Poem for an Old Chum

Asked to write in verse
To make long thoughts terse

Prose is my genre now
Literary essays of how . . .

How I imagine
How I hope
How I dream
How I regret
How I see within and among and between the lines

(to be exact).

I’m afraid of poetry, turns out.
Early efforts merely an indulgent pout.

Time mellows and memory sifts.
Who writes poetry when the melancholy lifts?

Dedicated to S.E., a dear college chum. Thanks for the challenge!

Starbucks Laptop Men

I’m sitting in a local Starbucks, and today’s Swing music mix (Dean Martin is crooning Volare, just before that was a song from Ella Fitzgerald’s Music and Moonlight), is just barely audible over the milk-steaming and repeat ordering patter at the counter. As I glance around, I feel like a sociologist discovering a new tribe. I’m sitting across the table from someone working diligently from a stack of yellow-pad papers and a book called Strategic Thinking, Acting and Learning. He’s got a Mac, no surprise. Behind him are three men with headphones, laptops and bad facial hair. Is it a pattern? That if you don’t have a home or real office, and are, instead, at Starbucks at 9:19 on a weekday morning, earnestly typing or reading or talking on the phone, or doing all three simultaneously, you’re released from the obligation of attending to a daily shave.

There’s a Mom in the corner, reading The Berenstein’s Book to her two-year old, and a nanny sitting with a venti-size beverage and three kids all under the age of 3. Behind me, another scruffy-faced guy, bending over a tiny little mini-computer, perched precariously on one knee (said knee is visible beneath his calf-length corduroy cargo Dockers – longer than shorts, shorter than pants, perhaps the clothing equivalent of unshaven, two-day stubble). He’s a stout guy who looks somewhat stockier than he probably is hunched over a Lilliputian computer. It’s in the 40’s and we’re supposed to get thundershowers today, so the apparel choice is unique to this gentleman. Oops – the guy just got up and left with one of the kids from the nanny – so she’s only here with two. That makes more sense. The huge amber ring on her right hand, not to mention her youth, gives her away – none of the well-married women in this part of town wear rings like that after they’ve snagged a corporate husband. And he’s a Dad. It’s not the weekend, so he must be a full-time Dad, so there’s somebody at home waiting for this scruffy-faced, stout man with short pants. Someone who just might adore this scratchy bear of a man.

Isn’t life strange? There’s someone at home who loves me, even when I’m scratchy. Last night during a Scrabble game, my husband had all the letters to spell out “borage” – only he pronounced it like “barrage” and wanted to know if it was a word. I didn’t know, neither did our 4th grader, but thanks to dictionary.com, we learned that borage is something – a plant with hairy leaves and stems, native to southern Europe. My husband used the word, opening up a whole new corner of the board for us; we all had a good laugh about how he’s my hairy plant. I love him when he’s scratchy and a day or two unshaven on the rare weekend he takes off from shaving. Maybe we all want a little borage to call our own. Maybe these Starbucks Laptop Men have just rolled out of bed from a late-morning tousle with their ladies, and it’s actually the look of post-coital masculine satisfaction that I’m witnessing. Maybe these guys have the new look that all the gals crave – scruffy and technologically tuned in – and I’m more judgmental than necessary.

Starbucks Laptop Man 1 has been on the phone since I walked in; his conversation voice is low and loud. I’ve barely seen Man 2 blink. Men 3 and 4 haven’t uttered a word; they seem frozen as they stare at their screens. And then it happens – they jump to life. A scraggly woman in wet layers just dropped a furry hat on the floor, and Man 2 pulled the earplugs out of his ears, pointed to Man 3 directly across from him, then down to the floor at the hat, then toward the door. Man 3 understood this abbreviated form of communication, took off his headphones, picked up the hat, and sprinted to the door. Chivalry completed, Man 2 and 3 return to their tableau.

In the time I’ve been here, the predicted rain shower has come. I dawdle when it’s time to leave. Sunbreaks and sheets of water await me if I step outside, but I have to go to work. In an office. Starbucks Laptop Man 1 is still on the phone. The guy across from me hasn’t taken even the tiniest break from his Strategic everything work. It must be important as he occasionally pulls his hands through his short hair.

