Page 4 of Love You Always

“Accept.” I sit cross-legged on the gravel and look toward the car speakers as though my mother can see me through them. “Hi, Mom.”

“Morning, sweetie. Just checking in.” The hollow sound of her voice tells me she’s driving someplace, and I pray she’s actually using the hands-free option because she’s already gotten two tickets for being on the phone. I don’t think the Department of Motor Vehicles has infinite patience for that sort of thing.

“Are you using speakerphone?”

“What? Oh, yes, yes. I’m in the car. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” I say.

“Just okay?’

“No, I’m good. I’m fine. How about you?”

“Well, you know…”

I stifle a laugh and roll my eyes. My mother is the Chicken Little of suburban Los Angeles. She lives in a gated communitywith my dad in sunny seventy-degree weather and somehow, some way, there’s always something dire about to happen.

“Tell me,” I prompt. At least it will give me a second to dust myself off before I show up unannounced at the winery where I plan to get married. It’s bad enough I came a day early, but now I look like a dusty desert creature with tumbleweed hair.

“I was at Starbucks on Ventura, you know, the one in the mini-mall, not the freestanding one on the corner…” She pauses as though I need to visualize the scene. As though every Starbucks doesn’t basically look the same.

“Okay…”

“I’d taken a walk with Victoria around Balboa Park, and then she had to leave to go to work at the furniture place, and I decided to treat myself to one of those coffee drinks you introduced me to. You know, the ones with the vanilla?”

“Vanilla latte,” I supply.

“Yes. That. And it was the strangest thing—there was a bird in the store.”

I close my eyes.Here we go…My mother, a fearless feminist who started marching for women’s rights in the sixties and never stopped, does not like “unpredictable wild animals” to come indoors. We are long past the time when I can joke that “predictable” wild animals aren’t really a thing. The fear is real, and I’ve seen my mom cower when a pet hamster was on the loose in the house.

“Someone brought a pet?”

I can hear my mother huffing, which means she’s now parked her car and is walking up the driveway carrying a bag of something. She always has a bunch of junk in a bag, whether it’s dry cleaning or a few things from the market. “No, from outside. Apparently, it flew in before I got there, and people were standing on chairs trying to shoo it from the store. The baristas were going to call the fire department. I didn’t stay to see how it all ended.”

“Well, I imagine the fire department got the bird out, given that they have ladders.”

“I know I’m being silly. It’s just that…” I can almost hear her biting her lip, debating whether to tell me the last part.

“What, Mom? Just say it.”

“I’m thinking twice about my idea that you should have a dove release at the wedding. All those birds flying around, even if they are doves. Especially if there’s a baby…”

And there it is, the real reason she’s calling me. She’s been uneasy about my decision to adopt a baby ever since I told her I was going through with it. Her list of reasons is long, starting with the fact that I’m not married and ending with her worry that I’m too busy with my career to parent a child.

When I told her a couple months ago, I did my best to explain my reasoning. At thirty-three, I want to start making plans for my future. My doctor has concerns about some fertility issues that will make getting pregnant unlikely, and I’ve always wanted to adopt because it breaks my heart to think about kids who need a parent—I want to be that parent.

I’ve always loved kids, and as each of my friends becomes a parent, I play the favorite aunt. But every time I walk away, it leaves me hollow. I’ve dreamed about raising a child for a decade, and once I commit to something, I’m all in. And I want this. I really, really want this.

My mom has “thoughts.” This isn’t new. When I was in the middle of a dating binge of bad choices and big mistakes, she was the first to warn me about getting a bad reputation. Turns out she was right.

That fueled her confidence, so whenever she has a thought about my personal life, I hear about it. Most of her concerns come out as veiled worry about something else—doves, the weather, the migration patterns of birds in general—but at their heart, she’s worried about me.

“There’s no guarantee the adoption will go through before thewedding, and I wasn’t planning on holding a baby up at the ceremony as dove bait,” I tell her.

“Okay, well that helps, certainly. And I suppose a lot could happen between now and the wedding date, so I’ll stop worrying.”

“Spoiler alert. You willnot.”

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