Jenny Reason

fiction.

“Jenny Reason, 25.” I was practicing introductions all morning. “Jenny Reason, age 25.” No matter how I phrased it, my name still sounded like “any reason,” like it was the punch line to a dorky pun.

The job fair was starting in ten minutes and I had to decide how I would greet the dozens of employers trolling for graduate students as interns. Why my age needed to be part of it seemed silly to me, but today is my birthday and I’m fighting to own my adulthood.

People hear that I am a graduate student and they assume I’m really smart – a national merit scholar or a high school valedictorian. But that hasn’t been my path. Orphaned at age twelve with no suitable guardians in sight, I was placed in foster care and bounced from house to house like there wasn’t any reason to keep me. At 15 I had had enough and I ran away from drudgery to find my home in terror.

By 21 I found respite in a mentor and a GED program. Made it through state school, and now I’m studying to be a child psychologist.

Today, my birthday is my every reason to break into the field. I smiled at the St. Mary’s Mental Health sign above me and shook a hand.

“Hi. I’m Jennifer.”

Magic as Patience

motherhood.

I think how day hides the stars and it reminds me of my life as a mom. Somewhere buried inside is a galaxy of stars I feel never inspire awe. One of two things may happen if this blinding shroud continues – a. the energy of my dreams will cause celestial scale explosions and rend me void of an inner voice, or b. the damned lights will just burn out.

It is true, my insides are screaming for an outlet: productivity, recognition, admiration, applause. And no, scrap booking won’t cut it. My ache is for a substance of greater weight that I can stand back and admire, be proud of. I want it so badly I may create my own big bang of reality and reward.

And then it rained in May. A heavier rain than we usually see in Southern California. Thunder and lightning, clouds and sunlight, water and hail – contrast and metaphor in plain sight.

I decided to move my potted plants from under the eaves and into the rain for deep refreshing and a thorough dusting. My children followed me onto the sidewalk outside our condo and continued to the grassy area around the corner. They began to dance in the rain, to soak themselves in the polarizing forces of indulgence and concern for their uniforms, the laundry they were creating. I let them today, indulge that is, and they ran and played and called down the rain in precious silly dances. I dashed for the camera and an umbrella to catch this unencumbered moment.

The day hides the stars, but rain cleared my view. This was the magic I needed, a constellation of youth – redemption in a frame.

No Mom Is An Island

motherhood.

The scratch had been there for a week, but its itch had long preceded it. Yes, these two were brothers, and their love for each other was deep. It was affection that sometimes ran shallow.

“It’s a lightsaber wound,” I explained to the mom sitting nearest to me. I didn’t know her, but her group seemed like the type to welcome strangers – you know, no mom is an island. Besides, she was obviously concerned about the one-inch scrape I was dabbing with Neosporin. Unfortunately, her group was also the type that would maroon you for allowing weapons in the toy box. So when I revealed the violent source of my son’s owie, she looked like a woman freshly slapped.

“I have heard horror stories of children injuring each other with these kinds of toys.” She said it gracefully and with compassion like she thought I must have just stepped off the boat from a more liberal country or a trailer home.

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “We do have our share of bumps and bruises.” I tried to turn the conversation back to the playground. “So which children are yours?”

She loosened her neck that had held her head cocked toward me all through the previous shock, turned back toward the jungle gym, and found her two lovely girls, just in time to see their golden curls bouncing on the drawbridge.

Forcefully bouncing on the drawbridge.

Unwillingly bouncing on the drawbridge and crying hysterically as my dirt-faced duo terrorized them with the aforementioned bouncing.

She shrieked and ran to rescue them. I spit expletives in the sand and walked up slowly, but intentionally, behind her. She was busy wiping tears, and I was able to slip away, a grimy paw in each hand. We loaded our arsenal into the trunk and headed for home.

Maybe they won’t come back tomorrow, I resigned.

Sounds of Motherhood

motherhood.

“It is persistent sound.” I said it so matter-of-factly that she didn’t grasp my meaning. It was my answer.

“I’m sorry, I must have missed something. What did you say?”

“Motherhood – you asked me what it’s all about and I answered it is persistent sound.”
She was too giddied up on progesterone at six months pregnant to understand.

“Let me spell it out for you. First, there is the wailing of an infant. And when he is silently sleeping in the next room, you lie awake to hear his breathing.

“Then there is monosyllabic babbling, which you will love, but the day he is silent when you point to a car and say ‘What’s that?’ you must clap down the fears that he is abnormal or delayed.

“Then you hear padding footsteps across your floor – he will always be running – and you will love the sound until you hear a THWACK and the terrible silence before he cries. The silence will deafen you, stretching seconds into years as his young life falls from your grasp. But when he cries, you know he will be ok and you will chide yourself for such dark and dramatic thoughts.”

My words were like a stun ray her skin was just beginning to perceive. She bit into buttered bread, shake off the tingling effect with a confused smile.

“Before long he will be fully verbal and your ears will be full of sensible and senseless questions by turn. Some you can answer. Some trap you in abstractions he can’t understand. Some, well, some just can’t be answered. And when he learns to talk back, one day you might retort with something harsh. All that night you will choke on the guilt until another merciful soul who has been in your shoes will let you off the hook. You have to make peace with the fact that you will hurt him.

“Love him, and love him loud, because that noise will drown out the pain you cause. Motherhood is persistent sound.”

The expectant woman released a single steaming voluminous tear. I heard it splash on her spoon that sat motionless beside cooling split pea soup. “She can hear it now,” I thought to myself.