The Maybes and The Magic

Fall negotiations with reality from our house.

“Why have I never met the president?”  Jean declares from the backseat. It’s Halloween; she’s dressed as Indiana Jones. 

“The president of what?”  I query.   On the cold, drizzling last day of October,  wet leaves fall in unison like clothes coming off.

“Of the United States of America.  For my inventions.”

“What did you invent?” I raise an eyebrow via the rearview mirror.  

She doesn’t waiver.  “You know how you nod yes (she nods) or shake your head no (she shakes).  I invented The Maybe.”  She circles her head in all directions, proudly, until her hat falls off.

We are on the way home from a doctor’s appointment;  Jean broke her arm trying to jump to the third rung of the monkey bars rather than the first or second.  She’s healed, though, even better than before. 

 “Isn’t it amazing,” the doctor tells us, holding up the x-ray.”  “You’re healed.  The bone is stronger! You grow back stronger.  End of story.”  The bone is better for the breaking.

Our pace now is the push and pull of city streetlights, a block moving by slower then faster, a gentle pull to a standstill and repeat.  Kitchens, porches, piles of leaves, firewood, election day signs among an early handful of vampires, fairies, and pedestrian parents; our little town waivers between the haunted past, the muddled present and the indeterminate yet to be.  We are not New York or Paris; we are slow and indiscriminate, the unseen every city with a few strange characters for good measure.  I am half outlier, half insider, rooted by blood family.  Jean does not yet know the edge of her belonging or her dreams. She knows not any stranger in any town.   She is Indiana Jones and her best friend is a Hot Dog.

“Mom, does France have a king or a president?”

“A president and a prime minister.”

“And Germany?”

“The same.  There aren’t really supposed to be kings anymore.”  I wish I could be more wholehearted about explaining the world to this tiny, inquisitive archaeologist-adventurer.  If Halloween is a loosening of what is hidden inside from the masks of the everyday, it is also a strange amplification of the goblins we’ve gotten used to.  Jean has heard snippets of the news, but like the rest of us, she doesn’t understand all of the terrible implications.  She can’t picture the violence.  She gathers that something, despite our quiet street, is wrong.  

“I wish everyone could just talk in peace.  Why can’t they just talk in peace?” 

“I agree, Indiana.”  I wait solemnly at a No Turn On Red. The news of healing, of scientifically growing back stronger is a beautiful surprise.  A mysterious miracle.  Costumes run in threes and fours across grass yards; a steak, a bear, two ninjas and a dinosaur.  I wonder if, in all my roles and masks and fears, I am better for the bruises, worn in somehow just right, like old blue jeans in October.  

“Mom, when you were in love, did you have a car?”

“In love with who?”  The light has changed; we are moving again, straight into the future and the past at a disorienting speed. 

“Your ex-boyfriend.  Did Grammy let you go by yourself or did she take you?” Jean senses something afoot and important about men and women but she doesn’t know the questions to ask.  

“I was a grown-up, Jean.  I was in college.”  

“You had a car?” Jean clings to this good news. “Was it a cool car?”

“Yes it was.  End of story,” I tell her.  However far off, the promise of a cool car lies ahead.

The light is gone early; by dinner a week later most of the candy is gone too.  What is constant about this meal at our house is that it is both delight and disaster, always resulting in a midnight snack no matter what I serve.  Jean lights the candles but cannot find it within to stay in her chair.  She likes the baked squash because I’ve put a little molasses in it, but is confused about the difference between sugar I want her to eat and sugar I don’t want her to eat. 

“Mable, Mable, elbows on the table —”  

She whips her arms into her lap, laughing. “I said that to Dad and Uncle Philip once and they told me it was boy’s night, party night and it didn’t matter about elbows.”  Her eyebrows are raised in THIS IS REALLY TRUE fashion.  

 “Well, it’s not party night tomorrow when we have dinner with Grammy.  You have to be on your best manners.”

“Grammy is Strict Strict Strict!”  She is up from the table, singing and doing the newly invented Strict Dance. “Strict, so strict!”

“And…..your report card is coming next week.”

Her attention is suddenly all mine.  Jean is very serious about a few things: school, homework, what her teachers say, photography club and her bangs being exactly right. “Did Ms. Vaughan tell you that?  You have to tell me what she tells you, as soon as she tells you.” 

I affirm understanding. She’s back in her chair.

“Is a report card about behavior or about stuff like writing and math?” 

“ALL of it.”  I glower unnecessarily.

“It’s a MASH-UP!” She erupts into air guitar, something else she is serious about. “Mash up!  Recess!  Oh yeah.  Science.  Writing. French class, and art.  Oh yeah! Mash up!  Report card. Oh yeah! End of Story!”  Her moves are startlingly punk coming from a freckled, small child.  She’s cultivated a head shake, her solo up the guitar neck and an emphatic face stretch.  Would someone else tell her to behave?  I can’t help how much I am enjoying the show.  The Report Card Mash Up is followed by the song The Legend of the Perfectly Fried Broccoli in which a prince goes forward (instead of forth) to find the perfect golden broccoli but encounters a monster and must overcome.  

“Have you ever had fried broccoli?” I ask her. 

“What’s this?”  She motions to the broccoli on her fork.

“Roasted.  I would not serve you fried broccoli.”

She can’t be bothered.  She is about to perform a dance to express how she feels about a bite of squash, with a dash of why is molasses ok and sugar is not mixed into the motions. Apparently, she likes this dinner. 

“Mom, what if you had four kids?”  

We are brushing our teeth.  “I don’t think I could have four kids by myself, Jean.  We couldn’t do it the way we do now.”  I love being a mom as much as I love being an artist.  More really.  The deep anxiety of what if I don’t like being a mother is long gone, and it is hard to believe that it once hung around with the great clarity of the almost real.  I imagine a version of myself, with a partner and four beautiful, funny children, a mess of laundry, ceaseless voices and motion all around.

“Maybe you would give a kid away.” she shrugs, toothbrush in hand.

“WHAT!?”  I spit out the toothpaste and get eye to eye with her.

“You know, if you had a lot of pain and sorrow.”

“Jean, What are you talking about?” 

“If you had a lot of sorrow and despair, and you wanted them to have a better life — you could just give them away to a person.” She runs water over the toothbrush.

“No, I could not!  Not ever.” Where is she getting these questions?  How does she know what a mash up is, let alone this Victorian novel about me turning hypothetical children out on the street.  

“Well, not me.” She looks at me knowingly. “You wouldn’t give me away. Just the other ones.”  She pops on her nightgown, giggling. 

“We are never watching Annie again.”  I call after her.  I suspect that is the root of imagined orphans, dances about squash and the funny songs she makes up in place of conversation at dinner.  Indiana Jean visited first, now Annie is here, singing songs so far from commerce, more moving than any songs I ever dreamed, so free they cannot be repeated.  I do have a favorite, a variation that moves through with a changing melody.

“Who is the luckiest person in the world?” is how it begins.  

“I am,” I sing.  “Because you’re my kid.”

“No, I am,” comes reply, “‘Cause you’re my mom.”  

“Moooooooooom, I’m sorry!”  I know what this shout wants before it arrives from across the house. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeease. Can I have a midnight snack?”  

In the dark kitchen, on the quest for the perfect snack, in the thin light of Refrigerator Mountain, I invent a Maybe of my own.  Maybe our dishes don’t dance like they do in the movies, but this quiet, homemade magic is more than plenty.  I don’t think things grow stronger for the breaking.  Maybe they just grow stronger.  End of story.