Page 173 of Things We Burn

Not that there weren’t stories. People had been transfixed by Kane when he was flying through the air on a motorcycle, winning Olympic medals, dating supermodels and generally being mischievous. But now that he’d ‘settled down,’ and had a baby girl, people seemed even more enchanted. By his love story, his happily ever after.

Yes, I was a little enchanted too. We were finally sleeping more. Not through the night, no, of course not. But we were getting three to four hours … in a row—that counted as eight hours in my book—which meant I was slightly saner.

Mabel napped in her crib, sometimes for a fullhour. She still enjoyed most days slumbering, cuddled up to her father.

The house was filled with her laughter, her smiles. I had slightly more time to do things for myself. Especially with the never ending visits from the Jupiter ‘posse’. Nora, Fiona, Tina, Tiffany and Calliope.

Kane had his bromances with Kip and Rowan going strong, the three of them taking the kids out and about so we could sit in Nora’s garden drinking or eating or just doing things that weren’t wiping faces, cleaning diapers or feeding children.

Nora welcomed a second baby girl without fuss or disarray. She seemed content, well rested and not at all on the edge of a mental breakdown like I’d been those first weeks. It baffled me that she’d done it again by choice.

Fiona seemed to feel the same as me. We were both content with one child whereas Nora wanted many.

These new friendships meant that Mabel would never feel lonely, though. Not with all of the children she’d be surrounded by, not to mention her cousins, who adored her and had just left with a tearful goodbye and promises to return soon. My mother was scheduled to arrive the next day.

Kane had already contracted Kip and Rowan to start work on a ‘guest house’ for family on our property. He wanted them to feel welcome. He’d spoken about adding on to our petite cottage, but I’d refused. I liked it exactly how it was. Small, compact, perfect for two adults, one child and one dog.

He had told his mother about Mabel, and she’d visited. She’d been timid, hesitant and when she did speak, she spoke a lot about herself. She’d held Mabel, but she’d seemed uneasy, uncomfortable, Kane’s jaw hard while watching them together.

It wasn’t an altogether ‘nice’ visit. It hurt me that Kane didn’t have what I had with my mother. But he’d made his peace with it.

As much as anyone could.

We hadn’t seen Knox. I knew that bothered him more than his mother’s indifference.

He’d thrown himself into the role of ‘stay at home dad,’ though I had urged him to do something other than that, like write a memoir. His new agent let it slip that he’d been offered many book deals. Kane was a literary lover and had an extraordinary story.

He was in Portland then, meeting with publishers, on my urging.

Tides was opening in two weeks. I had been toiling over the menu all throughout the day, writing and rewriting it. My decision making struggles were not just reserved for baby related things; it seemed they had seeped into an area of my life I had previously thought was untouchable. Unbreakable.

Doubt gnawed at me that this restaurant was a mistake.

“I didn’t hear your bike,” I called to Kane as the door opened then closed behind him. “She’s not sleeping. You didn’t have to push it up the drive again,” I laughed.

Mabel laughed along with me from her highchair, squeezing a piece of banana in her little fist, elated at the resulting mush.

It was a process, my accepting the mess that Mabel had to make in order to discover food, to learn. To understand that most everything I made ended up on the floor and that the bigger mess she made, the more delighted she was. Until it came time to clean her up. Then she made it clear that she thought we were trying to torture her.

Yes, it was a process. But one I was starting to enjoy. Motherhood started to feel comfortable, like it fit, like it might’ve been made for me instead of something that I was trying to cut myself into shape for.

Some days were harder than others. But I had Kane. He was unflinching in his support of me, of us. There were times, moments, when he did things that communicated the ways in which his life hadn’t changed and I had. Small things. It was hard not to turn them into larger things, to not catastrophize our entire relationship and its trajectory. To believe that he wanted me to be nothing more than a wife and mother.

Except he’d proven the exact opposite was true. Yes, he’d bought me the restaurant—which I still battled with my feelings about. But it wasn’t because he wanted to own me or be my ‘boss,’ to hold it over me. It was given freely, a part of myself he was giving me back.

And he was happy to be a stay-at-home dad, to ‘retire’ from his title as ‘The Devil.’ Granted, he was still planning on taking sponsorships here and there to ‘bulk up Mabel’s college fund,’ even though it was already bursting.

I knew he didn’t want to entirely let go of the opportunities because part of him was still the poor boy struggling and going hungry.

He’d communicated that one night. “Except now I know you’ll feed me, Chef,” he murmured against my neck.

And I was working on that. Feeding him. Feeding us. Feeding myself. The restaurant was truly coming together. I had finalized a menu after testing it, retesting it then changing it completely. It had taken me four times as long as it used to, but that was okay.

I’d interviewed for staff, gotten licenses, approved the interior layout, had the time of my life designing my kitchen. It was a little extravagant considering it was going to be a mid-scale restaurant in a small town, but Kane had insisted on it, and I’d found it hard to argue.

I was dying to be in a kitchen that was mine, to reclaim a little bit of my old identity and mesh it with this new one.

I had spoken to a therapist who diagnosed me with postpartum anxiety—not an uncommon thing with high achieving women, apparently. The transition from the control we had to perfect our everyday lives to the utter chaos that was parenthood and the chasing of a perfectionism that didn’t exist was a bit of a recipe for disaster.

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