The one with the warm, brown eyes and the Colgate smile who pushed a strand of hair out of her face one night while they sat in a private corner in their favorite Starbucks and suddenly the fireworks went off. Well, it was New Year’s Eve. But still, fireworks went off and hormones went wild and the next thing she knew she was writing “Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes” all over her notebooks, waiting for the magical day when he would get a job. As soon as possible. And pop the question. She’d thought of everything. The flowers. The dress. The groom. Now he needed to connect the dots. As soon as possible.
Finally, it was possible. He proposed, they got married, they moved into the garage apartment behind her grandparents’ house, and the next afternoon she was pregnant. Ta dah. She’d thought of everything except birth control.
Still, they were off and running. Grownups. On their own. Behind her grandparents’ house. They had everything they needed. A place setting for four, towels for two, six cans of tuna and a Costco supply of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese in the pantry. She also had morning sickness. He spent ten-hour days at the pretty good job he landed. She spent all day every day throwing up in their tiny bathroom. Nine months later, their healthy little bundle of joy arrived, and the garage apartment was suddenly too small.
So, they moved.
Into a two-bedroom, one bath apartment duplex in town and close to shopping so she could push the baby in the BOB baby jogging stroller on her daily grocery store trips because Mr. Warm Brown Eyes had their only car. They celebrated their first anniversary at Chick Fil-A while her mother kept the baby. They split a chicken sandwich and watched all the children climb through the play area’s gym, dreaming about the day their baby would be old enough to join in on the laughing and squealing. Then they went home and took a three-hour nap and the next afternoon she was pregnant again. Maybe it was a two-hour nap.
Nine months later, another healthy baby was born and the two-bedroom one bath didn’t make the cut anymore. Her parents co-signed for a mortgage and Mr. and Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes moved into their three-bedroom two bath home in the ‘burbs. Then they splurged on a ’98 Honda beater so she could load the kiddos into two baby seats, store the BOB in the trunk, and head to the store—outnumbered two to one. The babies were good about riding, though, and showed their approval by littering the floorboards with tiny, soggy Cheerios doused in fragrant baby formula from fallen sippy cups. In self-defense, she bought a three pack of those little vanilla scented cardboard trees and hung all of them from the rearview mirror. Nobody wanted to ride with her and the babies after that, but she didn’t mind—she needed the passenger seat for the groceries anyway.
They celebrated their second anniversary at the park with Subway sandwiches and a blanket on the grass where the three-month-old lay screaming for half an hour and the fifteen-month-old dropped her peanut butter sandwich in the mud, then picked it up and ate it anyway. Too tired from morning sickness to investigate, she thought she’d read somewhere that a little dirt everyday was good for kids.
Seven months later, another healthy baby was born, and they decided not to move. So far, every time they relocated to a bigger place the universe responded by giving them more babies. “Let’s make it clear we don’t have room for any more kids so the universe will find somebody else to pick on,” they agreed over a third anniversary dinner of Spaghettios and clearance bin salad at their wobbly kitchen table surrounded by its trio of high chairs.
She didn’t have the heart to tell Mr. Warm Brown Eyes the following afternoon that she was too nauseous to cook dinner, but he wasn’t born yesterday. He just moved his shaving kit into the kids’ bathroom with the tiny potty seat and Big Bird shower curtain and let his wife keep the master bath to herself. “Maybe if we stop celebrating anniversaries,” they each thought from their respective bathrooms, “we’d stop needing more high chairs.”
When baby number four arrived, four years to the day after they’d promised in front of the town clerk and their two best friends to love and honor each other through thick and thin, they wheeled two shopping carts carrying two children each through the greeting card aisle at Walmart, picked out cards they would have given each other if there was any extra money to spend, kissed each other while the babies cried, and put the cards back on the rack.
“Happy Anniversary, honey,” he told her gently.
“Don’t jinx it!” she hissed. “You know what happens every time we celebrate.”
But it was too late. The universe was listening.
By the time their fifth anniversary arrived wearily on their front porch, a fifth baby slept in the cradle in the master bedroom and Mr. Warm Brown Eyes recuperated on the living room sofa with a bag of frozen peas on his crotch. She wandered out of the bedroom in the worn-out robe she’d bought for their honeymoon, her long hair tied up in a messy knot, and fuzzy slippers covered in baby spit-up on her feet. She didn’t say anything as he caught her eyes. She just gave him the thumbs up and went back to doing laundry. It was enough. He knew she still loved him and they were in this together. And now that they didn’t need to worry about any more babies, he was already making plans for their sixth anniversary.
The next day he bought her a pretty new nightie for the occasion still a year away that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since he signed the authorization papers in the surgeon’s office. Later he wished he’d read the fine print while he did that. Who knew that practicing birth control was still important for the first six weeks after a procedure like his?
Her friends threw her a “Happy Half Dozen Babies” shower right after Baby Oops arrived. Years later, she had to admit she barely remembered any of it. Still, it was a nice enough gesture. They filled up the corner of their fourteen hundred square foot house with a tower of newborn baby diapers, eight plastic boxes of baby wipes, and a new baby swing. Somebody gave her a gift card to Babies ‘R Us that they got on clearance right before the store closed its doors.
“What do I do with this?” she asked in confusion.
“It’s a joke!” her friends laughed. “We thought you could frame it and hang it in the nursery! Get it? Babies Are Us?”
That’s when the twitch began. Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared into the faces of all her friends who still sported perky boobs. The eleven above the bridge of her nose stood out so much her eyes disappeared into numerology. The color drained from her face, and her voice, once as melodic as windchimes on a breezy day, suddenly sounded as gravelly as an old woman who’d spent her life smoking like a chimney.
