All Fours

by Miranda July

because I’m forever wanting to know what it feels like to be other people. What were we all doing? What the hell was going on here on Earth? Of course none of these artifacts really amounted to anything; it was like trying to grab smoke by its handle. What handle?

I try to keep most of myself neatly contained off-site. In the home I focus on turning the wheel of the household so we can enjoy a smooth, healthy life without disaster or illness. This involves perpetual planning.

I always wanted him back right on the dot—extended trips, school holidays, a child being too sick to go to school, these things run a chill down the spines of working mothers whose freedom is so precarious to begin with.

There was a time I would have responded with the compliance of a mirror—his anxiety was my anxiety.

It’s where I became myself—or at least a self that would last me a very long time.

The sudden absence of responsibility was a floaty, frothy, almost hallucinogenic weightlessness. No one to make breakfast for, no need to pack a five-part bento box lunch, no need to yell Put on your shoes! Brush your teeth! (Kindly but firmly, again and again, not nagging but not indulging and always keeping in mind the future adult who was being shaped right now.) Why aren’t your shoes on? Where are they? Here they are. That’s the wrong foot.

We were of one mind, waiting and praying in concert; us against the surreal world we saw out the car window. People were waiting in line for brunch while we waited to see if our baby would live or die.

And apparently time had, meanwhile, been passing—great swaths of it, whole decades.

Even if I started a new, more open relationship immediately after the divorce and stayed with that person for fifteen years, it wouldn’t be the same stretch of life. Coming into ourselves as parents and adults—none of that would happen with anyone else.