Monster, we're here

Perhaps the woman's story began earlier, with a panting run around her quiet evening neighborhood. The story has leftover parts of autumnal sun dimming as her quivering legs carried her pounding round and round. The story has an evening, fresh air cool enough to dry the woman's sweat and flush her face with exertion. If the woman's story began earlier, she did not know it. Rather the woman felt like something had sneaked up on her, quiet in the kitchen.

Running her bath, the woman felt very much like not having to think at all, instead piling books near her towel. The mysterious something teased at her and kept tears welling near to spilling. "Too much quiet," the woman thought. "I can hear the damn clocks ticking. It's autumn again, it--" Again the woman grasped for a word, again she gave up. Soft music and scented candles and lights blazing all down the hallway, the woman was distressed by the night's easy invasion. Dismayed that she could not find words for the stillness that had been slinking in her all night, the woman sat in her tub and tried to catch up on a month's worth of magazines.

As she slid into bed later, (dusky in ratty old flannels, burning with fresh washed heat against the empty autumn sheets) the woman found her word and clung to it. "Loneliness," the woman thought, and drowned into sleep.

The Kid has many ways of getting what she wants. Sometimes it involves crying, but more often it involves a cheeky smile, a twist and shout, a showering dose of charm. "Mama," she proposes, "Uhm, soon, uhm, soon I will go on the little blue swing". It's hopeful. It's wishful. It's all hell holy fury when the answer is no.

She likes a water table. She likes a book or two or three or seventy. She likes a doll, she likes a stroller. She likes to ride, she likes to run, she likes to eat, she likes to poop. The Kid is entirely normal. The Kid is something else. She will have her tantrum, and then she will ask for a hug, and she will calmly ask for a tissue to wipe her philtrum. Because of course we taught her that word.

The Kid has a brother. The brother is compliant, complacent, the second child. He is a big baby. He is an easy baby. He is the brother who fit right into our lives. He submits to the hugs which involve the kid flung across his chest. He chortles and kicks at her high-pitched sing-song cooing. "Oh yes, baby, you woke up". "What did you say baby?" Touch my hand, baby". She casually places herself near his (still) flailing arms. She carefully turns around and backs up, butt hovering above him. "Oh, yes, he touched me!"

Papa is drinking beer. The baby is nursing, The Kid is drinking cow milk. I am the Mama. Here we are at dinnertime, and let me tell you something: She lights everything up. He glows in the dark.

Come and get us, monster. We're here, and we're ready.