"Night and Day" By Marni Berger

1.The Awakening.

I’m waking from a sad dream. In thedream, my husband Leo is uncharacteristically crying at me, saying, “When wasthe last time we were really happy?” His face is older, lined, and Iimmediately feel responsible for everything: his distress, his fatigue, thepassage of time. He looks like he hasn’t slept in years. He is me and I am him,in the dream: I feel the same, exhausted. My heart breaks. Leo speaks like he’sswallowing a rock. When was the last timewe were really happy? Then he cracks the code, answering his own questionin a way that feels true to us both: “Back when we used to binge-watch Netflixall day.”

I wake each day a pessimist, positive I won’tfully shake sleep, that it will trail me like a shadow through the day. Myalarm clock is a human I love, two years old, who speaks mainly in third-person:“Where’s Mona’s Mom? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, where’s Mona’s mom?”

The kid hasn’t seemed to have broken arecent pattern of waking at 5am, the exact time Ferber says the night has endedand advises against any sort of sleep-training. She has also begun experiencingnightmares, at midnight and 3am. The pediatrician says it’s developmental—she’slearning about her surroundings; she’s growing wise to what she loves, and whatshe doesn’t.

We sleep in three hour chunks, like whenshe was an infant, except now she speaks, moves—runs.

For a second, I wonder if the black-outcurtains have failed. That spring is torturing us with the sunlight we prayedfor all winter, until I open my eyes and find it’s pitch-dark. The time is4:44am. On principle, I wait until 5, covered in my blanket, hiding.

For a little while, she’s quiet.

“Mommy. Mommyyyyy. Need diaper changed,Mommy.” I move slowly. She doesn’t sound too distressed. But she shakes thegate to her room. “Need diaper changed,” she says again. Then: “Putting somethingin Mona’s nose, Mom.” She’s incredibly articulate. And clever.

Anxiety is my close second to coffee as amotivating force: It’s you against theDoomsday Clock, I tell myself. Areyou raising an environmentalist or a warmonger? Don’t fuck up.

I sit up. I feel so achy, like I waspunched in the back, and remember I took a shovel to a dead plant in the gardenthe day before: The first spring in our new house and Mona’s first introductionto death. “It won’t make flowers like the others,” I said.

“Because it’s dead,” she said slowly, trying out the new word matter-of-factly.Across the lawn, the new rhododendron bush was blossoming pink flowers, despitethe dogs’ daily attempts to dig it up and my buyer’s remorse for its $69 pricetag at Broadway Gardens, a local joint. How helpful is going local, I thoughtbitterly, when it takes from your child’s non-existent college fund? I stabbedthe earth, wondering why all the plants had died in this particular spot, soclose to the house.

My husband woke early with her yesterday.He has rolled onto his side. I stand. It’s my turn. I trudge into the hall. Themunchkin’s bed-head peeks over her gate. She smiles, her teeth all grown in,making her into a kid, not a baby. I’m swallowed, each day, by her changes, by mycognitive dissonance, by always feeling, somehow, touched by everything, and bybeing, simultaneously, in love with my child’s past and present selves. Growthpresents a kind of grief I never knew existed before Mona was born, the flip-sideto fortune. A part of her dies the older she grows, and I don’t want to loseany of it.

She looks at me earnestly, and I findmyself fifty-percent wakened by my love for her, fifty-percent less zombie; Ican’t help but smile. She scowls like a twin from The Shining, her chubby fingers clutching the top of the gate as I bendto unlatch it and feel the heaven that is her soft hair against my face. I’mall in.

“Want out,” she says.

I move the gate away slowly, careful thatshe’s not still leaning on it, that she doesn’t trip. “Good morning, Momo,” Isay, smiling. “Watch your fingies,” I say gently.

She mocks me in a sing-song voice, whilemoving her fingers away. “Watch your fingies,” she says.

