Page 117 of Salty Pickle

I had forgotten about that tradition.

We could be goofy, doing rounds of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.”

Neither Matilda nor I can stay awake when Mom launches into her old lullabies.

I’ve made the right choice.

The ride is hard on me, and more than once, we pull into hospital parking lots when the belly pains feel like contractions. But when they settle down with water and rest, we move on.

I know my parents are serious about trying to mend things with me when they keep ordering veggie burgers on the route.

People can learn.

Could Court have?

We were too new, I remind myself. We don’t have to be a couple to raise a baby. But New York isn’t right for me, and it’s time to face that we will never be in the same place. Court’s family lives in Colorado, less than an hour from us, and I’m happy to let them be involved.

Maybe Court will visit them often, and Julian will know that side of his family.

It will be enough.

But despite all these pep talks, when we pull up to my childhood home, turn Matilda loose in the yard, and I finally climb into the narrow twin bed from my youth, I can’t stop crying.

I weep myself to sleep, wake up weeping, and fall asleep again.

Mom checks on me and, worried I would get dehydrated and have contractions again, brings me water, juice, grapes, and anything she thinks will replace the fluids that refuse to stop leaking from my eyes.

But on the third day home, I finally come out of it. I get up and head to Jasper’s room, where my parents have been working since we got back.

My parents sit on the floor, assembling a baby swing a lot like the one Court bought.

Dad looks up. “We got your old crib out of the attic. It wasn’t quite up to the new standards, but I fixed it by adding more rails.

I run my hand along the pinewood crib. Every other rail is newer and carefully smoothed and varnished. Inside is a pale-yellow set of sheets and matching blanket. Strapped to one end is a faded plastic piano with fat keys I vaguely remember.

“Was that mine?” I ask.

“It was!” Mom says. “I didn’t think it would work, but it does.” She pulls herself up from the floor. “You loved to kick it with your feet and make sounds. You would laugh and laugh.”

“There are pictures of that, aren’t there?”

She nods. “That’s probably why you remember it.”

I push on one of the keys. A single bright note comes out. It strikes a chord deep within me, a core memory lost in the decades.

“You’ve done a lot of work.”

Dad screws a metal bar onto the swing. “We decided to take off a few weeks, then your mom will go back to finish out her notice, and then I’ll go back once she’s home again. Once the baby room is done, I’ll get started building a small shed for Matilda and her baby.”

They’re rearranging their lives for me, creating space for us. It’s hard to trust that this is a good thing. The fear and resentment won’t go away that easily. But they’re trying.

Jasper’s old bed is pushed in the corner, covered in a new neutral green spread.

Mom waves a hand on it. “We decided to keep it for whoever is doing the night shift. We ordered a rocker that should be delivered tomorrow, too.”

“You didn’t have to do all this.”

Mom’s face gets serious, and seeing her expression makes my eyes prick with emotion. “I think we do. We didn’t see you for almost five years. We have to change. We have to fix this to deserve a place in your life. And Julian’s.”

---