Details
Obviously, I hadn’t fully evaluated other possible outcomes.
Welcome Michael, just months shy of four years old, with dark-blond hair and big blue eyes, in dire need of a mother. Oh, and did I mention Jim, the ever handsome and charming father of said boy? The first time this child tested me with the word “mom” and then looked up into my eyes with a little grin, waiting, waiting, waiting to see what my response was going to be, I knew I was in deep trouble. His inquiries have continued, albeit with modifications along the way. Once I was paging through a magazine while he sat beside me with a coloring book and crayons, and he stopped to ask me if he had come out of my stomach.
“No,” I told him, “you came out of your mother’s stomach.”
“But I want you to be my mother!” I hesitated, then pulled out the bottom of my sweatshirt to make myself look pregnant. “Okay, get in my stomach.”
Michael giggled. “Kate! You can’t go backward!” And then, just as I began to worry that the joke was improper, he asked, “What should I color next?”
