Archive for the 'Posts I Forgot to Categorize' Category

Page 2 of 3

Defying Darwin

From the International Cesarean Network:

The Cesarean Awareness Ribbon debuted in April of 2004 for Cesarean Awareness Month. The burgundy color of the ribbons represents birth and the wearing of the ribbon upside down symbolizes the state of distress many pregnant women find themselves in when their birthing choices are limited. The loop of the inverted ribbon represents a pregnant belly and the tails are the arms of a woman outstretched in a cry for help.

The Mommy-blogs and the parenting boards are all talking about “Cesarean Awareness Month” and I’ve had a few spammy requests to cover it here. Much of the rhetoric follows these lines — “Stop the horrible butchery of innocent mommies! Are you a victim of Cesarean? Post your story!”

So here’s my story.

When I was preparing for Mary, I was easily sold on the idea that natural was the right way to go, that my body knew what it was doing and should be left to do it without paternalistic, corporate Western medicine to victimize me.

So when Mare was born by emergency Caesarian after an induction at 41 weeks, I felt bad about myself.

“Empowered birth” has become a sort of euphemism for a very specific scenario — no drugs, no interventions, the mother a special kind of hero who gutted it out. According to the rhetoric, I had had an unempowered birth — a victim birth, brought on by my impatience, my lack of faith in my body, and a medical system that dehumanized me.

I researched VBAC when I was pregnant with Ren, looking for a “VBAC-friendly” practitioner who would be willing to let me give it a shot, who would help me redeem myself from my first birth. The response was universal — sure you can go for it if you want to. But it’s going to end the same way the last one did.

“My suggestion,” said the third doctor I consulted, “is that you learn to love Caesarians. Because without them, neither you nor your daughter, nor the baby you’re carrying would be here.”

I finally accepted it: it was nothing I did. It was nothing to be ashamed of or blame anyone for. For me, Caesarian was unavoidable. One step up from that — the Caesarian was something to be grateful for. It gave me Motherhood, and it spared my life.

We scheduled Ren’s delivery for ten days before her due date, to ensure there would be no emergency. It was a lovely delivery. Hard going in the surgery itself, pure joy immediately afterward.

This time out, there has never any question that Caesarian is the only option. I am marshalling my support team with a birth plan that includes dealing with the complications I am almost certain to have — problems with anesthesia, and a spinal headache.

“I want to be supported in my choice to push myself as hard as is safe. Remind me to nurse, wake me up if you have to, or put her on if you can’t wake me. Bring me lattes for the headache, and when those don’t work, hold her while I get the spinal patch and then help me nurse lying down while I wait for it to take. Don’t take the baby so I can ‘rest.’ — This will annoy me.”

I’ll never earn the Earth Mother stripe for natural childbirth, but I am about to have three empowered births under my belt. Each one makes me fiercer and clearer about who’s in charge and what I’m willing to do to get my kids home.

If you believe in a woman’s right to choose, a woman’s inherent capacity to know her own body and its limits, then you must also believe in Cesarean-section. Not for everyone, not every time. But in its time and place, it is a life saving — and life-giving — procedure. When you insist that nearly every woman who gives birth by this method is a victim of her doctor and her own impatience you make me suspect that you are actually the one who thinks I can’t think for myself.

I dissuade pregnant women from the idea that Cesareans are “the easy way.” In my experience they are painful, scary, and impersonal. They carry long term health effects. I support every effort to keep women from having them if they don’t absolutely have to.

But I will never support a movement that puts my birth method in the same catagory as terminal illness and domestic violence. I am no victim. And I certainly won’t support rhetoric that paints obstetrics professionals as butchers.

This year I am celebrating Cesarean Awareness Month with the birth of my third child by Cesarean. It is a tribute to the profession and practitioners that granted me what evolution sought to deny: life past the age of 27, and a shot at motherhood. Multiple times.

I have learned to love Cesareans, to accept them as a part of my choice to have a family. I am very proud to be a woman who takes her Cesareans like a champ, who does what she has to do to get the kid home.

Because that’s actually the important part.

Guess

Which one of these is not on my iPod?

Lose yourself, Eminem

Suite for solo cello 1 in G Major, Yo-Yo Ma

You were meant for me, Jewel

Personal Jesus, Depche Mode

Bookends, Simon and Garfunkel

Making your whole little world

Do you live near Amherst, Massachusetts?

Are you kind, generous, with great kids? Do you think you know how to properly care for and feed a Sunbeam?

