Page 112 of Rook

But it hadn’t just been Rook to remind me that I wasn’t my mother, that I was a good, kind, and giving person.

I had the club women and men. I had Lorna. So many people who saw the good in me, who believed in my ability to provide a good and loving environment for kids. They’d patiently reminded me how good I was withtheirkids until, little by little, I started to believe them.

I wasn’t my mother.

And as God as my witness, my child would know none of the heartache that I did growing up. They would be so full of love that they would overflow with it.

“Right, buddy?” I asked my belly. “We got this.”

As if understanding and agreeing, I felt the little flutter of a kick.

Rook - 8 years

“Nana!” Hawk yelled, waving an arm so hard that his whole body moved with it.

“Hey, bubba!” my mom called back, squatting low and throwing her arms wide.

My son ran at her, throwing himself into her arms to get scooped up and swung in a circle.

The sun caught on his hair that decided to settle somewhere between my reddish-brown and Tessa’s blonde, making him a true strawberry-blonde. The more time he spent outside, though, the more it streaked with gold.

And despite his mother and me both being very indoorsy, our kid was more like my mom, who always wanted to be out in nature.

I mean, the kid had his own little garden and bird feeder with a camera, so he could watch his little visitors on his TV to go to sleep to at night.

He was also the one to remind us, every two days, to wash out the darn hummingbird feeder.

“Birds will get sick,” he’d say with big, sad eyes that made either me or Tessa immediately jump up to wash out the sticky sugar water.

Hawk liked birds, plants, long walks, hikes in the Death Valley mountains, and occasional trips to the beach to collect shells.

He didn’t like TV, computers, tablets, or phones.

If you could know such things from such a young age, I imagined Hawk would be a kid who would hit eighteen and then claim he was going to go on a month-long hike in the woods or mountains somewhere. He’d be surfing in Miami one month and off snowboarding in Switzerland the next.

While his mom and I sat cuddled up on the couch with all our snacks, the TV on in the background as we watched his videos online.

“I came to steal your child,” my mom said as she hiked Hawk up on her hip and approached.

See, my mom lived with us for three years. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure how we would have gotten through the newborn stage without her ever-present, patient assistance.

But then, well, she’d met someone.

You could say the flashbacks had been incredibly intense when she told me. Her joy when she thought she’d been in love. The absolute devastation when she’d learned she’d been conned out of everything she had. The years I spent in prison. The horror of knowing she was committed because her mental health was so unstable.

It wasn’t long, though, before I felt sure that her current choice was a good, solid man. In fact, he happened to be a retired therapist. A career path he’d chosen to try to understand his own mother’s struggles with schizophrenia.

Joe, well, he got it.

My mother’s mental health, our complicated history, my concerns.

And perhaps a lot more important than all that, he loved my mom. And if there was ever a woman who deserved that, it was her.

“Yeah? Where are you taking him?”

“G-pa Joe and I wanted to go to the Inyo National Forest today. We thought our little buddy might like to join us.”

“Yes!” Hawk cheered, eyes full of excitement.

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