![]() His bronze skin was nearly as unlined as it had been then, too. At thirty-nine, his stomach was still as flat as the day we met sixteen years earlier. Sanjay shook his head, which had yet to produce a single gray hair. Can you please get me some toilet paper?” Who needed a bidet when you had decades-old plumbing? “Good morning to you, too. ![]() But instead of saying this, I reached behind me and flushed, which sent toilet water spraying everywhere. I was ready to revert to yodeling empty threats into the hallway when Sanjay appeared. I needed someone to trek to the dungeon, as my children referred to our basement, and retrieve toilet paper. My fingers landed on a cardboard roll where paper should have been. It was just far enough away that I couldn’t close it myself, so I quickly reached beside me. Instead, Miles stalked off, leaving the door wide open. I would have pulled him to me and hugged him, but I hadn’t wiped yet. His cheeks, which bore the high color of indignation, were streaked with glossy tear trails. Just ignore Stevie,” I said, as though the four hundredth time I uttered this advice would be the one that finally stuck. Still-Miles’ tears were a reminder of the microscopic line between being six and having borderline personality disorder. It was true that my motherin-law, Riya, who preferred to be identified as a baked good rather than a grandmother, smothered my children to the point of terror when she bothered to see them. His face immediately crumpled and he began to cry. “Sweetheart, if you do that and tell people I told you to, you’re going to end up living with Cookie.” What do I always tell you about how to respond to someone who’s mean to you?” When I had composed myself, I looked over at him. Still perched on the toilet, I turned and tucked my chin to my shoulder to stifle a laugh. “Stevie called me Rumpleforeskin!” he announced. His face was contorted with a mix of lingering rage and the fresh pleasure of ratting out his older sister. ![]() Then the door flung open and there stood my son, tight fists resting on his narrow hips. ![]() “Miles, can I not have one whole minute of peace?” The answer to this wasted breath of a question would remain no for another twelve years and two months-not that I was counting. Alas-I had failed to make the connection between survival and sunscreen.īut my sudden desire to be somewhere else was probably less envy and more the result of my second child screaming through the half-inch gap where the bathroom door failed to meet the frame. I had recently read that making it through mothering alive required putting on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. I glanced down at my own legs, which were not so much toned as two-toned. The caption noted that a cabana boy had fetched the cocktail she was holding in her free hand. A novel was on her lap, closed to highlight the cover (and, presumably, her sculpted thighs). One of my college friends was on vacation yet again, and had posted a shot of the vast Caribbean horizon beyond her sandy, pedicured toes. Maybe it was the photo I had seen on my phone moments earlier. I had just sat on the toilet and was mulling over the day’s to-dos and why-didn’t-Is when a single thought shot past all the rest: The first wasn’t even something I did it was only a germ of an idea, fleeting but infectious.
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