Far bigger than my balls, I have an enormous set of lungs. I can belt it out with the best of ‘em. That’s right, while other women might go sans bra or honest best friend (who lets you just chafe out in public with an eyeful of camel toe?), I can go sans microphone on an impulsive night of karaoke. Yes, my “I can hold any note longer than you” leaves the beloved Bernadette Peters feeling weak in her strong parts. So, use those lungs, I did when I lost Abigail in the corn maze.

I was not, at the time, drinking. I was at a pumpkin patch with Abigail. Phil and Lucas were at a birthday party. That’s beginning to happen now, invitations with a single name, where you can no longer bring an accompanying twin. Abigail and I were dressed in matching colors. I distinguish the word colors just so we’re clear that I never have, nor will I, dress in the identical outfit as my daughter. I plan to embarrass us both in far more creative ways.

A pregnant woman with an adorable mop of curls, bright eyes, and dimples remarked how much she loved Abigail’s dress, asking where I got it.

“Janie & Jack, sale rack.”

And from there a new friendship was born. Her daughter Gray and Abigail were also instant friends, arm in arm, weaving through pumpkins, running up through the aisles. They’re the same age, though Gray towers over Abigail. Luke, Gray’s younger brother, also a Kind Sir, raced to keep up with the girls. The woman’s husband, a teacher at an elite private school, was keeping up with the kids as my newest friend and I traded “just moved here” stories. Her, from Orange County, CA, originally from outside Chicago—some “M” city, though, technically, Milwaukee is in Wisconsin. I know this because for a while, I was thinking she might be from Cincinnati (they somehow sound the same to me). I also know this because I use Google Maps in lieu of a brain.

The woman hates warm weather and lives for mountains and skiing. I’m a fair-skinned redhead, so I’m with her on the anti-heat movement but for different reasons. I, for example, could be perfectly happy living in Seattle. RAINY DAYS are my 100% favorite days. I love them more than any other day and welcome weeks of it! It’s why I’ve enjoyed the Florida weather this summer. While hot, but nothing like Texas hot which is similar to walking behind a bus, each day around 3:00pm, the skies would darken and thunder, then a mini storm would grab hold for twenty minutes before losing its grip, the windshields the only telltale.

After choosing pumpkins we threaded our way to the corn maze, making mention of the woman on the news recently, the one who’d called 911 to report her family missing in the fields. ”How totally Halloween,” we agreed. Our girls were still racing, and while we tried to carry on more get-to-know-you conversation, we’d get off in fits and starts, forgetting where we were before we’d interrupted to lean toward the children, to correct them, to tell them to stay closer.

“Wait for Luke, he’s younger and can’t keep up.”
“Abigail, you must stay where you can always see me.”

But they were little darting firecrackers, bundles of energy and laughter and flight. We finally agreed they could run, but only in circles around us. They circled us, then careered out of the maze, emptying out to the dirt path where we’d begun.

We followed after and looked to hold their hands now that we were out near the creek where a 10-foot alligator was sunning himself. The backyards of Manhattan have rats. Texas has rattlesnakes. Florida gets ALLIGATORS. With each move, the natives get increasingly menacing.

Not a plastic climbing toy for posed photographs and unruly play, it’s a live Floridian gator in the creek just outside the maze.

There was Gray and Luke, but where was my royal blue one?

I might shit myself over meaningless things—like when Abigail cut her own bangs at the root—but when the really big stuff happens, I’m remarkably calm… for a psycho.

I didn’t “scream.” Screaming is a throttled shriek. But shouting, calling out for someone, utilizes a different part of the throat. Shouting can come with a cupped hand, megaphone style. But with a scream, the deep of your throat opens, like the lid of a whistling kettle.

I called out her name over and again, pacing the fields quickly. Then, with a calm that seems to take over, I turn on my camera and flip through the digital photos to zoom in on a photo taken earlier in the day. “Here she is,” I tell strangers entering the maze with their own young ones. “This is what she’s wearing.”

My new friend and her husband search, too. I continue to call for her, then listen, but I cannot hear Abigail, any of her. I’m going to play the mother card now. The language that says, I win at this. Even when I’m losing in the parenting game, I win at knowing the flesh that was cleaved from me. A fitting Halloween description, no?

I know Abigail. I am her mother. I know her laugh. And while Phil never could distinguish between Lucas and Abigail’s cries over a baby monitor or otherwise, I know each intimately. I don’t just know their cries, voices, and laughs; I know their sighs. I hear nothing of Abigail’s right now.

