When I was a child those choose your own adventure books were popular and being a little sneak and voraciously curious I would flip through every option presented because I wanted to know every possible impact of every possible choice and now when my mother tells me the story of how her mother betrayed her I give every answer possible: i agree that she had a terrible life and it’s understandable, I say she was still responsible for her choices, I say that there are some mothers who don’t know how to love a daughter, I shrug, I nod, I say it wasn’t your fault, I say it’s over now we can let go of it. In another half an hour something else will trigger the story and I will choose a different adventure.

I was looking at my daughter yesterday, the great size of her and wondering how, how did she ever fit inside of me, curled in what over there they called a bump. As in oh your bump is getting big! I could hardly do it now unless I were completely hollowed out, just a melon rind of a mother and even then I don’t know if it would work.

Today there is a faint shadow of hair above his upper lip and I think of how I should mention to his father that maybe he should show him how to shave it. From the other room I hear him shout fuck as something goes wrong in the game he is playing with his friends and now I will carry this version of him inside me too, alongside the one of him at two who cried when he realized that there was a time when he wasn’t in the world.