Sunbeam has chosen her college and is looking for hours next fall to help her pay for her education. If you’d like to apply to hire her, please drop me a note with your contact information, introducing yourself. I’ll pass it along to her and we’ll see if we can find a match.

Pop quiz, hot shot

Guess what happened at our house today?

Update

Karin. Heeeeeey KAAAAARIN!!

All you have to do is come back. That’s all. Just leave Connecticut and come home and I will make this for you whenever you want.

(Yes, CBS, that is Irish butter. Kerrygold. YUM.)

Here’s the recipe, adapted from Elise.com’s Soda Bread recipe:

4 1/2 cups flour
3 Tbsp sugar in the raw
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
8 Tbsp butter
1 cup raisins
1 egg, beaten
1 cup buttermilk

1. Mix dry ingredients.

2. Cut butter into dry ingredients. I just use my fingers and work it in until it’s pretty well blended. Add raisins.

3. Add buttermilk and egg. Mix with your hands until it comes together into a smooth dough. Pat into a circle. Bake on a parchment-covered sheet at 425 for 45 minutes until golden.

GUEST POST: We Interrupt The Scheduled Programming

I am Not The Momma Damomma.

I am The Food Whore.

The Crazy Lady on the Left Coast who’s blog decided to up and freeze and make my life miserable. I’ve tried 4500 (no joke) different times to log into my account in the last week each time thinking -maybe – this would be my lucky day.

I don’t think I need to tell you the copious amounts of liquor I’ve gone through.

I’ve said before that I am ridiculously stupid when it comes to this internet game, and that was confirmed this weekend when I could not get any sort of help from the Movable Type people. Well, I shouldn’t say they have not helped me. They’ve been very helpfull telling me that they cannot help me via e-mail and have given me 45 links which I have followed and none of which make any sort of sense to me.

So I am sort of – stuck. And I am starting to think that it has something to do with the e-mail I received from a those people who offered to do my website and make my breasts the size of large mellons. Neither has happened – coincidence? I don’t think so.

At any rate, for the 6 of you still reading my blog I wanted to let you know that I am alive and working on getting this mess figured out, even if I have to go through Blogger to make it happen.

I just snorted – I am all tough and sounding off like I know what the Hell I am doing.

I don’t. But I’ve asked for help. My dear friend offered up her blog space for me to share this message. Ok, maybe offered up is a strong word. I basically said, “I am posting, ok?” Because I am a vicious beast who preys on tired pregnant women. (Thanks, my friend. I hope those oatmeal cookies were good.) And I hope that it can all be figure out nicely. Because my local supplier is running out of lemons.

Thanks for your time.

DaMomma – thank you my friend. I put this under the “Barf” category. Because that is what I feel like doing every time I sit down and try to figure this out.

Mary – Butterfly Kisses

Renny – Seriously, spatulas are not weapons.

Breast is best, and other total lies

I want to preface this post by saying I exclusively breastfed both of my daughters for 18 months. When Ren was five months old I had to have an MRI which meant I couldn’t nurse for a week. I spent the next month pumping, nursing, eating godawful stuff (barley … blech) to get my milk back.

So know that I say this with love:

Breast is not best. That is a total lie and I wish they would stop feeding it to all the exhausted, exhilarated, beat-up new mothers of the world. I’ve watched it reduce so many great moms to tears of self-recrimination and doubt. I’ve talked to friends whose first days, weeks, months of motherhood were ruined by the hours they spent torturing themselves with pumps, pills, meetings, gadgets, gizmos and endless tears.

I know women whose worst doubts about themselves were realized at the hands of callous lactation consultants so single-minded in their mission to promote breastfeeding that they totally abandoned the greater cause of nurturing babies by nurturing new mothers.

Yes, the science is irrefutable: breastfed babies have stronger immune systems, slightly higher IQ’s*, and are less prone to obesity. Even the most modern, well-developed of infant formulas can’t do what this magic stuff can do. Breastmilk evolves over the course of baby’s infancy to provide the right balance of fat, sugar, water and protein at each stage. A nursing baby doesn’t get dehydrated or constipated and is protected from a myriad of infections. All but the sickest babies will nurse through fever and stomach bugs, making Mama more powerful than Motrin and Pedialyte combined.

Breastfeeding can be a beautiful experience, continuing the bond of the womb, a special closeness between mother and child. There is nothing more tender than a pair of wide trusting eyes peering up, a hand resting on Mama’s skin, baby totally in love and totally secure.

There is no doubt breastfeeding is one of the greatest gifts that a mother can give her child.

