Sorry for All the Times, and: Portrait on the Lost Coast

Sorry for All the Times

Again without warning, I have a baby  girl. I have given birth    but I hardly remember the pain. It seems

so strange that we have this child, and unexpectedly. Maybe  we have adopted her. I let her suckle, hoping    my milk will let down, as I’ve heard it can, to see

if that will work. But of course my milk lets down—  that’s right. I carried her. She begins to nurse—    it feels good, and it hurts.

By the second day, she is talking in sentences. I try  to impress upon her father how amazing this is, how    extraordinary. Yes, yes, people boast about their children,

but this—this is different, this is truly a feat. I cannot believe  my good fortune. My child is a person who would not have been    otherwise, she is a person and more important

to me than anyone, ever. I feel sorry for all the times  she came to me, suddenly, like now    and how I felt no joy, only burdened, nearly

crushed. This time, I understand—my daughter is someone  I can know, I know I have known her for a long time. No, no,    not only some idea of her, but her. This child. This one.

“Sorry for All the Times” was first published in West Trestle Review, July 21, 2014; it is reprinted with permission.

Portrait on the Lost Coast

I bring a photo of myself, a pasthaircut to a new stylist,to show her what I’d like.In it, my niece, six or seven,sits beside me on a desolate beach, bothof us looking off toward the MattoleRiver, its mouth on the Lost Coast.

We have the same big smile, a similarshape to our lips, our hair the sameshade of brown, hers sun-bleached,mine beginning to gray. “Is that your little girl?”the stylist asks, for I had notthought to explain. BeforeI answer, in that pause that isnot even a pause,

I feel like I do when my nieceand I are out at the museum, ora birthday lunch—when strangers give us that smile, presuming I am Mom.When I glimpse the unspoken approvalin a glance, someone’s tone, I feela sudden weight lifted, a weightI never remember is there—

and a sense of comfort that disappearsas quickly as it comes; it is as ifI had gone ahead and chosen what was expectedfor me, what I had grown up expectingof myself. And just as fleetingly—like that day on the Lost Coast, jaggedshale, black sand, the camera anglethat lent itself to what likenessmy niece and I possess—I feel greaterthan my share of credit for her grace, my shareof responsibility for who she may become.