This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

Missionary position was, as far as she could tell, like vanilla ice cream: purported to be boring and chosen only by passionless, unimaginative, exhausted people but really the best one. She liked to look at Penn’s face so close that it split into pieces like a modernist painting. She liked the length of his front pressed against the length of hers. She felt that people who needed to do it upside down and backward from behind – or who added candied bacon or smoked sea salt or pieces of raw cookies to their ice cream – were probably compensating for a product that was inferior to begin with.

That was how. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. All for one. It wasn’t so much that she and Penn had set out to practice Zen marriage equality and perfect-balance parenting. It was just that there was way more to do than two could manage, but by their both filling every spare moment, some of what needed to got done.

followed by Rigel and Orion had put a stop to that plan too, children being the enemies of plans and also the enemies of anything new besides themselves.

‘One thing on your list to worry about. Put all your worry into that one thing. Worry about it as much as you like, as much as you need to. But only that one thing. Anytime any of the other things flits across your mind, take that concern and channel it into your one thing.’

How did you teach your small human that it’s what’s inside that counts when the truth was everyone was pretty preoccupied with what you put on over the outside too?

But Rosie was also used to conflicting emotions, for she was a mother and knew every moment of every day that no one out in the world could ever love or value or nurture her children as well as she could and yet that it was necessary nonetheless to send them out into that world anyway.

‘It’s okay.’ Tears crawled out of Claude’s eyes and nose, and besides he was only five, but he tried to comfort his parents anyway. ‘I just feel a little bit sad. Sad isn’t bleeding. Sad is okay.’

‘You can’t tell people what to be, I’m afraid,’ said Rosie. ‘You can only love and support who they already are.

He remembered their first date, all those little lifetimes ago, another evening when he could not calm his racing heart or make his face do as he wished.

‘Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in,’ said Penn. ‘Easy is nice, but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.’

‘Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world’s problems, overcoming your own. I don’t know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there’s not much of it I’d trade for easy either, I don’t think.’

You never know. You only guess. This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what’s good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don’t get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. It’s impossible. It’s heartbreaking. It’s maddening. But there’s no alternative.’

In the end though what he could give her was better than magic wands and magic frogs and magic lamps. Better and more magical. What he gave her was moral support and unconditional love. He promised to be there for her always, even times when the sky proved too vast and the night was dark because she couldn’t kindle all the stars. He would light her way instead, he promised. He would be her Polaris, her celestial navigator, her astral guide. And whenever she came back to Earth, Grumwald promised, he would be there, waiting.’

As with so many things, this needed only a name to become real.

They say it is what you never imagine can be lost that is hardest to live without.

Leaving wasn’t weak, and it wasn’t giving up. It was brave and hard fought, a transition like any other, difficult and scary and probably necessary in the end. Fighting it only delayed the inevitable.

Orion opened up to show Aggie a mouthful of chewed-up pancake, and Aggie laughed, and Poppy felt like she would die of embarrassment, and Penn wondered where boys learned that, that trick of attracting girls by grossing them out, which only worked for a few years, like flirting training wheels. Maybe boys had it all along, that razor’s-edge balance of disgusting and charming, and for many years they didn’t notice or care, and for a few years girls found it fascinating, and for the rest of the time, men fought to keep it under wraps and only let it out when they were alone.

As with so many disasters, it seemed the only way forward was deeper.

Rosie put pictures up first thing. She said it made it feel like home. She said who cares whether all the plates and books and winter clothes and old phone chargers stayed in boxes for a while; once the beds were made and the pictures hung, the place was yours.

Tradition is one thing, but who wanted to send her kid through life with a name like Bristol Wonks? There were so many things that befell your children you could not control. Why wouldn’t you do something about the one you could?

‘No, it’s like a fairy tale,’ said Penn. Rosie rolled her eyes at him. ‘Maybe you look like a filthy scullery maid, but inside, you’re really a princess, and if you’re good, you find the right grave to cry on or the right lamp to rub, and you become a princess on the outside too. You look like a frog, but kiss the right lips and you magically transform into the prince you’ve known yourself to be inside all along. If you’re good and worthy, you always get an outside to match your inside. Virtue leads straight to transformation; transformation leads instantly to happily ever after.’

This is a medical issue, but mostly it’s a cultural issue. It’s a social issue and an emotional issue and a family dynamic issue and a community issue. Maybe we need to medically intervene so Poppy doesn’t grow a beard. Or maybe the world needs to learn to love a person with a beard who goes by “she” and wears a skirt.’

He watched her behind her closed lids and said nothing for moments that stretched on like Wyoming highways. Then he walked away. So she was able to coincide heartache with international air travel as well.

Tops that hugged their figures, modest but hinting, like a wink but not on purpose.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized to the patient, to K, to the large percentage of the world that did not have what the other large percentage of the world took for granted.

He realized this was what his father had been up to all these years, not entertaining his children but perfecting his world. If you wrote your own characters, they didn’t disappoint you like real people did. If you told your own story, you got to pick your ending. Just being yourself never worked, but if you made yourself up, you got to be exactly who you knew yourself to be.

Dispelling fear. Taming what was scary not by hiding it, not by blocking it or burying it, not by keeping it secret, but by reminding themselves, and everyone else, to choose love, choose openness, to think and be calm. That there were more ways than just two, wider possibilities than hidden or betrayed, stalled or brokenhearted, male or female, right or wrong. Middle ways. Ways beyond.

Making peace was better than living in fear.

‘You have to tell. It can’t be a secret. Secrets make everyone alone. Secrets lead to panic like that night at the restaurant. When you keep it a secret, you get hysterical. You get to thinking you’re the only one there is who’s like you, who’s both and neither and betwixt, who forges a path every day between selves, but that’s not so. When you’re alone keeping secrets, you get fear. When you tell, you get magic. Twice.’ ‘Twice?’ ‘You find out you’re not alone. And so does everyone else. That’s how everything gets better.

‘Because you know what’s even better than happy endings?’ ‘What?’ ‘Happy middles.’