What do you want to be when you grow up?

 

I had a dream last night I had a daughter. Girls talk about having nightmares of having babies or being pregnant I’ll tell you this wasn’t one of them. I don’t want a daughter, I don’t know if I would call myself a mother, and I don’t know if I ever will but this wasn’t a nightmare.

I gave birth in the quiet darkness of my closet and there were striped sweaters in my face. I remember being scared to hold her. I wanted her to love me. I brushed her forehead with my thumb and told her that she would never be understood for everything that she felt– that she would spend every day in explanation. That we all do. She smelled like coconut oil.

I told her it wasn’t sad. I told her it was fun to find new ways to try to approximate what you were each day. I told her photographs would always look funny because they never remembered what you did from that moment.

I told her that I knew the world would break her but that the same world would put her back together with push-pins and sticky notes. I told her she would cry enough to fill tea kettles.

I told her I didn’t want to name her because I didn’t know what she would want to be called. I told her we could pick one together. I didn’t see what she looked like because the closet was dark and when I tried to settle myself into a kneeling position she started to cry.

I remember being scared that someone would open the door– that someone would interrupt us there. That someone would find out I had had a daughter in my closet and take her away and tell me that she wasn’t mine.

I set her in the corner next to my green yoga mat. I told her I would be back for her each night and that no one would touch her but me if she didn’t want.

I told her she could leave if she wanted to.

I kissed her index finger.

I shut the door.