The Turth About Being Darwin

When my youngest daughter was eight, she caught a wild mouse out in the yard. She placed it inside a wooden box with thin wire netting for the sides intended to hold butterflies. Then put it on the same shelf that held Darwin, her store-bought mouse, in his brightly colored plastic cage. 

The wild mouse came without guarantees. We never assumed the wild mouse would still be in its cage. On the other hand, store-bought Darwin did. He was a Fancy Mouse. It meant stupid and boring: reliably tame.

After a few days, my daughter felt bad for the wild mouse wilting in the captivity of her room, and she let him go. It never occurred to her to feel bad for Darwin. She never considered that he might want out too. Instead, she held him in her tiny hands and created mazes for him to run and small salads to eat. He lived on her scraps of both food and attention.

In fact, no one seemed to think much about Darwin except for me. I, too, was a Fancy Mouse in a cage. I came with all sorts of guarantees. I was married at 18. I had two kids by the time I was 21, four by the time I was 30, and a grandma at 41.

I've been reliably tame forever. I thought that was just how it was until I met Sarah. For her and me to be the same thing redefines motherhood's boundaries. Sarah is a recovered alcoholic. She runs thick through the AA circles, gives motivational speeches, and holds workshops. She writes and recites poetry and paints in bright colors on giant canvases.  

Sarah avoided all the traps. She put herself first and second. Meanwhile, I cooked a hot breakfast for the kids, hers and mine, and let my coffee get cold. I did laundry barefoot on a cement floor between reading aloud and fixing hair. I cut the toast into triangles and the sandwiches into rectangles and ignored the uneaten crust. I watched hours of PBS and played board games. I drove our little souls around while they sang and gossiped in the backseat.

I answered every call.

I met every need.

I didn't do anything that Sarah couldn't have done herself. It wasn't beneath her to sacrifice her time for her children— she just didn't want to. And I didn't know how not to. I was constantly throwing out my plans to cover for her. She'd forget to pick up her kids from school. She'd run late, make promises and then blow it all up, and I'd have to step in and follow through. She'd forget to feed them. Forget to watch them. Forget they had emotional needs too.

It was incredibly stressful running around putting outing the fires she started while she bounced around chasing what felt good to her and only her.

I regularly managed to slip out of the house for a run, but I never really got to leave it all behind, not the way Sarah could. It is not in my nature. Don't go too far, get tired, and forget all you need to carry. Don't forget to buy more milk, pick them up from school, and drive them to gymnastics.

What I wanted for myself and what I needed showed up in my dreams. Added to coffee and the laughter of happy kids, it was enough.

Eventually, of course, I had to let Sarah go. From the moment my friendship with Sarah was conceived, it was ending. I didn't know that then. I wanted to believe there was something good inside everything I did for her and her children. What we had in common was we were both awake in a sleeping world. We saw each other.

The other thing was she reminded me of Wendi, my dead sister. Perhaps reminded is too weak of a word. She was Wendi.

And like Wendi, Sarah gave me just enough to hold on and keep me tied to her charms between the subsequent fault and the following favor. I now know that in the case of Sarah, it was simply a good illusion—a beautiful piece of chalk art under a thunderous storm.  

Sometimes I'd close my eyes and lay Sarah's image under my sister's shadow and wonder how thin the line really is. They were virtually the same person, so why did Wendi die and Sarah survive? How did Sarah stop drinking and Wendi drown? It's a mystery even to Sarah.

What isn't a mystery is what happened to Darwin. He died alone in his cage and was buried in a box in the yard.