But it isn’t the greatest. It isn’t best.

The best thing a baby can have is happy, satisfied, secure parents. A mother who feels inadequate in the face of her child starts to resent her child. A mother who feels forced, every two hours, to engage in an act she finds excruciating, or degrading or just plain distasteful is going to associate those feelings with her baby. For those women and their babies, breastfeeding is bad.

Far better a mother who has surrendered — to her own humanity, to the love of her child, to the realities of her own life. Far better the mother who prepares a bottle and feels good about it than the mother who struggles for weeks or months to do something that brings her misery.

It’s not that I don’t think mothers should try. I think every mother should be told how good it can be and encouraged to give it her best shot — for just one day, one week, one month, whatever she can stand to do.

And then she should be left the hell alone to sort out how best to nurture herself and her child, as will be her job for the next 18 years.

I am grateful to have had the happy luck of being a mother for whom breastfeeding was successful. I worked hard at it, it’s true, but I also happened to draw the cards that made it work. (For the record, the blissful Natural Birth cards did not make their way anywhere near my hand.) I am convinced that some women don’t make enough milk no matter what they do. Even if that’s not true, it’s not the point. There is a limit to what any new mother should be expected to stand. When it’s too much, it’s too much, and only the new mother can know when that is.

The bottom line is that millions of formula-fed babies go on to be perfectly lovely Americans who can’t be distinguished from their breastfed counterparts in any significant way. Certainly, no way significant enough to justify giving over those precious first weeks and months to misery.

So if you are considering breastfeeding and have stumbled across this page in search of perspectives, here’s mine: the best thing you can do for your baby is provide a loving, nurturing home. Please give breastfeeding your best shot, because it has great benefits if you can make it work. But don’t let it get in the way of your top priority, which is a happy mom and baby.

Breast is good, but it’s not best.

*Seriously, honestly … do you think anyone actually misses a point or two of IQ?

Gateway Porn

The heartbreaking intimacy of naked John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono the morning of the day he died; Whoopi Goldberg impish in a tub of milk; pregnant Demi Moore, nude — an advertisement for raw, sexual, unapologetic Woman. Annie Leibovitz‘s art worships life, defies banality, mocks self-importance.

But today I am so annoyed at her I just want to take away her gummy bears.

Annie Leibovitz is the woman behind the Vanity Fair photograph of fifteen year-old Miley Cyrus topless, wrapped in a bed sheet, clinging to herself.

It’s not that 15 year-old girls are — or should be — asexual. Adolescents are hypersexual because they do not yet have the maturity, wisdom, experience to control or protect themselves. Until they reach the age of consent, that responsibility falls on the adults in their communities. It is wrong for adults to engage children as sexual beings — no matter what those children claim to want.

Adults compelled Miley Cyrus to take her shirt off for the camera, adults set her up to look like she’d just had a roll in the hay, adults signed the consent form and made it an irretrievable part of her history. It was adults who later captioned the photograph with a smug hint that Cyrus did not have the good sense to be worried about it.

The argument that naked prepubescent girls have made great art throughout history falls short. Their innocence, their vulnerability, their incautious awareness of their sexuality has always been exploited, and more than one exploiter with a camera promised them it was art.

“Some offenders have described pictures like this as ‘gateway porn,’” says Dr. Scott Hampton, Director of Ending the Violence in Dover, New Hampshire. “Similar to describing pot as a gateway drug — a relatively mild drug that someone uses en route to harder drugs like cocaine or heroin.”

“I showed this picture to men in my offender program,” Hampton wrote to me by e-mail, “and asked them to tell me what message it might be conveying.” Here is a sampling of responses:

“Children are sexual objects.”
“It is OK for adults to fantasize about having sex with kids.”
“Children want to and are ready to have sex.”
“Sex offenders are only doing what children want them to.”
“Children are able to seduce adults into having sex with them.”

One offender who was convicted of possessing child pornography said, “When I used to look at pictures like that, it would reassure me that I wasn’t doing anything wrong; it made it easy for me to commit my crime . . . Oh, and by the way, that is child pornography.”

“The production and distribution of ‘gateway porn’ is a way that society grooms people into becoming sex offenders,” writes Hampton. “In other words, those pictures normalize the association between sex and children, making it appear that such an association is appropriate.”

Those images also fuel the idea that little girls should aspire to be sexual objects.

My daughters are too young to be aware of this image and the debate surrounding it, but if they were ten, I think I’d be so annoyed at Leibowitz I’d want to put her in the time out chair and send her to bed without dessert.