She is standing, staring at me in herfootie pajamas and a pair of red cowboy boots that she asked to sleep with—and,it turns out, was able to don—when she says slowly, carefully sounding out thewords, “What’s Mona’s poop named?”

My daughter is wide awake.

2.Nurse.

“I want to nurse,” says Mona, nodding her head, eyes wide, before breakfast. “Oncouch.”

I lazily agree, wanting to avoid whateverprocess weaning could entail. While she nurses, she reflexively kneads my skinlike a cat, and picks at my freckles, and I have to position her hands in sucha way, until she frees them.

At the same time, I love nursing her,having her close to me, snuggled, like a baby again; it almost feels like timehas stopped or, better yet, reversed without stealing anything of what we havenow. We are so close. I am paying to slow time with my body. Of course, itwon’t work.

“I love you, Momo,” I say, and she blinksat me, moving her hand up to the ceiling, twirling her fist slowly, watchingher body, daydreaming, I suppose. “Forever and always. No matter what.”

She unlatches momentarily and says, “Sankyou, Mom.”

I sigh. I feel, immediately, like I wasborn to be a mother—among other things.

Then, she picks a mole on my back, and itbleeds all over my shirt. A new adventure of parenthood.

“Owie,” I say, both annoyed and guiltyabout feeling annoyed, swallowing my tears and trying to be an ideal person—assuminga parental tone, neutral, even. But she laughs. Because I’d like to avoid hergrowing up to be a sociopath, I uncertainly show her the blood, and she burstsinto tears.

Motherhood seems to me, in this moment, aseries of single acts that are as desirable as they are undesirable. I wantcoffee. I do not want crying. I want to wake up. We are listening to the news.

The news mentions that the world may ormay not be ending.

Is that news? I like the get it overwith—the daily shock at the state of the world, the heart attack thattransforms, out of preservation, to sheer disdain for the rich. And then themagical thinking, the hope, that an asteroid will come to destroy only thosewith the worst carbon footprints. Who knows? Maybe the dinosaurs were assholes.

And that’s why we’ve been left with birds!

Birds are great!

We listen just enough to be informed.

The news says something to the effect of Not sure when the world will end.

I strain harder to hear if there’sanything we can do.

Leo’s making coffee. Coffee. Fuck. Yes. Ismell it. I inhale it. My soul is full of hope. Coffee is coming. I think: Maybe the world isn’t ending anyway.

That’s when the news says: The world is probably ending and there’slikely nothing we can do, but if there is anything anyone can do at all, now’snot the time to look for signs; now’s the time to invent them. Basically: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Doesn’t sound promising.

“Can we change it now?” I ask Leo.

“Definitely,” he says, with a hot mug. Hedoesn’t know if he should place it on the table or in my hand and hovers insuch a genuine state of uncertain kindness, it pisses me off.

Mona’s nursing again.

“Gosh,” he says, seeing the blood. “Areyou okay?”

We could be raising a child at the end ofthe world, but there are more pressing matters.

“Can you just hand me the coffee?” Withremorse: “Please.”  

3.The Walk.

Three hours later, we drop Leo off atwork to an early meeting, and my body threatens a caffeine crash too soon. Amigraine hovers. It is a sunny day. Playgroup won’t start for a half an hour,so Mona and I walk up and down the sidewalk bordered by townhouses andmanicured trees, searching for any kind of birds, though “orange ones” areideal. Mona thrives outdoors and adores walking the city sidewalks. She enjoyspointing out anything obvious that is most overlooked: a cigarette bud, a smalltuft of grass sprouting out of the sidewalk, a dead worm that I tell her issleeping and just really needs rest.

I hold her hand. Her small fingers are grippedaround mine. Her pink rain boots are finding each puddle. I think: I will remember this forever.

Mona finds a weeping cherry tree and sitson a stoop, positioning herself behind the bare branches—a week later I willmarvel at how they burst into pink buds, overnight. For now, she grins behindthe bony shelter. A sparrow scuttles along the curb.

