It’s quicker this time, and I’m trying not to think about the fact that our son paved the way for the second kid, because that’s just fucked up, and Otter gapes at me when I whisper that to him, like I’ve said something offensive, but then we’re both distracted by the fact that another child starts screaming, thin and reedy, and then the doctor says three words that cause
me to slump against the wall, barely able to stand on my own.
“It’s a girl.”
THERE ARE moments in life so profound, they forever burn themselves into your mind.
I know this, because I have so many of them.
Coming home from school and reading a letter from a woman who should never have been a mother.
The Kid sitting on my lap, asking what was going to happen to him, that he was such a little guy.
Facing Otter in a darkened hallway, wondering why my heart skipped beats in my chest at the sight of him.
Sitting at a dinner table, getting embarrassed when I thought a sign on a boy named Oliver’s door said something different.
A kid coming up to me, saying, “Who are you? I’m Creed. We should be friends forever.”
Anna Grant kissing me for the first time, her lips soft and sticky with cherry ChapStick.
Julie telling me to get her a glass of Jack. “Two ice cubes, Derrick. You know how I like it.”
Being told I had a sister named Izzie.
Mrs. Paquinn telling me that everything was going to be okay, that her husband, Joseph, God love him, left her too, but she got on all right.
The slow mechanical hiss of a machine that helped Otter to breathe.
Sitting in a car across from a man I loved, not knowing I loved him, throwing his own words back in his face.
Finding empty orange prescription bottles in Ty’s room.
Meeting Kori for the first time.
Meeting Corey for the first time.
“His name is Dominic, and he doesn’t talk much, but he’s my friend now, and he helped me follow the ants, and I’ve never had a friend on my own, so can he please have lunch with us?”
Staring out the side mirror, watching the Green Monstrosity shrink behind us, wondering when I’d ever see it again.
Creed saying Otter had moved to California.
The last breath Theresa Jean Paquinn ever took.
Anna asking me why she couldn’t be enough for me as we stood on the balcony of a shitty fucking apartment.
The first time Otter was beneath me.
The first time I was beneath him.
That smile, that crooked smile that never stops taking my breath away.
The Kid telling me that it’d be okay, that everyone was waiting for us at home.
Otter and I being told that it worked, that we were going to be parents.
A thousand other moments. All the bits and pieces that make up a life.