Just as I’m pulling this to a close, another guy walks in, sans laptop but with a four-year-old in a Sheriff Woody costume, complete with cow vest and red kerchief around his neck. The Dad’s here to meet with Man 2, who introduces Man 3 as being “in training.” They pull up a few extra chairs, the young boy places his Lego car on the table and quietly eats his treat, and the men are now engaged in a triangle of collaboration, communication without headphones.

I think I’ve glimpsed a new world today. Something about the new American male, maybe. Men who have flexible work schedules yet sit in a loud, cacophonous setting with uncomfortable tables and chairs, stay glued to their seats, their computers, their headsets, and basically recreate the existence of a cubicle. Other men who use the flexibility to blend work with parenting, but Woody is actually on his own now, as his Dad is focused on Man 2’s screen. He’s busy and working. It might have seemed like an outing, “Let’s go to Starbucks, Woody,” and his son might have been very excited to go for a hot chocolate with Dad. But Dad is now a Starbucks Laptop Man, and not even this adorable, amazingly well-behaved Sheriff Woody can draw his attention away.

I wonder how this new breed of techno-male will ultimately shake out. Guys who are Skyping, texting, net-surfing, videochatting, You-Tubing, videostreaming, constantly available but never really connected because all connections occur through screens and keyboards. Communication through abbreviations and acronyms, a whole new language in shorthand for texting and chat rooms, complete with ways to communicate that the naughty stuff has to stop (I totally understand P911, but am horrified to learn that something like W9 exists – look them up and you’ll see what I mean).

Then, because I’m me, I wonder, will my son become a Starbucks Laptop Man? Will he bring his son to whatever meeting places exist in 30 years, and offer him a hot cocoa? If he does, I sure hope he sits eye-to-eye with that child, in whatever costume he’s wearing, to talk to him – play with him, read him a story, toss him a ball, look through baseball or Pokemon cards, come up with a plan for an adventure they’ll have over the weekend. My son doesn’t yet have a cell phone, his own computer or email account, and still doesn’t know how to type (despite the fact that some of his homework assignments are to be typed). My husband is about as low-tech as an adult can be. We spend our family time doing really old-fashioned things - talking, reading, playing cards and games, cooking, eating, listening to music, writing and doing homework (why is there so much homework in the 4th grade already?), taking walks and small hikes, my husband and son play ball, my son and I bike, and all of us like to have our friends over.

Of course we use computers, although apparently we do far less with them than many, and of course we watch movies and a bit of TV (NCIS and The O’Reilly Factor for my husband, Barefoot Contessa and romantic comedies for me, and Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, the occasional educational program about space or nature or lions for all of us). I enjoy my over-priced coffee drink as much as the next person, and I wrote most of this posting today at Starbucks on my tiny netbook. But I continue to hold out for whole-person communication, small activities that can be shared, conversations held under blankets, whole afternoons with girlfriends at a day spa or slow moments with old friends, a glass of fine wine paired with kettle-cooked potato chips and sour cream – that kind of thing. I wish the Starbucks Laptop Men well in their high-tech ventures, but I adore the two low-tech, high-connection guys in my life.

Borago officinalis from Wikipedia.com

"Maybe you could write about that . . ."

Last night, in those few precious moments before bedtime when there’s not a single chore remaining for me to ask him about, my son and I were taking just a moment to snuggle on the couch. I asked him to tell me something about him that I didn’t know – something he might not have ever thought to tell me. I was thinking I was being clever and that out would come some juicy things that I should know but he hasn’t deemed important enough to tell me, in that way that guys have of eventually telling fragments and bits of things, but never in the “tell me all about it” way with relational nuances, tips about how each person looked and the emotional feel of the information, that women crave.

“Why wouldn’t you know something about me?” he answered. I think he wasn’t sure if it was a real question. “There isn’t anything you don’t know,” he added, with his usual enormous, grin looking gummier with gaping holes from the teeth he’s recently lost. He snuggled in even closer, burrowing, really, as far as he could get without smushing his glasses.

“Did I tell you what our morning assignment was?” he said, from somewhere near my armpit.

“No,” I replied, animated. There was something. A tiny detail, a 15-minute span of his morning that, although I know in general that each school day starts with an independent writing assignment, he hadn’t told me that day’s assignment. It was to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in an error-filled paragraph.