“Hello, little birdie,” says Mona.“Whatchu doin’? How you doin’. Youare my dear one. I love you forever.”

She’s paraphrasing lines from a sweet bookabout a mother who tells her daughter she will love her, no matter what—whichis our credo, too. The easiest thing is to love Mona—but I remind herregularly.

As a mother, I feel wise, now, to thebrazen goodness of the world, and seeing my child in it. In terms of how toprotect such goodness—I am foolish, and the responsibility so clearly outweighsme; it manifests, on occasion, as an asshole migraine that looms.  

4.Playgroup.

I’m both at ease and nervous in the Waldorf-inspiredplaygroup. The basic toys of wood and wool ignite Mona’s imagination, and she’smaking a goat and a sheep eat grass as I speak to the teacher whose job it is,also, to assist parents in any early parenthood questions. Other parents arelate, and last night after bed time, Leo and I ignorantly watched the MichaelJackson documentary after the Mr. Rogers one. Reverse order would have beenmore sensible.

In which case, I’m not sure what’s real: mycoffee-crash or my former high, but I find myself immediately worrying myself,entering a rabbit hole of frustration, as I try to speak in codes to theteacher, a language Mona won’t interpret or repeat, asking what to do aboutfamily members who kiss Mona even when she says no. I’m thinking of her birthdayparty a few days before—how close relatives, one by one, asked to kiss her andshe courageously told them, one by one, “I’m feelin’ a little bit shy,” craningaway from them, scrunching her nose. My heart soared—she’d found words toexpress herself, to set boundaries, to clarify the distinction betweenpoliteness and forced affection. But later in the party, someone asked again,she responded accordingly, and they didn’t listen; she started to cry. I movedher away, racked with guilt. She had found the words to protect her dignity,and they had failed.

“I want her to know consent,” I say tothe teacher at playgroup. “I’m firm about my principles.”

The kind teacher nods. “It’s important toteach that,” she says evenly.

I’m really tired. The teacher offers metea. I take some, imagining it’s coffee. It staves off the migraine barely. “Butmaybe I’m imbalanced when being firm about my principles starts to feelpainful? It’s not like they’re creeps.”

The teacher doesn’t speak, just nods, andopens her mouth as though she will say something wise. There’s a pause. Then shesays something to which I nod automatically, immediately forgetting what shesaid, and then, too ashamed to ask her what she said, I continue—

“I had this revelation the other day,” whichis true, “that I cared so much about my dogs before Mona was born—well, andstill do—and wanted only to protect them with reward-based training, because mychildhood was—” Another parent and child enter. The little girl is a blonde,blue-eyed ray of grinning sunshine and adores Mona.

Mona tolerates her.

Eventually, the two sit opposite each otheron a wooden boat. We all softly sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The toddlersstare into each other’s eyes, grinning.

When Mona is across the room playing witha doll, the teacher says, “I’m sorry—what were you saying earlier?”

“Oh, I can’t even remember what I wassaying,” I say honestly.

Then I remember, with the cattle-prod alertaligned with remembering anything while sleep-deprived, and the sense thatsomething else must be forgotten, or wrong, but what? The other parent isincluded too. They are both listening, nodding, listening, nodding, and it’sgreat: I’m hungry for someone to listen to me, to nurture me, to nod at me, tomother me. “I just think I was so protective over my dogs, first, before Monawas born, because there was a divorce when I was a kid.” I pause. They arestill listening. “And, you know. All the dogs died.”

The teacher has an excellent Poker face, andthe other mom smiles sympathetically, but I detect a grimace in one of them, orjust in the air, or maybe in myself, that makes for my immediate regret. I justwant to think of good things, while I’m a mom, to spread good upon Mona, andfor her to do the same, to the world, which needs it. Why did this bad thingjust appear? I decide playing it cool is the best chance I have for normalcy soI say, “So maybe I’m projecting my childhood experiences onto Mona. Myboundaries weren’t respected when I was a kid, and I don’t want hers to becrossed.”

