Life and Other Inconveniences

by Kristan Higgins

didn’t want to assume this would bother Riley . . . and I didn’t want to assume that it wouldn’t. I didn’t want her to think I was upset. I didn’t want her to feel rejected, and I didn’t want her to get her hopes up, and I didn’t want her to sublimate any of those feelings if she had them, and I didn’t want her to feel she couldn’t tell me about them if she had them, and I didn’t want her to feel that she had to tell me about them if she didn’t want to. Being a single mother and a therapist was very complicated.

You never realize it until you’re pregnant, or holding your baby in your arms, but your heart, soul and peace of mind will never be yours again. The tiny hijackers take over before they draw their first breaths, and you would do anything to keep them safe. Anything.

Here are some facts about getting older. You hate young people because their manners, clothes and speech, as well as their taste in books, music, film and television, are all inferior. You leak when you laugh, cough, hiccup, sneeze. Putting on a bra becomes nearly impossible. Your arms don’t bend that way anymore. Nylons are even worse, because you can lose your balance and fall. You go through a second puberty, sprouting hair from your ears and nose while your eyebrows and lashes thin and your upper lip grows hairs as thick and sharp as wire. You wait all day to have a drink. You nap when you don’t want to and can’t sleep when you do. You have regrets. Once you dismissed them as a waste of time, but as you get older, they creep back.