a fluke, a brief and fortuitous bout of tranquility. Angel Baby is never going to be totally easy going. She’s always going to be headstrong and demanding – she’s a girl who knows her mind – but at least now she can be happy. 

And now that Angel Baby can be happy, we can be happy.

So often it feels like we don’t get to pick what kind of mama we want to be. The way we mother feels like an extension of who we are and that’s about as easy to change as the ebb and flow of the tides. Not that we don’t try. I’m constantly beating myself up, vowing to do this or that differently, falling down, trying again – all of it laced in mother guilt. My mantra: every day is a new day. And sure enough, every day is a new day. Usually, I wake up with tons of energy (post coffee), the well has been mysteriously filled in the dark hours of the night and my children’s soft and sleepy faces are all I need to know I am doing exactly what I should be doing. As the day wears on, however, shit happens and sometimes – often – I end up really far away from my blissful start. And so I begin again. And again. 

On Sunday I had one of those weird “what should I do?” moments that brought my role as a mother into hyper-focus.  I very consciously got to choose how I was going to act, and it was a tad odd, if empowering. I had taken the kids ice skating and since I thought they would just be messing around, I didn’t make them wear their hockey helmets. Before long, Saint James sidled his way into a pick-up game with some boys and their dads: Edina’s finest. I could tell he was jazzed and stretching way beyond his normal level of play. The dads and older boys weren’t wearing helmets, but the kids that looked to be Saint James’ age all were. I grabbed his helmet, picked my way across the ice and called him over. He took one look at the helmet, said he didn’t want to wear it and skated away, chasing the action. I stood for a few seconds holding the helmet in front of me like an offering. 

I could walk away. I could bark after him and force him to put it on. By skating away from me, Saint James had closed the door on my attempt to give him his helmet under the radar screen. Right now – in this moment – what kind of a mother was I going to be?  

I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I sighed and walked away. 

He didn’t bully me. I didn’t give in to him. In that moment, I made a choice. A choice between letting my son skate around with his balls intact or grabbing him by those same balls and bending him to my will. I chose not to be the overbearing overprotective mother, knowing full well that if he got hurt, the pain would be uniquely and exquisitely mine.  I thought of his eyes and teeth, exposed to all matter of hard things and sharp edges. I thought of his delicate temples, protected by nothing more than the thin layer of a wool ski hat. I thought of all that is already in his beautiful brain – all that is yet to come.

Why did I walk away like a rejected suitor holding a droopy bouquet? Why did I accept Saint James’ petulant decision and spend the next hour feeling slightly queasy, when it would have been nothing for him to have indulged me and put it on? I don’t know. I guess I can imagine being a boy on the ice with a bunch of better hockey players. And I know – I just know that my voice scraping across that ice would have sounded shrill and unwelcome. No matter how hard I tried to seem casual and cool – no matter how many “buddies” I threw into my cajoling sentences, his cheeks would have burned in the cold air. I chose to let him be. I won’t always make that choice, but in that moment, it just seemed right. Wrong for me. But right for him. So I held my breath, my heart in my throat, until he skated off the ice his face lit with pride, right into my arms.