The teacher nods.

Mona is narrating her play across theroom: “Baby is sleeping. Baby needs nap.” She covers a soft, handmade baby witha silk blanket with such care. “There you go,sweet baby. You are my dear one.” The baby’s arms and legs are hanging half-wayoff the bed as though she’s been drugged. Mona strokes the baby’s face.

The more my daughter grows, the more Ilove her, and the more easily I fall victim to the unanswerable question thatpings my brain on a regular day, every hour, on the hour: How can you protect her?

The same question, on a bad day, spiralsinto a statement: You can’t protect herforever.

And on a really bad day: You didn’t protect her that one time youcould have—even when I can’t remember any one time, specifically.

On a really, really bad day it’s You failed.

I want this to be just a regular day.Sleep-deprivation has its own agenda.

“I think you’re doing a good job,” saysthe other mom. It feels so good I almost cry.

I don’t believe in screen-time for Mona,but at home I erratically refresh my email on my phone, guilt-free, whilepeeing because Mona’s “pooping right now” in the playroom. I think my emailwill provide an answer to a question I never thought to ask, and my addictionto my phone surges during moments of anxiety—and fatigue; I’m most tiredmidday. It is midday.

There’s an email about a meal-train. Thisis one of many emails about how to support the lead teacher at Mona’s futurepreschool; the woman appears to be a saint. I’m thrilled to send Mona to her inthe fall, two mornings per week. But apparently, the lead teacher isexperiencing my worst nightmare. I read and freeze. Her child has just died ofLeukemia.

I think about my grandmother, like amother to me, and her death, how her skin turned a kind of bright yellow thatwould have been really, really pretty under almost any other circumstance, beforeshe died. That death presented a kind of darkness I couldn’t find a way out offor years. I don’t want to think of it ever happening again.

EveryoneI love, I think, has to live forever.

I finish peeing. I stare at the screen,refreshing again and again for some sort of cosmic guidance. Mona’s safely inthe playroom “still pooping right now.” We are oddly in-sync.

I plug in my phone. I wash my hands. Itake two Advil. I fix Mona ham and cheese and swallow my emotions, smiling,still wanting to cry and periodically continuing to check my email. I can hearMona playing—she has named her new toy bunny “Dash,” and for some reason related,I think, to revenge, Dash has stolen our “real” dogs’ bones.

There’s an email from my aunt, somethingastrological about the moon being in Pisces, which means I will have insomnia whilealso really, really needing sleep.

5.Naptime.

“Sometimes I like Mom,” says Mona, as Islip her pee-stained pants into the hamper—reminding myself I will wash themsoon. “And sometimes I don’t like Mom,” she muses, as I put on her clean pants.

I can’t blame her—I feel the same wayabout myself, while I love her wholly.

I say earnestly, “It’s okay to like someoneand not like them, too. Thank you for telling me.”

In bed, we read Horton Hears a Who—which is a thousand times longer than I rememberbut has a message that makes me want to sob: people matter, even small ones. Wealso read a hand-me-down book she picked out called Christmas in July, in which Santa loses his pants because acharacter named Rich Rump won’t give them back. It hits me while reading thisbook that this must be why Mona’s been asking Leo and me where our pants are, evenwhen we’re wearing them.

Eventually, she says goodnight easily.

The migraine is lurking, but I have the perilousidea to wallpaper while she is napping. For the first time in three months shedoesn’t nap within ten minutes. Instead, she goes to her gate, and screams,cries, hysterically.

I try to ignore her. We startedsleep-training months ago. I don’t know if I believe in it, sleep-training;just kind of ignoring someone’s distress calls. I did like, however, that itworked in one day, so I didn’t have to question for too long if I believed init. And then it was working for months, until now, and I was also sleeping. Iliked that. I like rest. I don’t like knowing my child is feeling pain. Sheannounces it now, through huge sobs: Mom.Mom. I’m feeling a little bit sad.

I am on my knees and covered in glue.

