Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories

Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us.

I wanted, then, to become what I most admired, what now seemed most real to me. I wanted to be that exalted, complicated presence in someone's life, the familiar body, the source of another's existence. But I knew what I wanted was not always what I needed.

I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love. Then—I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish woman. Then—I can do this. Millions of women have been mothers. Then—I feel very alone. I do not know what I'm capable of.

Sometimes you didn't know what you were after, I thought. Maybe there was a speck on the horizon and you followed it, hoping for the best.

I remember thinking that moms were not allowed to be sad, that surely women grew out of sadness by the time they had children.

I knew I was waiting for someone I didn't understand.

It was a character-building week, a week that thinned my hair, put circles underneath my eyes.

I don't want him to know that people like Louis's mom exist, that people fall into land mines of pain and can't crawl back out.

Would there be water shortages? Yes. More starving babies? Unfortunately. Would our quality of life soon be diminished by global warming? Probably. But who, I wondered, but the strongest among us could hold those ideas in their heads and find happiness? Get out of bed in the morning?

I pictured the mother whale, exhausted from labor, pushing her calf up to the skin of the water. The miracle of breath in the face of predation, life in the wake of whaling ships.

I want him to know nothing but gentle landings.

There were no promises, no obligations between living things, she thought. Not even humans. Just raw need hidden by a game of make-believe.