I’d had a mouse nest in the car before, and the chewed up paper towels were a dead giveaway. Because the scraps were emerging from the vents on the dashboard, primarily, I guessed that it was probably located somewhere in the area of the engine, a perfect place for cold little creatures to build a cozy home with easy access to all of the circuitry and cabling vital to the car’s mechanical functioning systems. It was only a matter of time before they’d sink their incisors into all of the most critical electrical wires, which would likely cause a vehicular breakdown at what was almost definitely the most inconvenient moment ever (as if there’s ever a convenient time for a car to become inoperative). This gnawing knowledge led us to raising the hood for an inspection, but there was no sign of rodents to be found. My next guess was that they were housed somewhere in the dashboard, tiny talons of teeth poised to bite through the radio wires, or perhaps the climate control. I thought of my beloved heat feature for the driver’s seat and feared the worst.

“Where is it, though?” the kids asked again and again, and I told them I really didn’t know but had looked everywhere I could think to look. Liam suggested I check in the glove compartment, but I shot down the idea immediately, claiming that there was no way they could have gotten in there. However, in classic fashion, he clung resolutely to this line of questioning, doing a deep dive into all of the ways they could possibly have found their way into the glove box. I repeatedly told him that was preposterous, but the kid kept harping on the idea until, thoroughly exasperated, I said, “Fine! I’ll prove to you it isn’t in there!” and flung open the compartment, and there, all snug and homey, was a mouse nest the size of a magnolia flower right there on top of my registration and proof of insurance card. It was made of tissue and paper towel scraps and bits of the car carpet upholstering the floor, and thankfully it contained zero actual mice. You can imagine how I ate crow, admitting to a positively triumphant Liam that he’d been right after all.

Speaking of crow, remember how this story began? Well, after I removed the mouse nest, I called my friend Jermaine, who owns a vehicle-detailing business so clutch that cars look (I swear) practically better than new when he’s finished with them. To prepare for him to come work his magic, I took everything out of the car and, in the process, found, hidden in the chamber in the trunk where the tire jack and jumper cables lived, a cache of dried cow corn, no doubt scrounged from the litter left from the crows’ front porch feast.

No, this isn’t the end of the story yet, because even though Jermaine is part stud and part sorcerer, removing the dashboard and cleaning behind it isn’t part of the service he provides. So even though all traces of the mice and the their nest had been ousted from the body of the car, remnants of their nest (quite a lot of them, I might add) were still inside the duct system in the front of the car, so for months little bits of fluff would come hurtling out at me when I turned on the defrost. And the kids continued to find great amusement at this, which turned to unabashedly wicked glee when different bits of stuff came flying out and fluttering around which we identified as paper, but not just any paper: these were pieces of a personal check, ripped to shreds and literally thrown in my face.

That’s right: the check my neighbor had written so many weeks ago had become a most expensive lining for a right penthouse of a mouse nest. There are many interpretive takeaways from this story, including the knowledge that leaving dried corncobs on the front porch is not advisable, and the longer you delay in cashing a check the more likely it is to turn into rodent bedding. It also bears mention that sometimes a kid’s idea that seems harebrained in the moment is actually right on, so as a parent sometimes we unwittingly play the fool. But if this experience can serve as a benchmark reminder with a thirty-dollar price tag of why it’s important not to drop food on the floor of the car, I’ll take it. Because, after all, we KNOW what can happen then.

It’s really hard to have a “no food in the car” rule when you have kids, and I’ve never even tried to implement one. However, when I got my minivan last winter, I asked them to please be more mindful when they’re enjoying snacks to minimize, if not eliminate, pieces of those snacks ending up on the floor and on their booster seats and on their lap. For a while I went with “no chips or popcorn or other foods that are prone to shedding copious crumbs” policy, but eventually I threw the list of verboten edibles out the window because it turned out that no matter what the kids eat in the car, they find a way to make it messy. Still, every once in a while I offer up the, “Please don’t forget to do your best to avoid letting crumbs fall where we don’t want them,” reminder, to which one of the kids always adds as a follow-up, “Yeah, because we KNOW what can happen then!” while the others nod along solemnly in agreement, silently vowing to be careful with their bag of chips for at least the first three bites.

