opposite direction with their prize, howling in triumph as they careened across the bumpy, pitted, uneven ground, probably destroying what was left of the stroller’s overworked springs. The young mom jumped to her feet, baby still in her arms.
“Marcus! Miles! Come back here right now!”
They ignored her, let out another battle cry, and took a sharp left, heading straight for a brown-haired little boy who was wearing the same kind of rubber boots as they were, green with googly frog eyes on the toes. Seeing the maniacal marauders coming after him, the smaller boy shrieked in terror and ran.
“Marcus! Miles! You two leave Geoffrey alone! I am not kidding!”
They still ignored her. The terrorized Geoffrey ran toward the lake and around a clump of bushes with the Evil Twins in hot pursuit. Before I really knew what was happening, the Mother of Dragons thrust the baby into my arms.
“Hold her for a second, will you? And keep an eye on Walt. I’ll be right back.”
And just like that, without even giving me a chance to respond or asking if I might be a felon or had any communicable diseases, she dashed off and left me, a perfect stranger, in charge of two of her five children.
She was gone for about ten minutes, the most wonderful, most heartbreaking ten minutes of my life.
I spent probably five of them just looking at that baby, admiring her perfect little lashes, smiling at the snot bubble and the way her rosebud mouth quivered and worked when I stroked my finger across the impossibly soft skin of her porcelain pink cheek. She was a beautiful baby and a perfect fit; it was as if she’d been custom-sized for my arms. It was heaven; I could have held her forever.
I heard a sound of shuffling feet and looked up to see Walt, the towheaded boy who’d waved from the slide, also clad in green frog boots, standing in front of me.
“I’m hungry,” he said, blinking at me with blue eyes.
“Oh. Well . . . how about some raisins?”
He didn’t say anything, just climbed up on the bench and sat down next to me. I took this as a yes and started digging through the diaper bag—if she hadn’t minded leaving me with her kids, I didn’t suppose she’d mind me looking through her bag—until I located a small, slightly crushed red box.
“Here you go.”
Walt opened the box, fished out three raisins with his chubby fingers and put them in his mouth.
“Are they good?”
He chewed and nodded and wiggled his little torso back and forth in a bench-bound happy dance.
“Wanna play I Spy?” he asked after digging a few more raisins from the box.
“Sure,” I said. “You start.”
Walt frowned and chewed and twisted his towhead from left to right, searching for a subject. “I spy . . . something green.”
“Something green. Hmm . . . