Wreck

by Catherine Newman

He has not historically been a crier, but he is one now, because that’s how life is. You don’t yet know who you’ll become.

We’ve been together thirty-five years, and we’re still getting to know each other.

The kids are in the back together, like always, and I have my automatic heart-swollen all-is-right-with-the-world feeling, even though so much is wrong with the world—the world in general and ours in particular.

Jamie catches my eye and smiles, and I smile back reflexively. I’m an undammable river of mother love. I’m a torch-brandishing one-woman mob, and I will go after anyone who casts doubt upon the rightness of my child. Even if that person is me.

I turn green, bulge up with enormous muscles, burst out of my clothes, and Incredible Hulk my way to the editor’s New York office, where I snap him in half like a wishbone.

The game Chutes and Ladders really does prepare you for life, doesn’t it? The constant ascending and descending—every good and bad thing seeming, in moments, so random and temporary.

“A little bit of yikes. You can visit with the fear, but don’t hire a van and move there.”