A few years ago we went to a corn maze at a pumpkin patch, and there were some ears of feed corn, kernels dried on the cobs, lying on the ground here and there. I thought, oh, what a great sensory activity it is for kids to remove the dried kernels from the cobs! How satisfying a project that is, and what a nice boost it’ll give those fine-motor skills! So I slipped three of them into my bag to bring home. I then made the mistake of leaving them on the front porch for a week, during which time a murder of errant crows made the discovery and ravaged the cobs, scattering kernels all over the front porch and making a totally terrific mess (birds are even less mannerly in their eating habits than children are!). I threw the remaining kernels in the grass and called it a win for our feathered friends.

Around this time I visited a semiannual children’s consignment sale and was waiting in line when I spotted a neighbor. I waved to her and she came over to say hello, mentioning that she had to go pick up a child and couldn’t wait in the checkout line, so she had to replace her finds and make a quick exit. I offered to buy the armful of items she was toting and bring them over to her that afternoon, and she agreed, thanking me and promising reimbursement. When I stopped by later on, she collected the goods and gave me a check for $30 to cover the expense. I put the check in my car, right there in a safe spot in the console, and planned to cash it next time I passed the bank.

A couple of weeks passed, and I finally thought to stop by the bank, but the check was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t where I was (almost) sure I’d put it, so I searched the entire front seat area, to no avail. I did another search a few days later but still turned up nothing. I didn’t know this neighbor very well and felt awkward about asking her to rewrite the check, so I just did nothing, thinking it wasn’t enough money to get worked up about and if her ledger showed a discrepancy, perhaps she’d ask me and I could explain my state of disorganization. Alternatively, maybe it would turn up on its own the way things have a tendency to do when you actively refrain from looking for them.

Another couple of weeks passed. It was winter now. One icy morning I cranked the defroster in the car to try to clear the windshield and was surprised when little bits of fluff began flying out of the vents along with the air like a little snowstorm inside my Suburban. A few pieces actually hit me in the face, and upon inspection it appeared to be little bits of tissue and fuzzy fibers of something synthetic. I knew this was weird, but that car was full of strangely inexplicable mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, and I preferred to pretend that this was an isolated event that wouldn’t recur because I didn’t want to deal with yet another annoyance. Of course, the issue persisted, and the kids thought it was hilarious, cackling with delight at the bits of detritus flying at my head on several occasions while I tried to drive over the next few days. One afternoon I noticed that the roll of paper towels I kept in the trunk appeared to have been nibbled, and that’s when I knew I needed to do something about this.

To be continued…

Just like parenthood, marriage is so much harder than I ever imagined, and I know I’m not alone in this experience. It’s a challenge on so many levels, and in some ways it gets easier with time but in many ways it doesn’t. I believe in anagrams, and it feels appropriate that the word “marriage” can be anagrammed as both “area grim” and “rare magi”. However, on this day that marks thirteen years since our wedding, I want to publish two conversations which exemplify my husband’s generosity of spirit.

Conversation one:

One of the kids: “What are we having for dinner?”
Alison: “Well, sort of tacos. But I took the breading off the leftover fried chicken and mixed it with the rest of the rotisserie chicken, and it looked like a pound so I added the whole packet of seasoning, but I’m not sure how it’ll turn out.”
Brian: “If it’s terrible, I’ll eat it.”

***

Conversation two:

Context: I’d somehow tweaked a muscle in my back and had been aching all day. After the kids were in bed, he saw me trying to turn my head and rotate my shoulder in an attempt to work the muscle group and release some of the tension. He brought me some Advil and said he thought I should take it. About ten minutes later…

Brian: “Did you take the Advil?”
Alison: “Yes.”
Brian: “Good. I will bring you wine and seltzer next.”
Alison: “Wow! You’re like a doctor!”
Brian: “Then I’m going to make you popcorn. And after that, I’m going to leave you alone!”
Alison: “Oh my god! You’re actually a love doctor!”
Brian: “Yup.”

Here’s to all the spouses out there who offer to eat failure food and know when to leave their wives alone. I toast you with wine in one hand, seltzer in the other, and ibuprofen in the bloodstream.

P.S. “Thirteen years” can be anagrammed as “heart serenity”, “share eternity”, “nitrate heresy”, “hysteria enter”, and “shanty retiree”. Naturally.

Add to the list of things they didn’t tell you about parenthood:

Your daughter will take it upon herself to embark on a mission. The objective of this mission is to successfully enter the house so quietly that you don’t even notice until she makes it into the kitchen, where you usually are when they get home, but as stealth is not particularly a strength of hers, every day you hear the doorknob click or the faint sound of footsteps to announce her arrival. However, one day you’ll be standing in the kitchen, price-comparing sneakers for her (she left that morning sporting a pair of yours because all of a sudden her feet had grown a foot), and you’ll look up for no real reason to find her standing four feet away from you, staring at you and grinning madly.

