Steph – Page 41 – Stephanie Sicore

The kids pick their own tomatoes and basil off the vines and bushes that have, in three short months, overtaken their once-huge terracotta pots. I am sloppy; I quickly slice the larger tomatoes and the buffalo mozzarella, throw it onto a plate and shake olive oil and salt atop the pile. We walk barefoot back out into the garden, around the back of the house, and sit in the shade on the upside-down red canoe. There are no forks. Why should we need forks? We eat with our fingers and talk about next Saturday, when we’ll be inside this canoe paddling up the big river from Russian Gulch.
But the heady tomato-basil-olive oil fruitiness anchors us firmly to the present; and before long, we’re nothing but giggles and dirty, greasy fingers leaving shiny happy prints atop the dusty canoe. Maybe the slick fingerprints will make the boat glide faster, we postulate.

Hi Chas, Birthday Boy, Mister 3,

Three years ago I walked down the white fluorescent aisles of Target with a package of toilet paper rolls, counting the bear hugs I’d felt all evening get closer and closer: twelve minutes; eleven minutes.Â Passersby smiled at the cute ball of you underneath my little black dress. I remember checking out, squinting at the red formica and conceding that you were ready to be born into the world, and that I’d help you once I’d unloaded the groceries at home and packed my overnighter.

Two hours later, you were banging on the escape hatch as I walked the halls of labor & delivery. Shortly after that, as I sat on the edge of the bed, my back all but in an actual vice clamp, I grimaced and felt the floor flood with warmth. I looked down, my flip-flops drenched in amniotic fluid; I looked up, and nearly puked. I think I may have puked three minutes or so later.

When the night sky began to toss and turn, bluing the atmosphere with its conscience, you crowned. I pushed twice, really hard pushes that channelled eons of mothers into Om, and out you slipped, all purple and dense and strong, wet-cry muted once blue-eyes met mine; you squinted uncertainly, then frowned at me, and I knew that you were a robust soul, and that your name couldn’t be Owen. It had to be Chas.

+ + +

We had fun today making some cupcakes for your birthday. You wanted to make devils food cupcakes, easy enough. Every now and then I couldn’t help smelling your head full of blond wildhair, my eyes closed, as if I could keep it , in my zeal, tucked within the corner of my heart. As if I could oncork that heavenly little boy smell of ozone and compost, the faint smell of detangler mixed with other unidentified sweet funk (possibly cake batter, it was hard to tell in a chocolate-scented kitchen) and smell it when you are no longer in the house, but far away in college, or possibly on a steamer ship to the arctic, or hiking the sierras, or hanging out inÂ your girlfriend’s parent’s house for the holidays. Wait, please never do that.

And please never stop telling me that cake makes yur muscles grow big and strong

But I can’t bottle your boyhood any more than I can expect you to stay home every holiday. Instead, I’m catching little whiffs of it whenever I can: as you crack an egg into the mixing bowl,

while you ice a cupcake;

And (as you can see) I’m taking pictures often, too; I’m really trying to, at least.

When I’m at a loss for words is when the camera shutter flutters.