Read Online Growing Girls by Jeanne Marie Laskas - Free Book Online

choices. You put it out of its misery, or you find help.” It seemed such an obvious statement and yet courageous all the same. We agreed. We talked about ways of killing it. I said there was no way. The small man shook his head. The tall man said, “Then it’s up to me.” It seemed we were characters in a parable, something in the Bible or a children’s book. You read those things and imagine yourself the good one, the smart one, the hero. Only when you’re actually in the story do you find all the reasons for being the one who just stood by. It doesn’t excuse you. It doesn’t really help at all. The tall man stared and thought and in the end said he’d take the cat away and figure something out. We brought it to his car, put it inside, then raced to the top of the ridge to capture the sun.
    That was a Saturday. Weeks went by and I heard nothing. Pretty soon the cat and the tall man and the small man would be just another few characters I once met, characters you hold out hope for while busily denying this and that.
    Then one day I got a fax. It was a report from a veterinarian’soffice.
Spot is four-pound tabby, does not appear to be in pain, legs severely damaged beyond repair. Probably hit by a car at just weeks old. Severely malnourished. Spot may still have a good-quality life. I would try to find her a home before more drastic measures are taken
. The fax was followed by a call from the tall man. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment and often had trouble just making the rent. “I hate to ask you this, but any amount would help …” I said, of course! He said Spot could get around fine now, dragging her back legs behind her. He said he never wanted a cat. He said looking at that cat was like looking at happiness.

speechless
    We took a family vacation to Aruba because John Daller, our accountant, has a time share there and one year he couldn’t use it. We saw the poster when we were in his office getting our taxes done and I happened to mention motherhood’s attendant exhaustion and the fact that I was having prison fantasies. “I was thinking how it really wouldn’t be so bad, just for a little while.” I’d actually caught myself having a daydream of a most pleasant afternoon in a place where there’s nothing to do but sit and stare at a cinderblock wall.
    Ask any mother just what, exactly, is so exhausting about motherhood and she will likely have a hard time pinpointing it. The problem is, you block it out. The minute you get a break from motherhood, all those details of what, exactly, was wearing you out are … gone. Poof! Disappeared. This isan evolutionary phenomenon, away the species protects itself. Any mother who can’t get rid of the memories of how exhausting mothering is would have to kill herself, leaving all those half-grown kids to fend for themselves.
    One thing I know is that it’s really not just the lack of sleep. It’s really not just the fact that Sasha wakes up several times a night because she kicked her blanket off and somehow I’m the only one with the skills to get it back on right—must-be-Mommy—oh, Daddy’s blanket-covering prowess is just not up to snuff according to the little snit of a kid who has you awake
again
, and there you stand knowing you’ll
never
get back to sleep now because now you just remembered that Anna grew out of her sneakers and so what the heck is she going to wear on her feet when she goes on the pony ride at the birthday party that you can’t believe you have to go to, and hang on, did you buy wrapping paper? No, you most certainly did not. So, think,
think!
Well, you can have the girls make homemade wrapping paper out of old grocery bags and markers and stickers and make it look like you planned it, oh my God, it will be so cute, and speaking of cute, what is the
matter
with you that you are not the kind of mother who sews, you have yet to make your kids one outfit and you never even tried to crochet either of them an afghan.