I’m trying to teach my girls that their smarts are far more important than their looks. I tell them that if they use their brains and are fierce and work hard, that will be success.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that message across when there are sexualized women gazing at us every-freaking-where, clutching their breasts under bed sheets?

And when it’s their number-one hero — still a child herself — I have increasingly less credibility.

But don’t worry, Ms. Leibovitz isn’t going to be blamed for corrupting the morals of two more young girls. Because protecting their sexuality, ensuring that they are clear about their own boundaries and that no one ever makes a sexual choice for them — that’s my job.

So if the question should come up and I am asked by my daughters why Hannah Montana took a picture with her clothes off, clutching her private parts, I will be honest:

She took her clothes off because an adult told her to. And no adult has the right to tell a child to take her clothes off or touch her private parts.

Because it’s wrong.

Vinaigrettes — Deeply Moved

DaMomma:  Wow. I’ve never seen a check like that before.

Nice Local Teller:  Congratulations.

(What she isn’t saying is that she remembers when Cute Husband and I used to have negative balances in our account.  She remembers when I asked how much I could take out for groceries and still cover this check or that check.) 

DaMomma:  Yeah.  If only this check represented the amount of money I had instead of the amount I had just signed away.  That I don’t actually  have.  That I owe.

Teller:  It’s your first house.  It’s supposed to be scary.  Congratulations.

Nice Person at the Other Window:  CONGRATULATIONS!! 

Crowd of People as I walked out, check in hand:  CONGRATULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I grinned and waved like Miss America.  Not the Miss America that’s worried about foreclosing on her house.  No, the other one, with the big boobs, the fake teeth and enough air in her cranium to keep problems from actually attaching themselves into her mind.

THAT Miss America.

###

The Loser Cruiser.  A back road.  DaMomma talking into her cell phone.  Renny, in back, is eating crackers and whining. 

A Super-annoying System (of automated customer service):   At the tone, please state the service you want.  For example, to find out how to make a payment say, “I want to pay my bill.”

Renny:  Momma off da phone! MOMMA OFF DA PHONE!

ASS:  (BEEP)

DaMomma:  Sign up for new service.  — No, Love, I have to be on the phone.  We need electricity.  Eat your crackers.

Renny:  Watch Princesses?

DaMomma:  No, love, we don’t watch videos on local trips.

ASS:  Okay, did you say, “Pay my bill?”

Renny:  WATCH PRINCESSES!!!

DaMomma:  NO!

ASS:  We have payment locations in …

DaMomma:  LOOK LADY I ALREADY AM SPENDING PHANTOM MONEY I DON’T HAVE FOR A HOUSE THE BANK OWNS – I DON’T NEED TO PAY YOU FOR ELECTRICITY I’M NOT GETTING.

ASS:  I’m sorry.  I don’t understand you.

DaMomma:  No one does.

###

DaMomma:  I have something to confess.

Cute Husband:  Okay.

DaMomma:  I bought the girls a swing set.  They were sad about leaving Ducky’s house, they were crying.  I thought this would help.

Cute Husband:  Okay.

DaMomma:  A big one.  It cost a lot.  I think I spent too much.

Cute Husband:  Okay.  Look, it wasn’t like it cost (THIS PORTION CENSORED), right?

DaMomma:  That’s actually exactly how much it cost.

 Cute Husband:  Mother of God.

DaMomma:  OhmahgawdIcan’tbreatheI’msorrydon’tbemad.

Cute Husband:  How did that happen?

DaMomma:  I was sad and I had cash …  I lost my head.

Cute Husband:  You lost your head to the tune of (THIS PORTION CENSORED.)

DaMomma:  IT WILL MAKE THE GIRLS HAPPY.

Cute Husband:  IT BETTER BECAUSE THEY MAY BE LIVING IN IT.

DaMomma:  Oh, that’s okay!!  It has a tree house.

Cute Husband:  For (THIS PORTION CENSORED) it better have hot running water and a double vanity in the master bath.

###

ASS:  Please stay on the line.  Your call is important to us.  Due to heavy call voume, current wait-time is FIVE minutes.  Please continue to hold …

Car Rig Assisting Containment of Karoodle — Hi, I’m Barbie!  Welcome to 12 Dancing Princesses.  I play Genevieve.  Do you want to dance with me?

Karoo:  (singing the 12 Dancing Princesses theme)

CRACK:   … and don’t forget to catch me in my next show … Barbie and the Fifteen Illiterate Mermaids With their Cute Aquatic Nimrod Friend GIBO.  Tell your parents to buy the video NOW!  (tee hee!!)