Of course, adding this small detail to the rest of what I knew about his day – his George Washington presentation through the paper-bag puppet we’d decorated over the weekend with fabric fragments donated from a much more craft-skilled mother than I am; cardio stations in P.E.; difficulty eating the burrito at lunch because of his new wiggly teeth; his karate class in which he didn’t get a chance to spar but did do a whole session of warm-ups; his struggle to type up the first paragraph of the body of his Easter Island report (the follow-up to the Tikis – check out how cool they looked at the final event)


– didn’t really add much to my knowledge of him. Except that he and I have a relationship where he still talks to me, still trusts me with the minutia as well as the great big messy things of his life, still thinks my input is safe.

He enjoys the fact that I know him. He’s not intimidated by it, doesn’t find it intrusive, doesn’t think there’s anything odd in it. He wants me to know him, as it is one of the ways he has come to know himself. And this knowledge doesn’t seem constraining or limiting to him. It makes him feel good.

This morning, before breakfast, we were talking about how difficult it is to be old and sick and alone (my Great Aunt, at 86, has taken ill – may she be blessed with healing). “Maybe you could write about that tonight,” said my son. He knows Tuesdays are my writing nights. I gave him my big, gummy smile, and a giant hug.

But Mom’s can’t burrow back into their children, so I’ll nestle later with my husband, and wrap myself in this memory, this little parenting victory.
My son knows me, too.

Quake Damage

Last week, on my short morning commute, the radio announcer reminded all in his listening domain that it was the 10-year anniversary of a large earthquake that had hit this area. Ten years - really? Well, yes, according to very simple math, it has been ten years since February 28, 2001. But the math and my memory don’t align.

I remembered the quake as taking place in the afternoon, but I Googled it and learned it occurred at 10:54 am. I was teaching an undergraduate class in Room 154, a state-of-the-art lecture hall of a just-built-to-code campus. The building swayed and swayed and swayed, just like it was supposed to, yet it was unsettling to feel a bit sea-sick on land. I didn’t immediately figure out what was happening, as I’d recently left California, a land where I expected earthquakes, to come to an area of the country I never thought of as having earthquakes. There’s no place to take shelter under a high-tech, multi-media podium, so I went to the doorway. There were too many students to send them under doorways, so I must have sent them under their brand new tables. But I don’t remember telling them to do this. I don’t remember dismissing the class, as I must have, since once you realize the ground is unstable and your lecture hall is in motion, there’s no further pedagogy to pursue.

When the 1994 earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley and reverberated through most of the LA area, I was out running; the fastest way home was to keep running. By the time I returned, the shaking had stopped, so there was no need to get under anything. I did wonder about the windows on the buildings as I was running, but there wasn’t much else to do but go home, even if the city around me wasn’t guaranteed to make it through. The ground acceleration from that quake was what proved most destructive: freeway overpasses buckled and collapsed, businesses, apartments and homes shifted right off their foundations, some without ever having had adequate support for even their first floor.

In my area, most homes lost chimneys, but mine didn’t.
Some of my belongings and appliances took flight and broke; my biggest losses, other than some knick knacks, were a TV that face-planted into the floor and an elegant, long-necked, hand-painted ceramic vase from Les Beaux de Provence. I re-glued it back together – the glue lines are obvious and it looks more awful as time goes on, as the glue has turned to yellow and brown and there are bits and chunks of it still missing, and, true to fate, it’s broken a few more times so it boasts clunky repairs of repairs. But I salvaged this piece because its unique shape keeps a memory alive of a long-ago trip to Provence. My neighbor, an elderly potter, lost almost all of her hand- and wheel-thrown pots, a lifetime of her creative energy.
Not a thing of hers could be salvaged. The inequities of loss were surprising.

So this year is the 10-year “anniversary” of the 2001 quake. My son did the math and figured out that he was in my belly when that quake happened. I have no memory of being pregnant during the earthquake, which, given that I was in my last trimester, the 31st week of a 41½ week pregnancy, you’d think I’d remember that part of it. There wasn’t a waking moment that I forgot being pregnant – so it’s quite odd that in the 10 years that have passed, the only times I’ve remembered the quake I remembered me as if I was only me. I didn’t remember what I must have felt – the fear that any of my stress from the event could have endangered my unborn child. I was certainly worried about other things during the pregnancy, so the possibility of me not being worried about this is inherently impossible. But I don’t remember it.