I tell myself I understand a concept oflimit-setting.

I ignore the screams.

My blood-pressure rises. There’s ananimal mother in me begging to get out, to run to her, to hold her. There’s apragmatic mother in me telling me this will cause a regression, a dangerousthing, leading to real sleep problems.The exhausted mother in me keeps wallpapering.

I am weighted by thick folds of paper,patterned with giant pink flowers, and whimsical grasshoppers that I realizetoo late are hanging, as Mona would say, up-smy-downon the wall.

Mona screams. I am holding an X-acto knifewhich is getting slippery with wet paste. Paste gets on my hands and knees, mysocks. Somehow, I lose track of the wallpaper smoother, the plasticscraper-thing. I nearly self-induce an aneurysm, swearing and fuming, trying tofind it. It is under my knee. I’ve only wallpapered once before in my life, andduring that time completely gave up, went to bed, and made Leo finish.

“I’m feeling a little bit sad,”she wails.

I begin to burst into tears along with mychild, muffling them so she can’t hear me, with my wrist, my only dry body part.Crying both relieves and intensifies that headache, like a balloon released ofair while being injected with more. The frustration of wallpapering is anindisputable first-world frustration. But if the guilt of motherhood—of allparenthood, let’s say—is the flip-side of love, then I’d like to think that spansspace and time, and I’m feeling it now. Guilt. Love. Who gave me so much power?Who thought I was qualified to handle another person’s life? Who thought mymother was? Or her mother?

It strikes me that we’re all just beingraised by other people. It explains a lot about the world. My mind.

I feel angry at my mother right now. Forbeing a person, two hours away and not here to help, though she would if shecould. I am angry at her for being the sort of person I need to be two hoursaway from. I am angry at her for not being what I needed her to be when I wassmall, in every moment that she could have, and I’m scared I won’t be that forMona—so scared I won’t be there for her whenever she needs me that I tellmyself I have to be perfect. I must. I’m sobbing and remembering a lot ofthings now—

It must have been love. My hopeless romantic mother blared the music, singing with her four little kids in tow, in a maroon caravan, leaving my stepfather as fast as she could—facing the unknown. I grew up on such terrible music. I grew up with, in part, a terribly unstable man, who jokingly pretended to be a dog when I was five and bit my leg so hard it bled. There was a half-moon on my thigh, red and cut like teeth. He hadn’t known his own strength, his own imagination. My boundaries. My mom was angry. But she hadn’t stopped it in time. It was too late. Even when I was small, I resented my mother—I couldn’t count on her to immediately take us from a bad place—as much as I revered my grandmother’s reliability. We escaped to Grammy’s house, her walks in the woods, her magic, the fairies, until we left completely.

It was a great day. The day we left mystepfather. I loved that song. It musthave been love. The windows were cracked.

“Smell that fresh farm air, boys andgirls!” my mother said.

“Manure!” we squealed.

Itmust have been love.

It was a great day. But I can still hearthe dogs barking, from their chains tied to trees. Their sounds faded withdistance, then remained, like ghosts in my mind.

He put them all down. My stepfather couldbarely take care of himself, my mom later told me, sympathetically. And she hadall of us.

Noneof us knows much what to do.

We escaped.

Whatshould I do now? 

Now Mona is crying, “Got coffee for you,Mama. Got coffee.”

The good thing about hysterical cryingpre-nap is that I have completed the wallpapering in a desperate no-fucks-givenmanner (but with lots of fucks actually given), rapidly and by the time shedrifts off with Pete the Cat in frontof her face.

I am exhausted and grateful. It’s my dayoff, too. I work part-time tutoring, and yesterday, at the beginning of asession, a student announced he hated all his classes and that his friend had justcommitted suicide. Because I didn’t know what to say, I said, “My friendcommitted suicide too. Once.”

