To the Moon and Back

It struck me then how much time she must have spent as a mother, how much of her motherhood, pretending not to feel things.

How easy it would be—or at least how possible, looking how I looked—to let that part of me fall away? To, absurd as it sounded even to me, opt-out? To be an astronaut—to be myself—without the weight of everything that came before.

She nodded so subtly as she passed, like we were both in the cartel, and the cartel was gay.

I’m strongly considering a PhD, sir,” I said. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “Ambitious!” Della had warned me that “ambitious” wasn’t a compliment. Especially for a girl.

I used to think my mother was self-conscious and shallow, that she would stop at nothing to belong. Not realizing—not for a very long time—the strength it takes to say what you want. The ambition of wanting a certain life, of demanding it.

Every person who loved me loved me in a certain way

I remember our mother pulling off the highway into dark towns, buying biscuits at the drive-through with small bills in a rubber band, pulled from under the driver’s seat. Kayla slept and I ate three biscuits, hers and mine and our mother’s, too. Our mother, who cried silently behind the steering wheel from Dallas to Plano to Sherman to McAlester. I practiced reading highway signs. Our mother helped me sound them out, until she didn’t.