I remember running to my car to get out of the parking garage before it was “red tagged” – using my learning from the earlier quake as to how quickly parking structures were closed down to check for damage, and the second they were closed, you couldn’t get your car out. You were trapped in whatever part of town your car was in, which is possibly worse than being in your car crawling home with every other panicked citizen, convinced that what they are going home to is more important than what any other driver in any other car is going home for, so aggression and ruthlessness ruled the roads. I have only remembered the part of me in the lecture hall, and me heading out to my car, and the sense of victory that I made it out before they stopped all cars from leaving. And that I couldn’t call my folks right away, as the overwhelming phone activity in and out of the area pretty much shut down communication. I don’t recall what happened when I returned home, nor how long it took me to get there. I don’t have a single memory of which items fell off the walls and shelves, and what got broken. Perhaps nothing? Were classes cancelled for the rest of the week? I don’t recall.

Not long after, my personal life shook and swayed, then ruptured wide open; I plummeted to the mantle between my own outer crust and core. The ground acceleration surpassed my ability to hold on. I let go. I scrambled to get out before being trapped in a structure that would collapse around me, or being swallowed alive in the cavernous breach. Nothing built around me could sustain the movement, the turbulence of the shake up, and sadly, nothing much lasted after the fault line erupted. Shards and broken bits, mainly, except for a fierce sense of having survived, internally, intact. My memory of this quake is indelible.

Despite living through two major earthquakes, I don’t think of myself as an earthquake person. Tornadoes were the natural disaster of my youth, and I have spent more time than I cared to in a basement waiting out tornado warning sirens. Many of these tornado watches and warnings occurred before my parents refinished the basement, so it felt more like the black and white Kansas desolation Dorothy avoided by heading to Oz. I’ve not lived through a hurricane, or flooding, or forest fires that encroach, but a friend of mine was hit by lightning. I imagine there’s no place anyone lives where there isn’t some form of destructive natural phenomena, so I can’t be unique in living through some.

My son is about to be 10 years old. Ten years is the time it took to grow him into the person he is. Ten years is the time it took for my parents to shift from being late-middle-aged, in their 60’s, to old age, in their 70’s. Every adult reading this entry has lived the last ten years, too, and has their own sense of their own hallmark shifts, changes, and tectonic plate movements, let alone the natural disasters they’ve lived through. In these ten years, I have created a mosaic from the broken pieces, shards and holes left from the geographical and emotional earthquakes I’ve gone through. I imagine that everyone I encounter has their own life mosaic – very few of us will live through decade after decade without something shattering, breaking, falling away, being lost to us forever, fundamentally altering our initial selves.

Maybe it’s the glue that makes us stronger - that and our conviction that certain pieces of our lives are worth gluing and repairing and others are worth walking away from – that the act of repairing and rebuilding makes us stronger, more solid and sturdy than we are in our original, naïve, unbroken (youthful) selves. We even come to learn that we will go through many unexpected shifts and movement – the ground will, in fact, shake during our lives - and that we won’t necessarily fall completely through the rabbit hole each time. I now know that I can rebuild after great, unexpected losses, and that I didn’t become bitter or reclusive or afraid to live life fully. I might die in a disaster, but until the moment I am gone, I will build and rebuild a life that make sense to me.

Please, please, please

“I hope it snows tonight.”
“I hope it snows enough to cancel school tomorrow.”
“Please, please, pretty please, I hope it snows tonight.”

We awoke this morning, and not even a "Good morning" came out of his lips before he inquired, "Did it snow?"

He hopped out of bed to look out the window, seeing only the finest dusting of snow and ice. He went to check the school closure website.

Elsewhere in the city, inches had fallen and roads were too icy to pass.

“Oh, yea!” he squealed with delight as he hopped back in to bed.

His prayers had been answered.
My husband doesn’t have to teach today.

Advice to a New Mother

I was at a baby shower for a new Mom who, that day, had reached 37 weeks. Such an accomplishment, those first 37 weeks. She’s already mothered her young one, already sacrificed for (his or her, the parents don’t know) sake, has curtailed her activities and her work, even to the point of bed-rest for the last two months. She already knows her child’s rhythms, feels the movement, can no longer be awake or asleep without being yoked to the needs of this new life. She, who is not that far out from her own childhood, having a baby at an age that seems so young these days, who is yearning for the safety and security of her own mother, has already crossed over into Motherhood, and I don’t think she knows that yet.