They also didn’t tell you that about thirty minutes later on that same day, you will open the bento-style container in your son’s lunchbox after he’d spent a day at miniature horse camp, and out will fly a fly. It will make a drive for the space directly between your eyes before making a hard left and wheeling off to explore the rest of the house and figure out the best hiding spots in which to hole up as soon as you try to stalk it with a swatter. And later, when your daughter points out that there is a fly in the house and you say, “I know. It flew out of your brother’s lunchbox,” that brother will overhear and begin clapping his hands with what you can only describe as a look of demonic glee on his face before actually pumping his fist triumphantly and exclaiming, “YES! IT WORKED! WE GOT YOU! Arlo, the fly trap worked!” at which point the other brother will leap up and join in the victory dance.

He’s right. They did get you. But the question is: what did YOU ever do to get THEM?

We let Summerly stay up for an extra thirty minutes one night last week to watch some coverage of the Olympics in hopes that swimming would be featured live, but track and field events were happening instead. Earlier in the day, we’d marveled at the physical beauty of a few of the divers (Jennifer Abel, I’m looking at you!), and so when the camera fell upon Sydney McLaughlin, who is so stunning it’s difficult to believe that she’s a real human, I almost fell out of my chair even though I wasn’t even sitting down. That’s how much of a knockout she is, visually at least, and I couldn’t help remarking, “Wow! Yet another beautiful person!”

Summerly replied in that drily adult way she has sometimes, but I didn’t hear what she’d said and so asked her to repeat it. Brian, who was sitting with her on the sofa, responded, “She said, ‘You should see the males!'”

“She did?!” I exclaimed, thinking that this was hilarious but also surprising because I’d never heard her remark on a male person’s attraction factor, though many times she’d pointed out girls or female characters in books or movies whom she found pretty. I’m careful when discussing physical beauty with the kids, making sure to include all shapes and sizes and races and abilities when I remark on peoples’ pleasant appearances, taking advantage of the opportunity to practice inclusion whenever possible (it’s not just the Jennifer Abels and Sydney McLaughlins of the world that garner praise), so I felt a little dismayed that that my daughter’s first commentary about liking what she saw when referring to maleness was about a bunch of Olympic track-and-field athletes whose full-time job it was to be in the kind of physical shape that’s basically impossible for a large majority of Earth’s people. I was kind of hoping that her first expression along these lines would be about how she thought a scrawny boy named Rishi with prominently positioned ears, a lisp, and a smatter of acne was cute. “No, I didn’t, Daddy!” she rebutted in a tone of self-righteous rebuke upon hearing what he’d thought she said. “I said, ‘You should see her NAILS!”

Phew. There’s still hope for Rishi and his ears after all.

As first-time pet rabbit owners, we’ve learned a lot these past few months about what it means to have a free-range bunny in the house. Cecil is an amazing pet in many ways but does possess a laundry list of behaviors that we’d prefer to eliminate if possible. One of these is a strange pattern that appears to be cyclical; he’ll go weeks without depositing his little round pellets of excrement outside of his litter boxes, followed by a week or so when he feels compelled to mark all of his favorite spots in the house multiple times a day. The little pellets aren’t really that bad; in fact, we all agree that they are less repellent than guinea pig scat, and we’ve certainly seen worse having diapered three children. Not to expound too much on this subject, but the pellets are almost perfectly spherical and, because his diet consists primarily of dried grass, they essentially lack moisture and odor. I think of them like miniaturized hay bales, though I realize this may be a somewhat euphemistic interpretation as a way to minimize my annoyance at having to pick up after him repeatedly during these phases.

