Unmasked

James Baldwin in Letters From a Region of the Mind makes the observation that “Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,” which, on the surface, strikes one as sentiment bordering on the sentimental, as something pat and easily contained on a bumper sticker. Yet, as sentiment, the statement is emotionally accurate. James Baldwin knew the human heart.

Consider this: How much safer were you before love? And then: How much did you wish to cast off the hockey mask and enter the frays of romance, or of childbearing, or, even, of loving a pet that you knew would die before you? We walk around, before love, safe behind the armors of loneliness, and we ask those we deem worthy to strip it all away so that we stand there, a throbbing heart, exposed, the cages of our safety masks and curved ribs as good as gone.

Thus here I stand before you— world, fates, family— all of my masks gone, stripped down to the skin, and I ask, meekly, that you let me be in my nakedness or that you wrap me in the blankets of goodwill. Spare me the excoriation. My husband, late forties, the man I hand-picked and pursued, has just competed in a triathlon, and he is vital, a force, more alive than anyone I know. I see him pushing past all probabilities in terms of mortality, so when he rides his motorcycle home from the hospital at four in the morning after a long night of work, steer the drunk drivers the other way. 

And my son, my one and only child, the one who has already scared me, scarred me, with health concerns and mortal danger, let him outlive me, let him mourn and miss his long-dead mother. He is everyday getting farther away from that proverbial well that wishes to suck him down into darkness. Abnormal MRI, seizures, autism: He’s shrugging them off like a coat he has outgrown. In Mexico, when he fell into the deep-end of the pool, his father watched him plunge below the surface only to paddle up to where he was able to hoist himself over the side of the pool, away from tragedy and back into the waning sunlight. World, fates, family: Be safe and let me be safe.

And my two dogs? The smaller brown one has many years ahead of her. My old, white dog turned twelve last month, and I can see her eyes going milky. Her back legs slip out from underneath her, and I have to hoist her up. All ninety pounds of her. She has gotten more nervous with old age, and she can no longer hold her bowels very well. She doesn’t mean to shit on the floor, and I can feel her shame. She knows something is wrong. I clean it up with no admonishment. I just stroke her until I see her tail wag. In truth, I think she has another two years in her. When I picked her out from the homeless man’s litter twelve years ago, she could fit in a cat carrier. I was not projecting this far into the future; I did not think of her death. I just wanted to let a little love in.

In Praise of the Mundane

We're deep into summer now, and the iridescent fig beetles will appear in a week to gorge on the overripe fruit. Running lady has grown predictably tan and predictably outpaces me every time I circle the reservoir. The grass grows brown and brittle, and in the afternoons I hide in the shade of a palm tree while Dexter runs through community sprinklers. We punctuate the long, hot days with self-serve frozen yogurt, and reliably the moon comes up behind the hill of houses once the day sweats off its fever. We watch it rise from our chairs around the glass table in the backyard where we drink coconut water and white wine. I've hunkered down into the predictability of existence. Let's praise it. 

Cultivating a love or skill

Let's praise the likelihood that Dexter will ace his preschool skills and transition smoothly into kindergarten, already able to read simple sentences and perform very basic math. Let's assume we'll run into expected disciplinary problems in grade school, and let's expect a few trips to the emergency room for stitches. He'll discover a skill or love and pursue it because that's what we do. Maybe he'll torture us by playing scales on the piano. Maybe he'll need shuttling to swim lessons. Maybe he'll be a math wiz. Let's rightfully figure that middle school will be awkward and painful sometimes, but he'll get through it. We can probably imagine that high school will be both hard and easy, that it could come off without a hitch, that he'll escape unscathed with enough of an education to go to an approved college. We can reasonably expect a part-time job serving burgers at Red Robin or painting houses until graduation. Let's praise the admirable career, even if it misses greatness. Let's cheer for a nice wife and charming kids. Let's weep with gratitude for the boring expectedness of it all. Let's rightly anticipate my son watching me lowered into the ground, and let's suggest he might cry, not because it's tragic, but because he will miss his mother, whose love for him was bottomless. Let's cross our fingers and hope and pray for a simple rolling forward of the years. 

Boy in the Plastic Bubble

Those of us who have had children late in life are accused of helicopter parenting because we keep a watchful, nervous eye on our sons and daughters. If this is true, it may be because we have seen a thing or two in our already long lives that let us know how someone can be fully present one minute and taken away the next. We have been witness to stories of loss, and sometimes those stories are merely once or twice removed from personal experience. Maybe we recognize the ephemeral quality of existence even as we watch our kids swing from the monkey bars. Perhaps we know that parenthood begins and ends with that one little boy panting around the house, pretending to be a dog. Because something bad could happen, and I could go from being a mother to once having been a mother, and that's the saddest narrative I can imagine at this wise and infertile age.

Broken Leg Pouty Face

At fifteen months, Dexter broke his leg. At two, he had a severe allergic reaction. At two and a half, he had a febrile seizure. Add dashes to the timeline of his existence with croup-like coughs, fevers, and the usual bruises. Now, at three, he's had a few incidents that suggest something neurological, but they have been so few as to only be suggestions. And so I watch him closely. This morning he pretended to fall three times in a mock ballet dance. Maybe the other falls were staged, too. Maybe I circle him and whir like the police copters that churn the sky in the high heat of these dependable, ordinary August days. 

Raise your glass of white wine or coconut water with me, dear reader, and let's have a toast for boredom. Cheers to you and your loved ones. 

Never-ending Summer