I had a long list of places I wanted to see. I wanted my passport filled with stamps, my bones tired from bumpy bus rides on backwood roads in some distant place. But it didn’t turn out that way. The pull to stay with my family, and in my place, was so great that the best I could do was go to graduate school across the country in Oregon.
He’s my office mate and I’m sure he had no idea what was about to befall him when my boss walked me into our shared office last June. And share I have. Over shared, in fact, most days. Everything that goes through my head comes out of my mouth and there is only one thin cubicle wall between me and him. He hears it all.
I want my daughter to be who she is but I can’t help but want to fold her into soft, downy wings and keep her from a world that might not be kind to a child who moves between genders or a teenager who does.
By Jennifer Savage.
My apathy and naiveté are shocking even to me. Almost as shocking as the fact that Donald Trump is going to be our president. Almost.
I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.
When I was thirteen I changed my brother’s diapers and at nineteen I rocked my sister to sleep on our front porch swing. I remember the weight of her small, curled hand in my lap as she slept. This is what I want, I thought, not now, but some day.
I feel stretched, worn thin and the thing that bothers me most is that I seem to get to this place a lot, head in hands wondering what is wrong with me.
Well, I’m sitting here feeling like a pretty crappy mama. We missed Eliza’s class holiday performance tonight. We didn’t miss it because we chose not to go. We missed it because we were late and her class performed without her.
I only have a glimpse of it now but I think I’m starting to understand that we are parents forever.
