I heard myself scream at you before I realized that my thoughts had moved to my vocal chords. Your face crumpled like paper. You cried, loud and hard. My little boy, banished from the park for gulping in big mouthfuls of pebbles.
Scooping stones out from around your molars for the second time in ten minutes, I had warned you, "If you eat rocks again, we're leaving." And you lay face down in the sand and opened your mouth and we left. You fought me all the way to the car, and once in your seat, you chanted your frenzied mantra, demanding milk--"Molk, molk, molk, molk"--and finally screamed at me: "MAMA!"
I screamed right back at you. I yelled at you to shut up. And I tried not to cry when you started crying. I was sure I could feel the weight of other parents' stares between my shoulder blades. Because none of them would ever tell their toddlers to shut up.
You slurped down the contents of your sippy cup as I drove us towards the drugstore (I had to take you somewhere calm, air-conditioned, sterile). Then you held the empty cup out, and quietly asked, "Molk?"
I spotted a grocery store on our right, and pulled into the parking lot.
***
Last night I dreamed that my baby had drowned.
He was so tiny, maybe two months old. I was in a giant swimming pool with him draped over my arm. I was talking animatedly to a beautiful blonde woman with a leading lady's body and a series of goofball expressions. There were dozens of other people in the pool, too. But no one seemed to notice that the baby over my arm was face down in the water.
I looked down and he was the same purple-blue Westley was when he was born. But he didn't grimace and try to cry like a waterbirth baby. He was just still. I walked to the edge of the pool and laid him down on the cement, while the beautiful woman I was with called frantically for someone who knew CPR.
I knew he was gone.
***
Dear Westley,
You are 19 months old today, which is the strangest, most awkward thing to say. "Nineteen months" doesn't sound like an age. I think I'll start telling people you're one-and-a-half when they ask. Or else I'll tell them, "Well, he thinks he's two."
We've been having a hard time these past few days, you and I. It's the terrible pre-twos. We both need more sleep than we're getting, I think. And we're both not getting it because our minds are too full. Your Dad and I keep having serious discussions about film theory, and moving, and our lives going forward, and you keep learning words and building your own sign language and trying desperately to make me understand you. Today you asked for a "bite" of my veggie wrap, and then another "bite," just that clearly. And then you told me it was "goo."
Every day I hear you say something you didn't say the day before. You know what an oboe is, and tell me when you see one. MaMay says you told her "jeans" while she was helping you get dressed. This morning you told the cat to "moo" when she was sitting in your seat. I know more words are coming soon, but I hate that I still can't understand you so much of the time. It's so hard to wait. (It's probably worse for you.)
I have to tell you, I've been kind of a shitty mommy here lately. I'm sure you've noticed. It's hard for me to reflect back your feelings and moods when my own are coming at me in giant tidal waves, changing like weather. I worry that I'm doing the best I can and that "the best I can" isn't good enough for you. You deserve a mother whose mind doesn't implode on her, who doesn't shout at you for opening the garage door or pulling her hair or chanting "molk." It probably doesn't look like it to you (actually, I don't know what you see--you seem to understand everything, oddly), but I'm trying to get better. I'm trying, Punky.
Even on the days when my vision is most swollen with depression, though, I want to see you. You're like a perfect book I can't put down, under the covers with the flashlight in the middle of the night. You're the best movie I've ever watched. And I can't believe I had anything to do with it. Nothing as incredible as you could have come from me. Maybe--just maybe--from your Daddy, but not from me.
Yours always,
Mommy
