Читать книгу Alone: A Love Story - Michelle Parise - Страница 18

Dear White Shirt,

Tonight, we talked and talked, all the adults, once the kids finally fell asleep. We drank wine around a bonfire and then more wine and we talked about how the moment is life. How isn’t it funny that the things you can’t plan for often turn out to be the best things? If we let them.

We had more wine. We talked about death and fear. We talked about risk and love and gratitude. We talked about how our parents fucked us up and what ways we would inevitability fuck up our own kids. We laughed so much, even when what we were talking about was painful.

We smoked weed. We talked about how our lives are half over now — if we’re lucky — so our goal is to have more fun and to feel more present in the now, in the here.

We talked about you, because everyone always wants to talk about you, and I always talk about you anyway because how can I not? You’re so woven into my life in a way that I’m not always sure I understand but also in a way that strangely makes sense.

And I wished you were here. Because we’re at a rented cottage on Canada Day and we ate ribs for dinner and homemade biscuits and beets and all that made me think of you and how you love to eat and would enjoy it — like, really enjoy it — and you’d say something quirky and funny because that’s how you do, and I would look at you and be melty, because that’s how I do.

I thought of Birdie’s face and how it lights up around you. How she’s always the kid with the single mom when we’re doing things with my friends with kids. The other kids have siblings and two parents and she whispers wishes to me sometimes while she’s falling asleep, things like “Mom, sometimes it would be nice to have a brother or sister to play with. But that’s okay, I understand.”

And I lie there very still beside her, because when I had her I wasn’t sure I had “the feeling,” you know? The right feeling I thought I should have about being a parent. But being her mom turned out to be the one truly good thing in my life. The one easy thing. And now that I’m approaching forty, “the feeling” is so strong in me I can’t think of anything else sometimes. How my body seems to want another baby. Yours.

I would do it in a heartbeat now, no question, but time is running out, and you can only be occasional to us. You are not here lighting sparklers with her, or singing duets with me as I play guitar around the fire. You aren’t worried that time is running out. You’re trying to make sense of your own life. You’re trying to be good and true to you. Your free spirit is what I love about you, even though it’s the thing that keeps you from me.

And I crawled into bed now and I’m still wearing your Adidas jacket and it still smells like you somehow and it’s like I’m flooded, but not with anxiety or sadness at what you will and won’t be.

No, I’m flooded with good clear thoughts of all the things you already are.

xo,

mp

July 1, 2014