He looked at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

My friend was a beautiful person with blue eyes. I always wondered how her parents felt. The nightmare of losing your child to Leukemia could only be topped by the nightmare of losing your child to suicide. Did my friend’s parents wonder if they’d loved her enough, or if they’d showed enough, in a language she understood, that they’d loved her enough? I cruelly think: Maybe they didn’t love her enough.

“I don’t mean to belittle yourexperience,” I said to the student, thinking of love, of Mona, of if I wereshowing love to her in a way she understood. I could think of nothing worsethan a miscommunication of love.  

The student just kept looking at me.

I text my husband that I have Frankensteinedthe wallpaper to the wall, the patterns pretty much fucked. I tell myself Idon’t care, but I tell him I do care. “I’m sure it looks great,” he says, andthen I ask him if he always agrees with me, and if he does, how am I eversupposed to grow. No response for a while. Then he says, “I don’t know what tosay.”

“I just want to grow,” I say, gnawing on driedmangoes from Trader Joe’s.

“You must be exhausted,” he says. “Howabout I rub your back later?”

“I’m just sitting here,” I say. “You must be exhausted.”

“That’s okay,” he says.

“What kind of asshole squints at theseams of wallpaper anyway?” I say.

“Agreed,” he says.

“I gotta’ start writing now,” I say. “Justan FYI. In case my responses are slow.”

“Good luck!” he says, “You got this!”

I drink a lot of water. I do twentypushups, so I feel like a badass. I allow myself to sit. I recharge. I eat a lotof candy, because I first ate a big salad. It is amazing. I browse West Elm. Icreate a twenty-grand, fantasy shopping cart. I think about my student debt andhow I should be focusing on my writing—the source of my inspiration, and mystudent debt—more than I should be thinking about tutoring, which is onlyuseful because the salary is so low I can remain on my income-based repaymentplan for the loans I took out for writing school. That’s not true: tutoring isalso useful, because it forces me to think about people besides myself, and myfamily.

Masochistically, I use my free time topay our credit card bills a little early, and I muse on something Leo once saidwhen I was up all night panicking about my student debt, just post-2016election (I’d been banking on Hillary lowering my interest rate): “Money isn’tthe only value.” I didn’t realize this very obvious truth applied to mespecifically until I had a kid who didn’t give a shit if I made a cent if Iwould just sit the fuck down and nurse her. This is probably why I don’t knowhow to wean—I see it as my value. And it kills me when she cries.

I text Leo: “I haven’t written a singleword.”

My migraine has made itself fully known.I take more Advil.

“That’s okay!” he says.

“Are you sure you’re not just agreeingwith me?”

“Yes.”

6.Grocery Store.

At the grocery store, there’s a storyhour—which, I think, is a genius move by the grocery story management—andbefore shopping, we caretakers and kids sit in a circle and sing songs aboutwanting to ride on a firetruck and feeling giddy for marching like dinosaursand doing the hokey-pokey. And I like to joke to myself: What would all thiswould look like if the adults were doing this with no kids around? I tell thisjoke to another parent who laughs: “It would look like we were on drugs,” shesays. “Or just really happy!”

Mona is silent until the last song whenshe starts singing more loudly than all the other kids, “I feel peace like ariver in my SOUL.”

Later it’s “I love you, Mom” for thefirst time, in the shopping cart.

“I love you, too, Momo!” I say.

Both incidences make me feel like I’vesucceeded—as a parent and therefore a human withvalue on the planet. No pressure.

An old man walks by and Mona says, “Thatguy is very bald.”

No one seems to hear her.

“It’s true,” I say.

Then she hugs herself and a sweet smilecomes over her face. “I love him,” she says.  

This also makes me feel successful,somehow.

7.Dinner.

We pick Leo up from work, and come home.I give Mona a big pile of shelled pistachios ona plate in the kitchen, while she stands on her Learning Tower—a magnificenthand-me-down that is just a glorified stool, elevating her to counter height.