After the requisite sharing of birth stories (including one birth horror story with a detailed account of watching the doctor come with scissors to cut her sister’s episiotomy), it was time for lunch. Then gifts, which were shades of yellow and green, with one exception from an aunt who provided a blue pajama set and a pink pajama set and the receipt so the parents could return whichever one they wouldn’t need. Bottle warmers, blankets, diapers, a boppie, baby carriers, a plush giraffe, hand-knitted booties so small that it defies reasoning to imagine a foot so tiny it will fit snugly in it, pacifiers, hooded bath towels, more baby blankets, outfits, a musical play mat with an overhead mobile, and baby-sized wash cloths that looked like they would be used for a doll. Finally, there was a photo/sound book, with a page for the baby’s grandmother and each of the aunts, so that the baby could flip through the book and look at their pictures while hearing the sing-song, melodic cooings and greetings from women who already love this baby. A Playmobile precursor to Skype, I suppose.

Now there was only one thing left – it was time for chocolate fondue, and the talk turned to passing along information to help the new Mom. The advice ranged from the philosophical (“it goes by so quickly”) to the sanity-saving (“make sure you meet with other Moms”) to the practical (“just call me a day in advance and tell me you need me to come by”). Life lessons imparted between the reaching and crunching and oohing and aahing over yummy morsels dipped in warm, swirling chocolate. Of course, when it was my turn, my advice was a bit longer than a sentence or a sound bite. A teaching moment, probably. Will I ever just speak like regular people? Maybe, but it seemed important for me to tell her something that I don’t think mothers often hear.

Babies cry, I said, and your baby will cry. Many times you’ll be able to soothe your baby, and sometimes you won’t. Even at the times you can’t soothe your baby, stay with him or her, hold her, speak softly and remind him that you’re right there, even if you can’t fix whatever’s wrong. At the exact moment when you get frustrated that you’ve tried everything, that you are exhausted, too, and you can’t take it one more moment, and every fiber in your being wants to push that baby away, give it to someone else to handle for a bit, walk out of the room and let the baby deal with it on it’s own, that’s the moment to breathe deeply and remember all you have to do is be there with your baby and let your baby know you’re there.

Funny, that my advice would be to prevent those moments when mothers temporarily abandon their children, leave them alone to handle something they can’t. Force them to endure not only pain or discomfort but the isolation of experiencing pain by themselves. That I want to undo our entire cultural misconception about what mothering is supposed to do . . . but I’m at a baby shower, holding a strawberry in my hand, too impatient to put it on a skewer before its chocolate bath. Mothers should contain our children, accompany them as they grow and develop, get to know these people we bring in to the world, socialize them, of course, but there’s not much else to do but be present in a useful way. Instead, we have a whole slew of mothers interested in being present when their kids are happy, invested, in fact, in making them happy, but needing to flee when their children are upset. And worse, mothers who punish their kids for moments of discomfort, unease, fear or sadness. Mothers who shame their child for the “failure” of disrupting chronic happiness and gratitude, as they themselves were shamed for failing to take away their own parents’ pain.

Happiness, I wanted to tell this woman, is nice, and it will come, but don’t get so hooked on it. Don’t over-value it. Happiness is part of your new life, but so are confusion and fatigue and fear and worry and sadness and loss and excitement and joy and boredom and awe and anger and surprise and contentment. Embrace all of these, I’d have added, if my mouth wasn’t full of the chocolate cake square I’d just coated with warm chocolate. Hold your child when he or she’s in pain – it’s way more important than videotaping your child’s first step. Soothe your child and teach him or her that pain always recedes, that it’s just a matter of time. I’d have gone on to a complete, “This, I Believe” essay, if I hadn’t been pulled to dip a piece of pineapple next, on the way that children will attach most strongly to the adults who are there for their moments of sorrow and disappointment and fear, and help them understand that they will survive these moments with the parent’s love intact. That if you want to be a Mother who has a life-long relationship with your child, one that your child actually wants to participate in, the focus should be on leaning in to those moments we can’t fix, joining in the temporary suffering in a way that deepens the bond rather than frays it.

My final advice, had I not returned to the tiniest square of chocolate cake and one, just one, pretzel, would have been this: Happiness, yours or your child’s, comes through living a full and rich life. You can’t and won’t make your child happy (and your child won’t and can’t make you happy) but you can absolutely be there to participate in the happiness when those moments come. Show up for happiness, sure, but stay through the rest.

