Dating Big Bird by Laura Zigman

Author:Laura Zigman [Zigman, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-82827-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-04T14:00:00+00:00

I could believe anything at this point—including the Pickle’s assertion, later that evening when I was putting her to bed, that the reason she’d peed in her Pull-Up this time was because she didn’t know where the bathroom was.

“You know where the bathroom is.”

She shook her head.

“Yes, you do. It’s right there.” I pointed at her bedroom door and beyond toward the hallway. “Maybe you should go now before you go to sleep.”

“No way,” she said.

“Yes way.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

I grabbed both cheeks and got in her face as close as I could without touching her.

“Nose kiss!” I ordered.

“Nose kiss!” she repeated, and then she grabbed my face, too, and we rubbed noses and wrestled each other and rolled around on the bed until I was exhausted.

It was time to go to sleep by then—Nicole’s bedtime, not mine, though I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I was ready to collapse. I got into bed with her, under the covers, and read her a pile of books. By the fifth story, our eyes were drooping, so I finished the one we were in the middle of, Blueberries for Sal, then slid out of bed and turned the Barney night-light on and the big light off.

I got back in bed and pulled the Winnie-the-Pooh comforter up under her neck and breathed deeply. It had been a long day, a very long day, and my mind was still racing from my sister’s news. Would they have a boy this time, and would they want to know beforehand, unlike the first time with Nicole, when they wanted to be surprised? How would Nicole react to a new little brother or sister, and how would I react to being an aunt for the second time? Could I ever feel for the new baby what I’d come to feel for Nicole, or was she always going to be my favorite? I wondered suddenly what she would be like in a few years when she was older. Would she always be as headstrong and opinionated and sure of herself as she was now? Would she keep painting and become an artist, or would a sudden fascination with Lego building blocks emerge and make her want to become an architect or a mathematician? Would we always be as close as we were now? Would she still like me? Or would her growing up inevitably mean our growing apart? And when I leaned over to kiss her, I couldn’t help imagining what my child would be like, look like, grow up into, if I had a child.

“Good night, my Pickle.”

“Good night,” she said. “I la loo.”

“I la loo, too,” I said back.

I went to sleep in tears, so moved by the simple bliss of her declaration that I was unable to think about anything else before I fell asleep—except wanting a child of my own, and what I was going to do to make that happen.

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