After about twenty pistachios, Leo,probably remembering the time he gave Mona so many pistachios she threw up allover him, says in what I hear as a condescending tone, “That’s a lot ofpistachios for a little baby,” and I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Mona. ThenI give her some noodles. I know she’s hungry. She not able to wait for us toplate our food all prettily. I try to avoid tantrums, when I can at least. Shecoughs on a noodle.

“We should cut those,” Leo says.

I stare at him.

“I’ll do it,” he says before he realizes: “You’re right. She doesn’t need them cut. She’s been with you all day. You know what you’re doing. No worries.”

He doesn’t actually say anything after“I’ll do it.” But I tell myself I’ll remind him to, later.         

8.Moon.

“When the sun goes down, the moon comesup,” I say. “And that’s when it’s almost bed-time.”

She stares at me and says thoughtfully,“Moon says no to sun.” She shakes her head. “Moon no like sun.”

“Oh! Well, the moon does like the sun.But the sun needs a rest sometimes, and the moon is saying, ‘Come along, Mona,have nice dreams with me.’”

She smiles and turns to the window,peering outside. “It’s moony out,” she says dreamily, licking the glass. An icecream truck is coming our way from a stop-sign up the road. He must be getting ready for summer! —Ithink excitedly, and then about how the best parts of parenting arere-experiencing the best parts of your childhood with someone you love. Icecream on your wrists on a hot summer day, after a bike ride, or a walk in thecreek. The smell of cut grass. A concert in the park. The weightlessirresponsibility of imagination, of warmth in your bones. I want all that for Mona.The world, I think, is so wonderful; wait till she sees it! Myheadache is almost totally gone.

I squint at the driver. He is speedingpast our window. He is texting.

“What’s he doin’?” says Mona.

“Uh, I dunno’,” I say absentmindedly,wondering about the state of the world, again.

In my moment of uncertainty, Mona turnsto the brown dog with a villainous grin and says, “Eek says George!” and pokes Georgein the eye.

George bites Mona, and Mona cries so hardshe throws up the pistachios.

9.The Chocolate, the Vitamins, and the Bright Blue Pill.

Mona eats two chocolate chips each night. Enough sugar to incentivize sleep-time, not enough to keep her up. Leo routinely puts the chips on a floral-printed, glass dessert plate. Mona stands in her tower, sucking her dessert and swinging one leg back and forth.

George takes her bright blue pill withsome peanut-butter. The pill is made of milk-thistle and Sam-E. Something boththe holistic and regular vets prescribed after George’s liver nearly failed froma surprise infection post-Christmas, one that led to an overnight vet visitthat killed half our savings and cracked open my realization that I couldn’t,in fact, protect us all from bad fortune.

George was diagnosed with chronichepatitis, so even while she acts normal, we have been told a flare-up couldhappen at any time. Death at any time—that’s what you get with life. I don’tlike being able to predict how she’ll go.  

George was Leo’s first dog. We adoptedher when she was ten weeks old. We were a year into dating. She was our babybut always an old soul, the third-wheel to our child-less NYC, in-home dateweekends, when we’d drink beer after beer and eat sushi on the bed, buzzed, sharingedamame with George who knew how to de-shell it, somehow; and making fun ofIndie movies on Netflix for hours.

I take my vitamins, including prenatalsfor breastfeeding and/or getting pregnant again, though we’re not reallytrying.

I think: Motherhood doesn’t define women, but a body poised to create life,whether you can or can’t, choose to or not, should define women as sorceresses,at least. I wearily wonder if sorceresses question their level ofperfection as much as I do.

And why women are not seen assorceresses, in this day and age, generally-speaking.

Were we ever?

10.Come on, Eileen

I’m really excited it’s almost bed-time, a chance to reflect on the day’s good work. I delay pleasure with more pleasure and begin singing the lyrics to “Come on, Eileen.” Mona is standing in her tower by the counter, sucking her milk, and I realize I don’t know any more words besides the title, so I yell at the Echo: “Alexa, play Come On, Eileen. Please.” We always say please to Alexa, for obvious reasons, but we mumble it, lest the additional word confuse her, and her confusion frustrate us.

