I wrote “Meggie’s Work” when my son was small and I was raising him on my own. It holds both things at once: the joy of being his mother and the quiet wish to keep a self beyond that role. Many women know that season well.
Meggie’s newest work of art--blue crayon on pink construction paper--describes our town in little girl simplicity. Houses resemble drunken boxes wearing triangle hats, jammed together on bowling alley streets.
Down the centermost her father, a tall, handsome stick figure, strides into town toward a smiling moppet that is Meggie herself. She has her stick figure arms raised in welcome.
I search the drawing again and find a tiny person atop a faraway hill, back turned, moving toward the edge of her cotton candy landscape. The figure is blurred, like a runner caught on slow film.
This, I realize, is me.
My little water sprite studies her drawing over my arm, her seaweed hair tangled and her seawater eyes bright. She wraps one hand around my elbow, the other a tight fist by her mouth.
Meggie has been the center of my universe since she rode the wave out of my womb six years ago. My love for her has a ferocity I didn’t foresee back when David convinced me to start a family.
Why has she drawn our family this way? She’ll tell me if I ask. She wants me to ask.
But I don’t ask. I don’t want to know.
Usually I love to delve into her drawings: the seashore visit that read like an alien attack, and our cat, Raffles, chasing a blue kite over the setting moon, which Meggie swears is easier and more real than a cow jumping it.
This I’d rather leave to guessing. I take the simpler route and believe she’s in that stage where Daddy seems perfect and Momma gets in the way, rather than hear whatever tumbles in her head about our life.
“Let’s hang this up so Daddy will see it,” I say to her, rising from my chair.
She clings to my arm across the room in a way she knows I dislike.
“Meghan, let go.” I suppress a sigh and clip the drawing onto the line strung just for this purpose, looped under our high clerestory windows. Within their frame I see the blue sky beyond and the upper branches of our oaks dancing in the wind.
What would it be like to be a bird upon one of those branches, free to fly in any direction?
I reach up one hand and place it flat against the pane.
I feel Meggie tug on my sleeve again. “Momma. Don’t you want me to tell you about my picture?” I can’t tell if her tone is coaxing or hurt.
I want to shake off her grip and stand under the oak trees, feel the wind on my skin, if only for a little while. I want to be me, alone, separate again and still whole.
I feel like I’m drowning.
But there is my beautiful kelpie child clinging to my hand, and how I love her. I unclip her drawing from the line and sit back down.
Meggie smiles and slides into my lap. She settles herself against me. I feel as if I should warn her to go slow and take small bites, like any good mother would, but I remain silent as she takes a deep breath. As she speaks I look out at the oaks swaying behind the glass, and I dream of flying.