An Actual Person:  Hi, Corporate Energy Machine, what may I do for you today?

DaMomma:  Hi!  Oh, HI!!  I need electricty at my new house.

Person:  Okay, may I have the address, please?

DaMomma:  452 Picture Perfect Lane, Lala Land. — Hello?  HELLO?

(Cell phone window reads:  SIGNAL LOST)

DaMomma:  SON OF A BITCH WHORE ON A CRACKER!!!!!

Renny:  Bitch?  Whore?  BARBIE???

###

Twenty minutes later … 

Actual Person #2:  Okay, we can set up new service for you, no problem.  Give me the address?

DaMomma:  452 Picture Perfect Lane, Lala Land.

Person:  Okay, no problem, let me pull up that record for you …  Okay, I show 452 Picture Perfect Lane actually is in Zone 7, which we don’t serve.  Do you want the number for Ultra Mega Power?

DaMomma:  (CENSORED)

Renny:  Pucker in a shoosh bag?  Momma?  What?

###

At the Happy Swings, Empty Pockets store … 

Cute Husband:  THAT.  That is our swing set?

DaMomma:  Yeah.  I admit, it seems like an even worse idea now that I actually see it.

Cute Husband:  Something about seeing the actual structure just screams (THIS PORTION CENSORED) dollars to you?

DaMomma:  They just had to have the glider.  Everyone said that one’s really important with two kids.  And monkey bars, you know how much Mare likes that.  And in order to have the monkey bars we had to have four swing positions.  And interstingly, four swing positions means you can support the ramp.  And really, that wasn’t that much extra money. 

Cute Husband: Of course.  I see that now.

DaMomma:  Every fight we have from now on you’re going to bring this up aren’t you?

Cute Husband:  I won’t have to.  I’ll just point to the yard, and the structure blocking out the sun.

###

At the Registry … 

Smarty Lawyer:  Okay, gang, this is it.  Congratulations.

DaMomma:  Really?

Smarty:  Yes.  Really.  You own a house.

Cute Husband:  Congrats.

DaMomma:  You, too.

And right there, in the Registry, after nine and a half years of marriage, two kids, five years’ active duty in the Marine Corps, four apartments, four rental houses, and one really large swing set — we smooched.

Smarty:  To be young again, and kissing in the Registry.

Cute Husband:  Please don’t tell us we’re young.  I don’t think we can take it.

DaMomma:  I’ve sprung five gray hairs since this morning.

Cute Husband: That’s okay, we’ve got that swing set to make us feel young.

DaMomma:  See?  See? — I knew we needed it.

###

The only way to New York is Through Connecticut

I freaking hate Connecticut.

Because of course that’s where I was at around 7 o’clock Tuesday night when the engine light on the dashboard flickered on and the funny acrid smell grew strong enough to convince me it wasn’t from all those cars on the highway in the August heat.

My kids were asleep in the back when I pulled into some old dusty gas station off a rural dirt road. I had driven past a few stations and finally picked this one because, although it was closed like the others, there was a cluster of old men seated at a picnic table beside it. They looked relaxed and wise and like they might help a girl trying to decide if her car was — hahahaha– on fire.

First thing I did was check the oil. I made sure to look extremely confused as I did this, like I could barely even find the little doohicky-do to check it. I clucked away at it and went to dip it again and then finally one of those guys got up and walked over to me.

“About a quart low,” he said, looking carefully at the dipstick. We put a quart in, and threw a spare in the back. I tried not to think about the four quarts it had taken three weeks ago.

“Engine light?” he said, looking at the engine again. “Could be anything. Where are you headed?” he asked.

“New York City,” I said. “For my nephew’s birthday.”

“Lemme get a flashlight, see if I can get a closer look at the engine,” the man said, walking toward his truck. While I was standing there, another man got up from where he was sitting under a tree and walked over to me.

“New York?” he said. He was dirty, with a stubbled chin and a sour smell.

“Don’t go,” he said, peering into the engine block. “It’s not safe. Go home.” He straighted up and walked along the car, stopping to peer in at my sleeping children. “Take your kids home.”

I felt a cold shudder.

The man helping me came back with the flashlight, ducked his head under the hood of the car and said in a harsh whisper: “Don’t talk to him,” he said. “He’s not safe. He’s a bum. Sleeps under that tree.”

A second cold shudder. What the hell am I doing here?