Another example of unwelcome behavior is his constantly being underfoot, begging to be picked up and petted. He’d be content on a lap with a human hand stroking his fur for hours upon hours every day; I think it’s realistic to say that he literally cannot get enough of this kind of attention. He follows me everywhere I go, or at least tries to, licking and nipping at my ankles as a way of begging for my palm’s undivided devotion. Based on the success we’ve experienced having added a second guinea pig to our milieu, we’ve been on the lookout for another bunny to hopefully ameliorate Cecil’s physical attention deficit, thinking that the benefits of increasing our menagerie would outweigh the detriments. In perusing Craigslist, I came upon this post:

At first, I thought this was completely preposterous. Here was a person trying to SELL his or her pet dung, going so far as to buy bags with cellophane windows to showcase the very thing I literally threw in the garbage every single day, and composing an almost poetically scientific paragraph on its benefits. When I got to the word “tea”, I almost laughed out loud. When I showed the post to my husband when he got home, he branded it “genius”, which made me think. Was this actually a good idea? Had I been foolish to dispose of so many litter boxes full of this stuff, ignorant of its horticultural benefits? I had a vision of myself at a booth at a farmer’s market, sitting on a folding chair and petting Cecil while my children merchandised the fruits of his digestive system, aided by “before” and “after” pictures of my plants to corroborate the utility of our wares. It was laughable, I know, but what an idea: marketable waste! People buy all sorts of crap, so why not see if they’ll buy the real thing?!

I don’t think I’ll get into the business of peddling poop, but this idea did reframe the way I began to consider Cecil’s territorial demarcation habits. Now, when I go around with a tissue to collect the deposits, rather than double back to throw them in the trash can, I drop them into the nearest potted plant (there is no shortage of those in this house). If the Craigslist poster will go to such lengths to sell the stuff, certainly it can’t hurt to try using what’s literally on hand. Now the nuisance of removing his leavings from the floor seems less of a chore because I see it as our pet doing his part to help fertilize. And maybe I’m imagining it, but I swear these plants are looking more enriched and prosperous than ever, perhaps due to the salubrious seasoning supplementing the soil.

As for the Craigslist vendor, I hope he or she is successful in this uncommon entrepreneurial venture. I do appreciate that one of the images included in the post captures the creature whose biology is responsible for its owner’s unlikely source of income, despite the fact that the animal appears nonplussed. I can’t really blame the little guy, though; who WOULD want pictures of their feces pasted up all over the internet?

We decided a couple of years ago to cultivate a clover yard, as we were already well on the way there with a few patches of the deep green stuff elbowing the grass out of the way. One patch in particular really captured our fancy because, besides being viridescent and healthy and plush underfoot, it produces an unbelievable number of four-leaf clovers (and many five- and six-leafers too!). All one has to do is stand in it and look down, and in only a few seconds the eyes will fall on at least one of these lucky little plants. I say “lucky” because I imagine that a clover with more than three leaves, by virtue of the extra surface area favoring photosynthesis, has an evolutionary leg up on its lesser-leafed brethren. These clovers are also remarkable because they’re botanical behemoths; I’m not exaggerating when I say some are broader than my palm from leaf tip to leaf tip. Every year, this crop of uncommon clover yields more four-plus-leaf clovers in a month than I ever imagined a person being able to find in his or her lifetime. It felt like a crime to consider mowing it, so we left it to flower and bid it be fruitful and multiply.

Slowly the patches are growing larger and closer to each other, kind of like a reverse Pangaea situation, each continent of clover enlarging its hegemony over the yard until some point a few years in the future when they will converge, having ousted the graminaceous government of grass completely. We’ve let the dandelions stay, too, and a few swaths of purple dead nettle and hairy bittercress punctuate the parcel. Not only is this a happily organic feast for the eyes, but it’s also a ready (and free!) source of nourishment for our guinea pigs (yes, there is a second one of those now that the preschool petsitting job turned into a foster care and then adoption scenario) and Cecil, our houserabbit. We love the wild carpet out back, and so do a few other precious animals, particularly the bees and my mother. She described our yard as “lush, verdant, interesting, countable, soft green”, which I think is just about perfect.

Ever the speculative opportunist, I wondered if there were some way to capitalize monetarily on the multiplicity of many-leaved clover our yard produces, so naturally I typed the inquiry into Google, hoping against all odds that there was a seller’s market for them somehow. I wrote in the search bar: “can I make money with four leaf clovers”, and the internet immediately responded to my question in that way it has of providing the answer to a different question as a way of telling you that your question has no easily accessible precedent to provide a basis for an actual answer. That’s right: what came up were several different tutorials for making a clover out of money, which is basically the converse of what I wanted to know. As for my original inquiry, please let me know if you have any ideas because it sure would be great to turn this molehill of greenscape into a mountain of greenbacks.