My friend’s husband bolts off to fetch… the ladder. As I take this in, that they even have a ladder at the ready, I think, “there should be children in the corn lifeguards on duty,” especially with this gator situation.

Here’s what’s running through my head: nothing. I’m still in this paralyzed state of confusion, where I’ve at once forgotten how to wheel through the photos of my camera. I’ve forgotten how to zoom. It is the feeling you get when you forget in which row it was you parked, or when you enter your bedroom but can’t remember why you’re there. Obviously, you’re not there for sex, which never happens. So why? Then it hits you—you came to charge your phone, or to grab a receipt from your side table. Is a “stuck” moment, a brain fart, an Aldercocker Moment where everything becomes nothing. That’s how it felt. Suspended in time, empty.

I showed strangers what I could of her photo, “Can you see what she’s wearing?” I ask, still unsure how to zoom. I’m frozen nerves, except I’m also calm; it is true. Because who comes to a pumpkin patch wanting to kidnap an over-sugared wild child? No one. So, I’m not scared that she’ll be kidnapped. I’m sure it will be sorted out and that we’ll of course find her. I’m sure of it. How far could she have gone?

The maze has its own zip code, and I have no idea if there are other entranceways, but I doubt it. My only fear is that she’ll realize she’s lost, then scramble through stalks, recognize the pumpkins in the distance, then head toward them. Imagine we’re all combing stalks, arms distance apart, and she’s lost in a knot of people, in an entirely different section of the fair? Also, between the corn field and the pumpkins is another creek, possibly populated with other Floridian natives. If she’s focused on getting out to the patch, she’s not going to notice where she’s stepping, and she could stumble and fall in.

My friend touches me on the arm and tells me her husband has found her. “Abigail’s not even scared, I swear. The two of you are the coolest, calmest, people I know.” She doesn’t know us.

I crouch to Abigail’s level. She’s giving me the scared face she gives when she feels bad about something she’s done, when she knows I’m reeling. I open my arms, and she leaps into them. I hug her and hold her. Neither of us cries. But the rest of the day, we cling to each other, like a stick sweet mother-daughter combo that wears matching catalog clothing. I can live with this.

“Mama? What are fossils?”
I have no idea. I mean, I have some idea. I know they are proof, that it’s hardened sand or rock, prints captured. I try to explain this, hoping I’m right. “Fossils? Well, do you know how when we go to the beach you can see your footprints in the sand?” I feel like I want to say something about petrified rock and sedimentary rock, but I resist, mostly because I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
“Yeah.”
“Well, fossils are like footprints that have been captured from a long time ago.”
“…”
“Does that make any sense?”
“Mama, Joshua got his fossils taken out today.”

Today was preschool orientation. When all was said and done—I feel like I need a private, secretive blog, so I can post honestly about parents/ kids/ the whole lot of ‘em without breaking laws—I asked Lucas and Abigail to tell me their favorite parts of their first (half) day of school. Lucas liked making a new friend named Hank. Abigail’s answer was a bit more in the bread box.

“My favorite part of school was when we got to eat bread.”

Awesome.

My Guy

“Wider than it should be. And it will only get wider if you leave it alone.” ‘Nough said.

To likely be told to wait some more. Meanwhile, mama’s got the ‘rhea… Update: September 22, Little Miss will be getting a “revision.” That is, the plastic surgeon will be removing the scar tissue, then stitching her up properly. I want to bitch-slap the ER doctor at Westlake Hospital in Austin who used glue, and only glue, on my sweet girl. So for the next two months, I’ll be massaging her chin with Kelo-cote (advanced formula scar gel) three times a day. Then applying SPF 50 or higher. And, so it begins.

We are officially moving July 6. The trucks arrive THIS WEEKEND. We are not taking the kids’ bedding, so I need Florida replacements. No, wait. That sounds negative. What we need, they need, is to arrive at their new, shared, living quarters with the bedroom made up purdy and organized. I need to get on this, stat. At one point, I hit up Target and purchased an onslaught of Shabby Chic bedding, which when all was said and done and I was left to live with it for a few days, I decided it was Shabby Weak. Returned. So, help a girl and her interior design loves out.

Lucas, by the way, is in LOVE with his American flag pillow, sleeps with it every night and is concerned, insistent, that said throw pillow is coming with us. It is. Each night the loves sing with me: Fifty Nifty United States. So, they’re learning the 50 states in alphabetical order, and as we learn a new state each night, I pull up a map, then some tourism videos on the state. Just a bit of bedding background if you will… plus, you know I’m a preppy/ nautical junkie. So, there’s that. As for Phil, he’d rather not be bothered. YAY!