“Is the car safe to drive?” I asked. The sun was really setting now, and I had to make some decisions with what was left of the daylight.

“Yeah, I think so. But I think you ought to get it home. I’d take it to a good mechanic pronto.”

I got behind the wheel, started the engine, and pulled away from the gas station, back down the long barren country road.

I was closer to New York than I was to home. But if I continued on to the city I ran the risk of breaking down in the city in the night.

All of this was enough worry before I started asking myself where we were going to get the money to fix the car. Cute Husband has just taken the bar, his summer job expires next month — so does our health insurance. And this is our good car. It’s got 70,000 miles on it and I know the exhaust system is rusted out in addition to whatever thing it is that’s making that burning smell.

I pulled over by the side of the road next to a low stone wall bordering a field.

“A meadow, actually,” I thought to myself, as I sank down in the grass and cradled my head in my hands.

Sometimes it’s just hard. You keep waiting for it to get easier, but it doesn’t. I’m driving around in this beat up old piece of shit and the two most beautiful babies in the world are sound asleep back there and these cars are rushing past and I don’t feel old enough to be a mother. I feel small and scared and very, very stupid and I just wish for a week of no troubles. Enough money, no sickness, no fear, no sleeplessness.

And this is it. This is as grown-up as anybody gets, sitting by the side of the road in a meadow in despair wondering if some miracle is going to find you and make it easier.

Mare wanted to go to New York. She was so excited about the trip she could hardly breathe. What was I going to tell her when she woke up back home? Missing her cousins and her aunt and uncle? We can’t afford a vacation, so this was it and now she wasn’t getting that, either.

Don’t go to New York, it’s not safe,” that creepy little man’s voice resonated in my head.

“Come to New York,” my aunt said into my cell phone when I called to tell her we had to turn back. “The kids will be so disappointed. We’ll get your car fixed here. I can put it on my credit card, and you can pay me back.”

What should I do? Each move carried risks. Staying here meant Cute Husband would have to borrow a car to come get us. It would be very costly. Going home meant a longer trip and greater risk of a breakdown; and devestation for Mary and her cousins, who were waiting for her.

I got back in the car and back on to the highway toward New York. Why? — Ultimately because I don’t take advice from drunk little men who sleep under trees.

Sure. It’s nice for literary effect. But when I thought about it, it was a dumbass thing to put too much stock in.

So off we went. Mare woke up and I passed her apple slices and we talked about all the great things we would do in the city, and how exciting it was that her cousin was celebrating a birthday and performing in a Big Show all in one day and we were going to be there to see it.

I kept the window open so the fumes from whatever it was that smelled like burning wouldn’t kill us, and I spent a few minutes plotting out what I would do if I saw flames. (In a nutshell: Grab the kids and run.)

Thankfully, we got all the way to the Cross-Bronx Expressway without incident. Unfortunately, that was when I discovered Mare’s new fear of shadows.

“WAAAAA!!! MOMMA IT’S A MONSTER ON THE BACK OF THE GROWNUP SEAT MOMMA MOMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!” she shrieked in shear terror, cowering in her seat.

“It’s okay, Sweetheart,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. “It’s all right.”

Now how many shadows you think there are on the streets of Manhattan at 11:00 at night??

I put on the inside light, which felt much less safe to me because it advertised me as a young woman alone with two small children. But it made Mare feel a little better. She sat there with her hands over her eyes whimpering while the streets went by and I estimated the minutes until we found the building and I could collapse in a small heap and cry and suck my thumb.

“Momma?” Mare said, in a small voice, peering through her fingers. “Momma, what do you do when it isn’t okay?”

“Oh, baby,” I said, feeling a course of fear myself. “What do you think, Mare?” I asked.

“You ask for help?” she whimpered.

“That’s right. You ask for help. And you remember that tomorrow is always better. It always gets better.” My voice broke.

Where’s the damn apartment? — I just want them to go to sleep so I can cry.

We found the apartment. My aunt was still up and she helped me bring the kids in. The fold-out was made up — pink sheets, just for Mary. I climbed in with her and Ren, grateful for the air conditioning.

I read Harold and the Purple Crayon to them and soon they were both asleep, their arms around each other. I put my arms around them both and looked out at the buildings — just like Harold’s many buildings with many windows — and was grateful some more. We were okay.

I was too tired to cry. And somehow I didn’t really feel like it any more. The road is still long, but the part of it I had come down was behind me, and we were some place safe, on someone’s fold out in the city, our arms around each other in the orange glow of streetlights.

Sometimes that just has to be enough.