Image adapted from backofthebox.com

On Being a (Grown Up) Daughter

I write a lot about mother – son relationships (for obvious reasons) but I recently read a book that got me thinking about the other end of my spectrum, being an adult child to one’s parents. The book, Mitch Albom’s For One More Day (Hyperion, 2006), is based on the premise of exploring an ex-baseball player’s relationship with his mother; the unique spin is that much of the story chronicles his relationship with her after her death. This got me thinking of me as a grown-up daughter with parents who are getting closer to the end of their lives than I usually care to think about.

Albom’s (anti)hero spends much of his life taking his mother for granted, and sometimes doesn’t see or talk to her for long stretches. Maybe longer than you think can usually happen in a good relationship, but not so long as to make you think he’s a terrible, terrible person. Those thoughts are reserved for the way he walks out of his daughter’s life. But his turnstile approach to his own mother doesn’t seem that unusual. It’s not so unlike how I take certain cultural institutions – the interstate, the grocery store, Amazon.com - for granted. Doesn’t matter if I don’t use one for days, months, or longer; if I really need the thing that only it provides, I’ll turn to it, and it will be there, because it has been there all along, regardless of what I think about it.

Later, he realizes some important things about being alive after the death of his parents, and this one stopped me short:

"But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”

How many times my parents have provided this kind of backup. Even at times when I feel excruciatingly alone, or miserable, or stuck in an unbearably intolerable situation, I have held the knowledge that my parents will be there for me safely in my back pocket, where other people have been known to hold their Aces.

My folks might not know this, given how many times I have asked for help, but there are actually times I thought I needed their help, and didn’t ask for it – just the knowing they’d be in my corner was enough to help me make some kind of forward movement out of the difficult dilemma I’d been in.

Before my parents moved out of the family home I was raised in, the one they lived in for 43 years, I was protected from the unrealistic yet female fear of becoming homeless. I knew I could always return to my old bedroom, with my childhood single bed, blue and white stitched bedspread and even a few of my old stuffed animals still right there. But this option is now forever closed – I will never step foot again in my childhood home, and I will never watch my son sleep in my old bed, as I have when we’ve gone back to visit.

But I still am protected against being homeless, because if I needed to, I could live on my parents’ couch in their two-bedroom senior citizen apartment. I will never be homeless as long as they are alive. That’s something, in these times. A guarantee that a good professional career no longer offers, nor does marriage, raising kids who are kind to their parents, or even having really good friends to take you in. My folks are my guarantee. I will always have a home. It might make me crazy if I ever had to take the universe up on this kind of cosmic upending of everything I know to be true and the structures I have in place in my life, but crazy-because-your-parents-drive-you-crazy is one thing; homeless with no place to go and having no one in your corner is another.

There’s a second passage in the book that brought me up short. It’s taken from a scene where the main character thinks he’s encountered his mother, or her ghost, as she is no longer alive.

"Mom?" I whispered.
I hadn't said it in so long. When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.

"Mom?"

It's just a sound really, a hum interrupted by open lips. But there are a zillion words on this planet, and not one of them comes out of your mouth the way that one does.

"Mom?”

I can still vocalize that single “Mom” sound, can utter it at will, have probably been uttering it longer than any other word or sound. And there’s just one man who is my “Pop” – another singular sound, childish in its simplicity, an onomatopoetic word that perfectly conveys that all that is my father starts and stops with one sound.

But these sounds, these effortless primal communications, will be taken from me. One day, Albom warns, I will be orphaned, like his ex-ball-player. I will enter every situation without the backup of my real-life parents and the knowledge that they would (and have) stood by me no matter what. I will be alone in a way I have never been alone. I will have no one on the other end of a phone to whom I can say, “Mom,” with as many syllables to draw it out or shorten it, as the emotion of the call requires.

That it doesn’t really even matter how much or how little struggle a child has with a parent, it’s that the child has been wrapped in the consistency of always having been the child. There is someone who will answer to “Mom” or “Pop” and someplace to go home to, regardless of how crazy it makes you. That even though I’m now “Mom” to someone else, and I don’t need to be wrapped like a child in anything, I can hold the bravado of that position only because I still am somebody’s beloved daughter.