Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women, nonbinary and gender-diverse writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.
Not so long ago, when I was a youngster at Harding Academy, I fell asleep dreaming of the last week of school — that glorious epoch when the teachers gave up on keeping us quiet and instead issued recess after recess, Jolly Rancher after Jolly Rancher, and giant yellow folders in which to tote the precious, tattered contents of our year.
The final week felt like a different world compared to the back-to-school mindset of the previous August. There were no neatly combed bangs. No bright-pink erasers. Tanned and bedraggled from a day on the playground, I’d come home and dump dioramas at my parents’ feet. “Here,” I’d say, “is my report on the scarlet macaw.” “Here is my handprint, my cursive, my take on Where the Red Fern Grows.” I was barefoot and out the door before they could ask where on earth they were supposed to store these things. My sisters, too, had left their yellow folders leaning against the kitchen table.
For a week that began with cleaning, it sure ended in chaos. On the very last day, parents would drive through the pickup line with pool noodles and inner tubes strapped to their roof racks. They honked with gusto; they wore Hawaiian shirts. Even the meanest teacher donned a straw hat. (Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all). As I sat on the bench listening to the horn chorus, I remember being grateful to my perpetually late mother for her perpetual lateness. More time to enjoy the party. By the time the family car pulled up, the confetti had been thrown, the horns had relented, and I had seen everything there was to see. We rewarded ourselves for a year well done with the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.
These memories return every May as I watch the window display of Phillips Toy Mart shift from bunnies to boogie boards. As Hart Hardware trots out its kiddie pools, and the neighborhood sprinklers kick on. But this year is different. This year, I’m expecting a baby.
My mother used to tell me, “We worked so hard to get you here” — a phrase from which I recoiled. “Ew,” I’d thought. “Too much information.” The second she brought up the topic I’d head for the hills (or the trampoline), and return only after the nostalgic whim had passed. Now I understand that she was not referring to a lot of sex, but instead to the two miscarriages between my sister and me. To the heartache. To the negative tests. To the harrowing drive down West End as an ectopic pregnancy burst her fallopian tube.
“You can give up on having another baby,” the doctor had told her, tactlessly.
Thank goodness my mother — champion diver, marathon runner — has never been one to throw in the towel.
Maybe I’m thinking about the last day of school because, suddenly, I’m the one with the car, not the one waiting for the car to arrive. In a few years, I’ll be the one driving to the Chinese buffet and the one thumbing through the yellow folder. (I should probably start figuring out how to secure pool noodles to my roof rack.) The child I have wished and wished for will soon be here to usurp my position as the youngest of the family, and — just like my mother did — I’ll tell her how hard I worked to get her here. “Look,” I’ll declare, holding out my pinky. “This is how long the IVF needles were. Night after night, I stabbed myself for you.” Bee-lining for the trampoline, she’ll say, “Ew, Mom! Too much information.”
A few years ago, my mother and I finally went through those yellow folders. Steeped in attic dust and — let’s face it — asbestos, they wheezed out art projects and book reports I scarcely remember writing. The stick-figure drawings struck me more like cave paintings — unintelligible relics of the family we once were. Never did I mention worry or danger. Nor did I thank my parents for the stellar education and warm bed. Instead, for a Thanksgiving assignment in which I’m certain we were nudged toward gratitude, I wrote, “I’m thankful for the stars to wish upon.”
This is exactly how childhood should be. Magical, wishful. Just a tad oblivious. The real magic, of course, is how parents make it look easy. In a few weeks, these tired, overworked Willy Wonkas will stand on tiptoe looping pool noodles onto their cars. They will wait for ages, and honk triumphantly, and ferry their flip-flopped beloveds toward the all-you-can-eat buffet. Though I’m not the baby anymore, I know from experience that it will be delicious.
