Dear Reese,
One.
I do not enjoy April Fool’s Day. Perhaps someday I will find novel ways to celebrate it with you. A coworker shared that she once made meatloaf cupcakes (with mashed potatoes for frosting) to trick her kids into thinking they were having dessert for dinner. Actual dessert was wafer cookies rolled in breadcrumbs to look like fish sticks with green laffy taffy shaped into peas.
But my experience with April Fool’s Day as an adult is people lying to you and then laughing at you when you believe them. Which is fucking awful, darling. My boss starts the day by telling me a key employee quit, and I have plenty of time to go through most stages of panic before she says “just kidding!”. Thirty minutes later on the call I tell her, half-joking, that I haven’t recovered. Perhaps it is that I’m feeling extra tired. Last night you woke up crying at 9 pm, and we had a two-hour journey before you were asleep again — me lying next to you in the guest bed. My brain is having a hard enough time parsing reality, with a string of April Fool’s jokes.
Two.
Your teachers say you had a very good day. Yesterday looks like a fluke in comparison. I’m so happy. And you’re so happy. Smiling and smiling while getting you ready to go. Smiling when we go to vote and see MorMor working the polls.
I had an okay day. It got better knowing you’re happy, but this morning I was a bundle of nerves with a stomach ache and a desperate need for a nap. At noon, I spoke for the first time on an external HR panel on a topic I was intimidated about but I did it anyway. It went okay, I think. Next month I’m going to do it again. I put half an ounce of whiskey in my cherry juice tonight.
Three.
I have not been following Cory Booker’s record-breaking speech on the Senate floor today, but when you go to sleep, I pull up the live feed. It just ended so I click back and by chance see the last twenty seconds. “This is not right or left, it is right or wrong. This is not a partisan moment. It is a moral moment. Where do you stand?”
He spoke for over 25 hours and was not allowed to sit down or use the restroom. The speech ends, and I cry for a minute. I think of the famous line from Dylan Thomas’s poem: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Love,
Mama
The Castle in the Pond, Part 20
You walk on the tops of lily pads to the center of the pond. There, the black swan floats, watching you approach. You do not slow. When you’re close, he speaks to you.
“Have you come to fight me, little one?”
“If I have to,” you answer truthfully. You look at the swan up close. The pulse of his magic vibrates inside of you. “You sunk the castle in the pond. You have destroyed The Great Bullfrog’s power. What is it you want?”
The black swan arches his long neck as he lowers his face to your level. “I want my home restored, little one. The power of your bullfrog comes from waters far away. My power was born at the bottom of this pond eons ago, same as me. I’ve been held back from what is mine for too long.”
“So you want to remain and for everyone else who lives here to . . . what? Leave so you’ll be alone?”
The black swan clicks its beak impatiently. “You could not understand. I have answered your question. You were lucky to get one. Now, come do what you came to do and fight!"
Without another warning, he lunges forward, sharp beak open wide, and you throw your arm up in defense — but as you do, a lily pad rises from the water following your movement and hardens like a shield before you. The black swan slams into it instead of biting off your arm.
Badum. Badum. You feel that pulse of power again. The shield glows with green light. It’s not the black swan’s power you’re sensing. Nor the bullfrog’s or the manatee’s.
Badum. Badum. It’s yours.
To be continued.