P.S. For you origami enthusiasts out there, here’s what I got from the worldwide web and its sardonic sense of humor:

Last spring, the second graders were learning about Thomas Jefferson, and Summerly came home to tell me that one of her teachers had read to them the list of twelve pieces of advice he’d given to his granddaughter. She didn’t remember specifics, but after they went to bed I looked this up, thinking it was just the kind of thing I might find useful, or at least interesting. Here’s what I found on the official Monticello site:

According to the site, Jefferson gave this list to his granddaughter, Cornelia, when she turned twelve. It’s important to remember the context here; this advice was compiled over two centuries ago, and the world looks drastically different now than it did then. Racially, socially, politically, practically, technologically, psychologically, ideologically: our perspective today is unrecognizable as compared to the conceptual landscape of the early nineteenth century, and rightfully so. Having said that, and with no disrespect to old TJ (well, aside from the whole Sally Hemings and slaveholding bit), I politely beg to wildly differ, and I can’t help feeling a little sorry for little Cornelia, who no doubt incorporated these pompous postulates graciously provided by her august and influential grandfather into her life as she two-stepped into womanhood. In her memory, here is a line-by-line response for girls in modern times:

1. Unless it’s something you really want to do today, if it’s not one of your carefully-considered topmost priorities, it can most likely wait until tomorrow. Sometimes it helps to write it down for the next day to aid intentionality.
2. If you can handle it without feeling overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted, lonely, under-appreciated, or desperate, handle it if that feels right and doesn’t do a disservice to yourself or others in the long run. Otherwise, recognize and express that you would like help, even if you don’t absolutely need it.
3. It’s theoretically a good idea to avoid debt, but if you have no choice, look into options for financing, and shop around for a credit card with a low APR and airline mile options. Never miss a monthly payment, and bring your balance to zero as soon as you can. Also, it’s usually wiser to pay a mortgage than monthly rent.
4. This one is perplexing due to the comma splice and the dual meaning of the word “dear”, but here’s a fresh take: usually you get what you pay for, but sometimes you pay for what you get. Definitely include gift receipts when that’s an option.
5. I’m not sure what to make of this one, honestly. There are so many ways to interpret it that instead I’ll say this: keep the change. (I’m not talking about money.)
6. These couple hundred years have wrought transformation upon the notion of “pride”. The word itself has been reappropriated, rendering its meaning basically bereft of the negative connotations it once implied. Now we use more specific words to express the trappings of excessive pride as insinuated by Jefferson here (words like self-aggrandizing, inflexible, close-minded, uncompromising, or having either a fixed mindset or a superiority complex). Nowadays every person deserves to feel a sense of pride as a derivative of accomplishments earned, however small, as long as we understand that possessing pride is not a contraindication of a sense of humility. If we keep those in equilibrium and act accordingly, harmony is the byproduct of balance.
7. Ah, another example of the evolution of language is evident here; in recent years the portmanteau “hangry” has crept into our vernacular. If you know what that means, then you know a person can indeed repent from having eaten too little. Never underestimate the power of a banana and a glass of milk.
8. There will be countless times in your life that you’ll do things willingly despite the fact that they are troublesome. Be cautious about overcommitting, however, and use the word “yes” parsimoniously when the net inconvenience outweighs the net benefit, particularly as it relates to interactions with people outside of your nearest and dearest.
9. It’s human nature to worry about outcomes, to consider misfortune, disaster, even tragedy. In some ways it’s healthy to allow our brains to explore worst-case scenarios as a kind of defense mechanism against the shock of disappointment or being blindsided by distress because the surprise factor can intensify the negative effects of such an eventuality. It can be comforting to feel prepared, mentally and logistically, especially if you are someone who like to have a plan. However, dwelling on the catastrophe potential of any given situation doesn’t usually do much good. It’s that beauty of fine balance again: don’t be afraid to wonder if things will end badly if it feels like taking out insurance against gratitude, but don’t devote the occupation of your thoughts exclusively to it lest you contribute to manifesting that unwelcome outcome. Think also of how things can end well.
10. This one makes me laugh. Is it a metaphor? Either way, I think it’s a pretty solid piece of advice, but first make sure that the handle is properly affixed to whatever you’re trying to take. If a handle appears innocuous but might come off in your grasp, thereby compromising the integrity of the whole, maybe try securing what you’re hoping to attain by supporting it from underneath. Use both hands, and lift with your legs, not your back.
11. Practice tolerance of those who do not share your opinions, and offer them grace in whatever ways you can. This does not mean that you should shy away from confrontation if it’s approached holistically with the objective of learning through listening, sharing, and thinking in equal parts. If we ignore different perspectives or refuse to engage in discourse surrounding points of disagreement, we cannot evolve. If we reject opportunities for interchange, we choose stagnation and avoidance over interpersonal ignition and reactivity, the fission and fusion that further civilization. Conflagration yields new growth. My answer to “can’t we all just get along?” is yes, we probably can. But we shouldn’t. Not all the time. It certainly won’t make us happy.
12. The dozenth canon has withstood the test of time. This one is easier said than done, however, and I’ll also add that taking deep breaths while counting doubles down on the effects of this strategy. And while you count, it can’t hurt to reach for a banana and a glass of milk or, if you’re counting to 100, consider swapping out the milk for some ice cream.