Also, I’m not suggesting white for a duvet. In fact, likely there will be no duvet and just the quilt and sheets, as it’s balls to the inner thigh hot. So where you see a white throw or duvet, it’s really a stand in for “nothing belongs here.” Help!

The walls in the room are PALE BLUE not RED

Locks of Love is getting 10 inches of Little Miss’s lovely tresses. The sun kissed strands of summer are now locked away, at the ready for another child. There’s almost always a story involving a hair salon. Mine’s better and involves a mother in law, a spray bottle, and some scissors that some might characterize as “happy.” Or downright exultant. A joyous Monday to one and all. And now, the full story on shorty.

Abigail’s hair was arch your back long, and with long comes tangled. I was fine with it. And so was Little Miss until it was time to brush it. “Mama, I want short hair like Natalie’s.” Natalie is a girl in Lucas’s classroom with a blunt blond bob that suits her (think Vivian, as portrayed by Julia Roberts, sporting the glamorous Carol Channing look). “Are you sure?” I ask, shaking my head. “Yes, I’m sure.” Phil’s parents are in town, and Phil has asked how I’d feel about letting his parents take Abigail for a haircut. “Well, it’s silly for them to take her for a trim. I mean, last time we took her she left the place looking exactly the same. I can give her a trim.” Unless.

Abigail and I click through hairstyle sites for kids. Her hair looks stringy and limp and always manages to get in her eyes (because she yanks out ponytails and unravels her braids). So, what’s the best cut for a girl whose hair is fine and thin? All I know from fine and thin is the lines on my face. I’ve always had a thick mop of hair full of volume. Thin fine hair, when left long, doesn’t look healthy. It looks hanging and a bit sickly. According to hairstylists thin fine hair looks healthiest cut short with lots of layers to give the illusion of fullness. This sounds good… in theory. After combing through images, I pick my way through our family archive and land on these photos of Abigail’s hair once upon a time ago (shown below). And I love it.

Abigail’s Hair, 2008 (This Photo Is NOT Recent)

I hit PRINT. I sit down with my mother-in-law who agrees that the cut Abigail has in the photos suited her, looked healthy and precious. “She’s in good hands,” she tells me. “You’ll just have to trust me, Stephanie.” I’m unable to go to the salon because I have a Girl Scouts meeting. Abigail is excited to go with her grandparents. Though, in truth, I’m not sure she knows what she’s in for. I’m nervous. I continue to click through online images. “Will you stop?” My mother-in-law says. “Enough. She’s in good hands. Now stop already.” It’s only hair. It’s only hair. It will grow back. And if they cut it so it looks as it does in these photos, the photos they’re bringing to the salon, I will be thrilled.

When I return home from the Scouts meeting, I cover my eyes for the big reveal. In those moments I am imagining her as she was in her earlier photos and can’t wait to see her. “I’m ready!” Abigail sings. “Surprise!” When I open my eyes, my chest fills with a swollen feeling—a mix of nausea, grief, and a forced concealment. “Look how beautiful you are!” I say as she twirls. I mean this, of course, but that is some serious boy hair.

I want to cry, but there’s Abigail, truly happy. And, there’s my mother-in-law measuring my reaction. And, there’s Phil, avoiding eye contact altogether. “She has a boy haircut,” I tell my mother-in-law once the kids are asleep. “No, it’s not. Not at all. It’s a short cut for a girl.”

“No, I’m pretty sure if you came home with Lucas and had given him the same cut, it would look completely appropriate. For. A. Boy.” I want to ask how it ended up tapered to a point at the nape of her neck, like a boy’s cut. But, it’s really not her fault; it’s mine. If I was that fragile about it, I should’ve been there. 

I can’t imagine how this will grow out. How long will it take? Most obvious to me now is how I’m the only one traumatized here. I prep Abigail for the worst, asking her how she’d respond if one of her classmates told her they didn’t like her hair. “I’ll say, ‘so?’” So? Because the only opinion that matters, when it comes to how she feels about herself, is hers. The hair will grow out, but this attitude, right here, is something I hope she fights to hold onto, something she never outgrows. ——————————————

As for me, I’ve got the Monday Mantra on repeat: It’s just hair. It will grow back. Deep breaths. One salve: Little Miss is upstairs wearing a tiara. At least the girl can accessorize.