Small Animals by Kim Brooks

Author:Kim Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

PART II

THE COST OF FEAR

6

WHAT A HORRIBLE MOTHER

Sometimes I think about how the story might have ended here. I came home from Virginia more than a little embarrassed, more than a little ashamed, but basically grateful that there would be no more waiting and wondering; that in nine months, if I completed my one hundred hours of community service and twenty hours of parenting education, it would all be over and I could put what had happened behind me. Maybe in a few years, Pete and I would even joke about it. Most parents have their own examples of parenting-fail family folklore, stupid mistakes that could have ended really badly but didn’t, and so over time, they become funny.

Don’t get me wrong. One hundred hours of community service seemed like a lot, especially since I’d been struggling to squeeze writing into the limited hours my children were at school. But it wasn’t as though I was going to jail. It wasn’t as though I was losing custody of my kids or being placed on a registry. In the grand scheme of things, I told myself, it was closer to annoyance than tragedy, so the best thing was probably to get it over with and then move on. As my lawyer had pointed out, I wasn’t being forced to pick up litter along the side of the road—although in retrospect that might have made me feel more useful than what I ended up doing. Picking up litter is something that needs to be done. It benefits everyone, beautifies a shared public space. What I ended up doing instead was more of the things I’d already been doing, more of what it seemed every parent I knew was doing. I volunteered for the organizations from which my own kids benefited—their soccer leagues and schools. I attended bake sales and fundraisers, supervised practices and organized snack assignments. My lawyer assured me that these were perfectly acceptable activities for fulfilling my volunteer hours, since they involved giving time to nonprofit organizations, and that the judge would find them appropriate, since, after all, my crime was not against the larger community but against my own “endangered” children. If my failing had been inattention to my kids, then hyper-attention seemed a suitable punishment. And so as I put in my time and logged my hours, it occurred to me that I was finally becoming the thing I’d never wanted to be: a housewife.

On a few occasions, I did wonder aloud to friends or family if perhaps the ordeal might be something I should consider writing about (I’d been writing essays about domestic life and motherhood for a few years), but they were quick to point out all the ways that might backfire. People went nuts when it came to these kinds of parenting issues, one friend told me. The discussions were always so black and white, so combative. I had no desire to become some kind of parenting-rights advocate, so what could be gained by writing

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