Leo looks a little tired for this.

“Is this okay?” I say to him.

“Of course,” he says resignedly.

Then I say: “Alexa! Raise volume to five.Please.”

Leo raises his eyebrows. I nod. Hesmiles. I ask Mona if she wants to dance. Mona exits the Learning Tower.

Her parents begin flailing—dancing—in thekitchen, à la Elaine Benes. I tell Mona what I always tell her when we dance:“This is what good dancing looks like.”

She shakes her butt around the kitchen. Leoand I exchange grins at the miracle of her existence.

“I can’t believe there were two of us,” Isay, “and now there are three!”

I’ve forgotten I’m annoyed at Leo for thenoodle thing. Or the pistachio thing.

11.Darkness, my old friend.

My headache is gone. I’m almost asleepagainst Leo’s chest, the computer screen glaring beforeus. Game of Thrones endingoptimistically, which is amazing and maybe a good omen, despite the fact that alot of people have died anyway in battle. I read too much into everything when I’mfalling asleep. And when I’m awake. 

I briefly wonder what it would feel liketo be fully rested. I try to recall it—a pressure lifted. A clean breeze. Theability to recall details, to hold a conversation, to level my mood. Oh! And tofeel more confidence.

The computer closes. We kiss goodnight.

My eyes fade. My heart slows. I feel it,rest in my mind, in my bones, thoughts turning off, one by one, like lights ina house.

My husband changes positions, rocking thewhole bed like a row boat cast at sea in a hurricane from hell. But even thoughthe last thing he hears before drifting into unconsciousness must be, “Don’tfucking move,” we exit each day with optimism.

We’d be fools not to.

Downstairs, the black dog Ralph, afraidof the dark, barks, and Leo gets up automatically to bring him upstairs. Georgeopts to sleep with one ear open downstairs, guarding us all. Don’t ever die, I say to her dailybefore saying goodnight. I don’t have aplan for this.

I regularly tell Leo he has to liveforever, too. “No way. I don’t want to live forever,” he once said. I said,“Well, I’ll die first. Selfishly, so I don’t have to be without you.” Ilaughed. But he looked scared.

Death is always approaching. The night isthe tax on day. The dark is the tax on light. Risk is the price of love. I’m sohappy, I’m sad. I miss my grandmother. I wish, sometimes, she could see allthis love we have and validate my feelings, conveniently with a specialblessing, something like: Wow, that’s awhole lot of love. It’s a whole lot of love, and it must feel like a whole lotof responsibility. Fortune is so wonderful, and terrifying. You wonder when itwill leave you.

It floats over me, while I’m fallingasleep, like dreams do from the night before, what the teacher said atplaygroup, the thing I couldn’t recall just after she’d said it; actual wordsfrom the living, coalesced in my brain, at last: “You don’t have to be perfectin front of your daughter, and maybe it’s better not to be, in effectively teachingwhat it’s like to be human.”

The black dog climbs into bed between us like a child. Leo covers him with a blanket and one of us, I can’t say who, mumbles, “It’s gonna’ be okay, bud. You’re doin’ a good job.”

***

Marni Berger holds an MFA in writing from Columbia University and a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic. Marni's work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Motherwell, Lotus-Eater, COG Magazine, and more. Her most recently published short story "Edge of the Road with Lydia Jones" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (Matador Review). Marni is currently working on a novel entitled, Love Will Make You Invincible. Marni lives in Portland, Maine. She has taught writing at Columbia University and Manhattanville College. She currently teaches creative writing at University of Southern Maine. You can learn more about Marni’s work on her website.

"Daisies in the Dark" is a digital image by William C. Crawford, a photographer based in a North Carolina. He invented Forensic Foraging, a throwback, minimalist approach for modern digital photographers.His new book, DRIVE BY SHOOTING, is available on Amazon.com. You can find more of his work at his website.