The Season of the Rat, Happy Mother’s Day! Part 1

So last year, Mother’s day brought me love from my three babies. At seven, five, and three, they managed to put together a pretty good little breakfast for their mom. They paraded right into the bedroom with a tippy, spilly tray just like they do on TV. It was the best part of the day. They had poured nearly an entire bag of chocolate chips into a small bowl of vanilla yogurt. It was their food equivalent of the Taj Mahal, served with exactly the appropriate amount of pride. My husband of ten long and miserable years looked on with an embarrassingly feigned perkiness.

We took a little drive around and found a spontaneous, and still quite perfunctory, brunch at a nearby inn. We had no reservation, and were seated in an otherwise empty room. Our table was huge and round, seating ten people. We were a party of five. The kids sat in a delicious clump around me as they wolfed jello parfaits. Devin sat alone on the opposite side of the table like the spot on Jupiter, staring off and arriving back to Earth only to crack fake smiles and check his ever present Blackberry. He treated the complimentary and semi-wilted carnation that the hostess handed out upon leaving, as living proof that he had done his duty. After fourteen comments about the fancy brunch and the free carnation, I obligingly carted it around our stroll through a still-barren college town park. It was a relief to see it wind up in the center of a catch game, and finally trodden in a puddle.

The kids played around and loved it, unconcerned with the scape of wet grass, cold and littered with soggy cigarette butts and random debris. Then, sitting right there on a park bench, inviting play, we saw a rat. It was a fake rubber rat that stood about a foot tall on it’s hind legs, a Halloween decoration. It was gross and might have seemed out of place, but given the state of things at the premature birth of spring in Upstate New York, it did not. The kids assumed we had arranged such a fun and surprising treat. Weakly we both admitted we had not, but certainly should have! The rat was flung, caught, coddled, twirled, and carried on the end of a stick. After forever, we were able to take leave of the rat.  Sitting back on the park bench, inviting it’s next guest.

The leaves were trying really hard to come out, and although the sun was out, it was still early May, the leaves had awhile before they would be able to completely unfold. I have a picture of myself and the kids that day taken outside our brunching spot. Maybe because the sun was out and perhaps in my eyes, it looks as if my smile is trying really hard to come out, too.

Shortly after this, the push of something very powerful yet obscured and non-specific compelled me to take off my wedding band and put it away, just like that. It would be about a month before I came across the absolute proof that my husband had been having an affair.