I've got to teach my world to eat better. Right now, it's a wild omnivore. It eats all my sentences, paragraphs. Essays get swallowed whole, but when I go to feed myself, the cupboard bangs shut with a dull echo, empty. My world, it doesn't chew carefully--those ladylike 20 chews per bite, the little bit of food left on the plate for Miss Manners: None of that. My world is an ogre, sloppy-mouthed, grease-fingered, greedy beyond measure.
Any spare letters I have, I give to my daughter, who is coming into full language, and licks her lips for the sound of the alphabet and the way its sings itself back to us in the song we've made for it.
Being a mother is about being hungry. Wrought out of your former shape, changed irrevocably, slung back into a familiar shape, but then it's all different because of that body that is a child aside you. This goes for mothers whose children came from inside or from outside--whether that's pregnancy or adoption or surrogacy or fostering or any other way that child comes to belong to you. The shape of you, the way you configure yourself out in the world, has to change in accomodation. This is no easy work. No wonder it leaves you wanting.
To this day, my own mother hides treats, away from others' hands, in the top of the pantry or in the back of the napkin drawer. Russell Stover's caramel clusters or creamy hard candies that open out of their small package with a crackle and then melt slowly in your mouth. Beyond sustenance, some furtive indulgence. I'm taking her lesson in part. I'm going to secret away some words here, so I don't go thin and gaunt as a ghost woman.
No, not a ghost yet--just a traveler in want. Like a hobo, I will share my small stash with a fellow in need. Just give me the sign. I'll take you in, recognizing you, say to you, sister, I know what it is to feel your own belly in want and need. Sit down at this table and share some of this tiny, secret bounty with me.
