Someone stops over unannounced like the old days,so I pop open that bottle of Sancerre I’ve been saving.Talk turns to carp that reached the roadwayafter Thursday’s three inches of rain, how some saidInvasive, let them die, others said Naturalized,let them live, someone asked for a net and others saidthey’d catch them with their hands. I …
I’d heard plenty about how a mother’s devotion to her kids is primal. I got it—I could imagine that sort of wild, beyond-the-brain love, the kind of protectiveness that can sprout claws and incisors. I expected having a child to change my priorities, my routines, my capacity for tenderness and rage. I didn’t expect it …
In a time upended by quarantine, a time when so many women are shouldering extra burdens of housework and care work in the home, the exhaustion woven into these words is particularly acute.
