Notes From The Road

We were almost at Dayton when she told me she had to pee.

“Mom!” she yelled, even though I was less than 12 inches away from her.

“MOM! I have to go potty!”

I turned around, eyebrow cocked, assessing her. “You should have tried to go before we left the resataurant,” I told her. “We’ll stop as soon as we can.”

We were on that rare stretch of road that isn’t littered with bright blue signs announcing gas stations and fast food. “We have to stop.” She chewed her fingers; her ponytail, having escaped it’s mooring, dropped at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were wild.

“We have to stop now! I have to go POTTY.”

I took a deep breath. “Baby girl, we can’t st—” She interuppted me.

“Mom,” my daughter said solemnly. “I pooped in my pants. We waited too long.”

I closed my eyes and counted to 10, praying for patience and forebearance. “Ooooooooookay,” I said. “We’ll stop as soon as we can.”

“Mom.” She was whipmering. “It’s a big one. A really big one.”

My husband pulled over, and I carefully guided her to the side of the road, shielding her from the oncoming traffic with my body. Behind the van, on the scrabbly grass, I pulled her pants down, a wad of wet wipes in my hand.

She was clean.

“Whoops!” she smiled at me, palms raised toward the heavens.

My husband met my eyes through the passenger-side window. We laughed with our mouths closed.

***

Two new dogs joined the one poodle already in residence. They swirled and nipped at our ankles as we held The Babyman aloft. I bit my lips in order to stifle the sharp words on my tongue.

The house is too small; aunts and cousins and grandfathers and great-grandfathers bump shoulders like molecules. I step over this one and that one, the dogs tripping me as I gather pajamas and favorite bath towels from a laundry basket stowed in the bedroom my husband slept in as a boy.

“Excuse me!” I chirp, with manufactured cheer. “Beep-beep!”

As I step over a plastic toy school bus, my husband calls me wearily. “I need you,” he says, an edge in his voice. “The Babyman pooped in the tub.”

I wrap the baby in his hooded towel, the faux lion’s mane cockeyed on his head. One bright blue eye obscured, he grins up at me, cheekily. My husband meets my eyes as I leave the room, amusement and desperation competing for his face.

Babyman, Babyman, I whisper to him. Mama is so tired. Babyman, it’s time for bed.

PJs, medicine, TV shows, juice and bottles. They rest in strange beds, exhausted from the heady concoction of nine hours of captivity followed by a burst of joy and excitement.

I sit in a living room I first laid eyes on 12 years ago, and wonder where the road will take us next.