If I should have a daughter, instead of “Mom,” she’s gonna call me “Point B,” because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.” And she’s going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried. “And, baby,” I’ll tell her, don’t keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I’ve done it a million times. You’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him.” But I know she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that’s the way my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this. There’ll be days like this, my momma said. When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. “Baby,” I’ll tell her, “remember, your momma is a worrier, and your poppa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.” Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you’ve done something wrong, but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don’t ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.
- Sarah Key
The passing shadows of big, fluffy clouds on rolling hills is such an elegant and mystical site for the eye to see. They dance ever so delicately, with just the right touch of drama and mystery.
The debate about God’s gender is misdirected. What we call God is actually a married couple. When they decided to create humans in their own image, they compromised and manufactured approximately equal numbers of both genders.
Each female She creates is close to Her heart. She becomes the woman for just a moment as She shapes her and, in this way, is able to try out different heights and weights, emotional depths, and IQs, skin tones, eye colors. The same applies to every male shaped by Him. On certain nights when they’re feeling liberal, each creates a member of the opposite sex, just to see what it’s like.
When you die, you go to live in their large home and enjoy a parent-child relationship with them, and they devote tremendous effort to their parenting skills.
It is heartening to see that they learn from us in the same manner that all parents learn from their children. For example, it turns out they didn’t know how to express the workings of their universe as equations, so they are greatly impressed with the ideas of their physicist children, who phrase clearly to them for the first time what they wrought.
On the other hand, it would be misleading to tell you that it’s always been a happy family, because their was a period of time when that wasn’t true. Their marriage was an arranged one, and over the millennia they grew unhappy with each other’s company. By careful observation of their humans over the years, they learned that sometimes couples don’t work out, that people separate, adulterate, divorce—and none of it is so terrible that the universe crashes down. And so, in the manner that all parents learn from their children, they separated.
There were many acts of bitterness. They stung each other with unfair accusations, using information so personal it shouldn’t have been broached. Hurt, in an idea of quick revenge, She created a planet of all females. He retorted with a solar system of males. She encircled His line of planets with a band of women on meteors. The two of them armed with new humans to battle it out, women against men. Both sides were supplied with weapons ranging from sarcasm to tanks.
But something strange happened. The planets and meteors were silent. Orbits dragged like slow whispers through the empty space. No battles waged; not a shot was fired.
Upon close examination, they discovered that the monosexual inhabitants were miserable, crushed like existentialists under a feeling of the absence of something terribly important, something they couldn’t put their fingers on.
Eventually, She dropped Her hands from Her hips and He from His. She spoke the first tender words in months, asking if He was hungry. He responded by offering to cooking something for them both. The planets of men and women drifted back together, and the race started again, with its pursuits, seductions, choices, competitions, temptations, arguments, and a great cosmic sigh of relief as they all fell emancipated into each other’s arms.