“Funny,” she said, deadpan, and stood up. She walked out the front door and up the street, the sleeve of her dress torn where the four-year-old grabbed it in a temper tantrum earlier that morning when she’d silenced “Sofia The First” on the TV. Her flip-flopping shoes trudged along the empty sidewalk and she dropped the plastic red cup filled with Pink Cloud Punch in the hyacinth bushes in front of the Johnson house.
“Hi, Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes,” her neighbor called while she watered the geraniums on her front porch. There was no response from the young mother. “Are you all right, honey?” Mrs. Johnson yelled after the comatose woman. “Harry,” she said, turning to her husband who sat on the porch reading a newspaper. “Does she seem all right to you?”
“Who?” he asked, distracted.
She had no idea where she was headed. It didn’t matter. She had no idea where she was. Or even who she was. Not anymore. Not since the house was overrun with babies and rattles and bottles and teething biscuits and Tickle Me Elmos and coloring books and chicken nuggets and applesauce. Applesauce. She hated applesauce. Whoever came up with runny, tasteless jars of smashed apples should be handcuffed and hauled away like the Anti-Christ he was. In a perfect world, she’d never ever smell another smashed green pea, either, or find a week-old bottle of coddled formula behind a baby crib or walk around with hands that always smelled like baby puke or dirty diapers.
She had to find that perfect world. It was out there, some place far away from the shattered dream of motherhood and marriage that had all melted into one giant apocalypse of hopelessness. It existed. Somewhere. She could feel it. Her instinctive drive to live again kept her feet moving, slowly, one after the other, block after block, looking at nothing, staring straight ahead, her arms hanging limply at her side as though paralyzed. Maybe they’d all forget about her by supper time. Probably they hadn’t even missed her yet. By the time she walked to the edge of the earth, they’d have replaced her with a Roomba and a new microwave anyway. Jerks. She’d always wanted a Roomba.
A familiar noise, like slowly bursting bubbles in a tar pit, suddenly demanded her attention. Her thoughts foggy yet threatening mutiny, she fought a losing battle against recognition. What was that? A lawn mower? Her dying washing machine? A ’98 Honda beater?
“Ohhhh, noooo,” she moaned in a slow, deep-throated growl. Turning like the cursed heroine in “Bride of the Undead,” she stopped walking and looked through the smudged window of the car which now pulled up beside her three short blocks from her house.
“Honey,” Mr. Warm Brown Eyes said, his arm draped over the steering wheel as he leaned down low to see through the crank window that hadn’t cranked shut in two years. “Honey,” he said again, “it’s time to come home.”
“Are they gone?” she growled.
“Your friends? Yes, they all left an hour ago.”
“Not . . . them,” she said, haltingly. “The children. Are they gone?”
He blinked and tilted his head to the side. “Our babies? Our six beautiful babies? No, of course not. Your mother said she'll take care of them tonight. She said for us to go get a room somewhere to celebrate.”
She looked at him like she’d never seen him before. What was he talking about? “Cel-e-brate?” she asked quizzically.
“Of course, darling,” he gushed with those warm, brown eyes and Colgate smile. “It’s our anniversary. Don’t you remember?”
And that’s when she snapped. Out of it. She snapped out of it.
Well, after all, she was Mrs. Warm Brown Eyes, a sweet girl who didn’t know where she was going anyway. Sometimes when you’re covered in baby spit up and haven’t bought yourself a new dress in six years and the best thing you can say about your ’98 Honda beater with the broken window is that the engine still works, you just need to rip off the mask of perpetual sacrifice that’s glued to your face and let the world know you are one of the walking dead who desperately deserves a nap. And a shower. And some new fuzzy slippers.
With a sigh of acceptance, she opened the rusty door and climbed inside. It wasn’t exactly a perfect world she’d found, but it was her world. And she was surprisingly alive—shabby and smelly, for sure, but alive. She looked at her handsome husband with those warm, brown eyes and sparkling smile made up of perfect teeth. The guy who had the freedom to escape to his pretty good job five days a week for ten hours a day while she stayed home and suffered the inevitable effects of celebrating six anniversaries. And she remembered that boy who once pushed a strand of hair out of her face on a long-ago New Year’s Eve in a private corner in their favorite Starbucks.
She had no idea what to give him for their anniversary. Nothing as predictable as a romantic dinner alone or a sexy new negligĂ©e, that was for sure. Nor was it a dozen new golf balls or a t-shirt that read, “Best Dad On Earth.” It had to be something that represented how she felt about everything they’d gone through in the last six years.
“I want to get going,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ll keep the car running while you grab a few things for yourself and the babies. I’d give you a hand but you’re so good at taking care of them and I never know where anything is. Hurry now—we want to have as much time together as possible!”
Suddenly she knew what she wanted to give him. She smiled at him sweetly, looked into those warm, brown eyes, and hauled off and slapped him across his surprised face.
It was the best anniversary she’d ever had.
With thanks to Darron Birgenheier for the use of the hangry bird photo used here. You can view the original at the following link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/darronb/9305462056/in/photolist-fbhVEY-UByPCq-274JyjY-8kD7mY-26VUTQS-bCRmnG-Vyv5fJ-79SGhy-mJQE3i-9X1j4-8p1gzz-HRXrTe-mJQEbV-9LufWX-QUs9v-6dwBuG-4VmPXS-TkjFPm-PwvMu-2pkdNg-nyGkLz-HqawCW-6p3TC-nM8245-6LZxLm-TkiHpC-54SrWP-8QjMHF-6szjY4-4CwmQV-6rM9Jy-9M3dyj-4TpqhC-Bv8a6-t133Us-6ABv7B-UeaaCj-eGBevw-8mcR8b-9J83qH-51gWMg-2do9Xm-47MWkV-Xxwvvn-9SLCkB-6zWgNL-25isoQQ-6pDSGD-SUDZnU-PFGML
