Dec 01, 2020
A Pregnancy, a Pandemic, and a Pear Tart
When I first discovered I was pregnant, we were deep into a very strange spring.
When I first discovered I was pregnant, we were deep into a very strange spring.
I do not wish to have not been a parent. But I think it is normal to imagine new existences when the world is crumbling.
Nothing in my son’s life has gone according to plan. Why would school be any different?
When I say I love you, you know exactly what I mean, that this, our love, our family, is a small, fierce revolution.
Our son will grow up without grandmas, but we want him to remember these wonderful women he'll never get the chance to meet.
If there was one thing I was clearly not cut out for, it was being a stepmom.
We all have them, those unmet needs or wishes from our own childhood, the painful bits that creep in and affect how we parent.
On the heels of my diagnosis, I feel there is no way to construct a narrative around what’s happening to me—a deep betrayal for a writer.
Like a drawing is and is not mine once I’m finished with it, my son is not mine, not really, because he is himself.
In the battered barbershop chair, Faris sits slightly camouflaged and crumpled, as though he is a mystery even to himself.
Being disabled means hundreds of thousands of people believe they always know better than you do.
When you give birth to a life, you are also giving birth to a death.
My kids have been kicked out of many, many places for being different—just like I was.
We were so worried about surviving that we’d forgotten to show him even little ways to live.
I was thin-skinned as a child, with an ego that could put bruised peaches to shame.
I promised myself I would not threaten, shame, or scare my daughter into compliance. I kept that promise.
“I want him to stay as sweet and soft and cute as he is now. He is my baby boy.”
“In the emergency room, my instincts exploded from protective to full-blown primal. And it felt like love.”
An unexpected pregnancy, a birth, and a family reunion.
Maniacal clowns and pale men with eyes in their palms are the worst my son has to fear in life. Or so I wish.
