0142180238 (N) by Lauren Weedman

Author:Lauren Weedman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-23T14:30:10+00:00

Serial Killer Blues

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Carpe diem.

Be here now.

I keep repeating these things to myself, but nothing’s working. Today still feels like the last eighty-eight million mornings on the playground. Boring. I’m glad Leo is having fun going up and down the slide. Up and down the slide. Up and . . . Wait, maybe he’s going to . . . No, there he goes, down the slide.

It’s the same cliques as always on the playground. The Euro moms dominate the sandbox, the Santa Monica moms are in the west corner under the oak tree, and the Spanish-speaking nannies in hospital scrubs (which I really hope was their idea and not their employers’) are sitting on the benches.

The redheaded dad from Chicago is pointing out to me how one of the ladders on the climbing structure is wood and the other is rope. “That one, do you see it? It’s wood. All wood. The other one, not the wood one but the one next to it, it’s rope. I didn’t realize that until yesterday.” I want to scream, “YOU DIDN’T?!” in his face, but I don’t want to ruin Leo’s reputation, so I point toward the sky. “What’s that?” I ask and walk away to see what sort of soup the Euro moms are feeding their kids for breakfast today.

By the time I stroll over, they’re finishing up breakfast and watching their kids play with handmade felt dolls that look alarmingly like Aunt Jemima. I invite myself to sit down next to the German woman with braids on both sides of her head. Not cool Björk-like braids, more like heavy eighties Princess Leia braids that could tip her over and bury half her head in the sand. The way she dresses Drajum, her two-year-old boy, in scratchy old-man suits makes me think she may be the dark comic of the group, so I lean over to her and say, “I think the only people that playgrounds are fun for are pedophiles.”

My life has been exhausting and surprisingly isolating since Leo turned one. It’s like being a sober buddy for a drunk celebrity who’s fallen off the wagon, like if a movie studio assigned me to follow Charlie Sheen around and try to prevent him from getting into trouble. It’s also so much more isolating than I thought it was going to be. I assumed I’d gather a little posse on the playground and we’d be sharing secrets and mimosas, but it’s so boring. The last thing I want to talk about is kids. Yet it’s all everyone talks about. The book publisher who warned me about writing a book about motherhood was right. She said, “Unless you’re a zany drinking mom doing crystal meth and using diapers to sop up their spilled tequila shots, nobody really wants to hear moms tell stories about their kids.”

Finally, a middle-aged mom parks her Winnebago-size stroller next to me and gives me a big crazy smile. She needs to talk.

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