Recently Summerly expressed interest in learning ASL, so I pounced on the opportunity and excavated my Baby Signs books from the now very narrow section of “parenting babies” references I’ve kept in the basement. She thumbed through one book and came upon a photograph tucked into the pages. As soon as she handed it to me, the memory came back: I was staying at my mom’s house on a visit to Virginia while living in Connecticut over ten years ago, sitting on her sofa and learning some new ways to communicate with my new son. As a bookmark I was using a photograph I’d found in an old album earlier that day because I felt it was the perfect portrait of parenthood. Here it is, fresh from October of 1982:

The little boy was a neighbor, and the woman reflected in the glass is his mother. I could write a novella on this image, beginning with the boy’s bowl cut, his little fingers gripping the muntin on the door, his baby belly under that shirt with lap shoulders surely made by Gerber, the expression of guileless bemusement he’s wearing. And his mother’s mouth, just visible behind the camera, sporting a smile so broad it creases a circumflex into her cheek as she’s perched on the balls of her sockfeet in a squat to capture her child at eye level. Not to be overlooked is the fact that they’re on opposite sides of a door that is also a window while the lens of her attention is focused on him, on freezing that moment in time onto film, while he gazes elsewhere. There’s also the gauzy, ethereal feeling to the light, partly due to the double exposure–a photograph taken on top of a photograph–which is so often how parenthood feels. Here you are, beholding this human who may bear your resemblance in some fashion but is completely his or her own person, embodying a form that you only know how to see through your own eyes. There’s yet another door and another window in one of the exposures or the other, evidence of passages beyond and through, avenues that sometimes beckon and sometimes repel, pathways that can be closed with intention, opened in invitation, or locked against our every inclination.

And there’s that line of fire licking up at the linoleum along the bottom edge, no doubt the result of light landing on the film when someone opened the back of the camera before the roll had rewound safely back into the blackness of its canister, a reminder that light, while essential to creating a photograph, has the power to burn. Used in just the right applications and amounts, it can create a beautiful composition but, just like so many other things, can wreak ruin if administered in deleterious ways. There’s that child-sized table and chair set in the second exposure (or is that an ironing board?), and what I’m almost positive is a little forlorn-looking white poodle tucked almost impossibly under the contour of the woman’s upraised arm: signs of life, of work and play, of so much else going on to operate the functionality of a family.

After inspecting this photograph for very many minutes, I began to wonder: is the woman reflected in the glass in the first exposure as I’d initially assumed, or was her image part of the second exposure overlaid atop the first? Was she the photographer capturing her son as he stood there on the threshold, or was her image secondarily applied to the film, captured elsewhere at a different time in a context unrelated to the little boy at the door? Was she engaged in the moment or an interloper on the scene, an accidental juxtaposition precipitated by a combination of mechanical and human error? Was she the woman I’d assumed she was in this moment for all of these years, the adoringly proud parent with her focus funneled through the F-stop to suspend this memory in perpetuity? Or was she a specter interfacing with the boy in the doorway, just another of the intersecting angles showcased in this composite image?

I’m sure a professional photographer could answer this question, but I’m content to hold both possibilities as a reflection in and of itself, just as parenthood is a picture made up of blurred lines and counterpoints of ambivalence, a confluence of assuredness tangled up with second-guessing, a swirl of light and color in shades of gray, a cloudburst at noon on a sunny day. The composition of life, like any other kind of art, engenders a multiplicity of interpretations that all exist in a breathless simultaneity, a beautiful nebulousness that actively defies singularity. The line between the known and unknown is as fine as the spine of the tiniest feather, as diaphanous as a thin veil of smoke throwing everything just the slightest bit out of focus. All we can do to impress a precious moment into the future is squint through that viewfinder, invite the right balance of light, twist the lens toward clarity, release the shutter, and hope for the best.

Ah, those three little words.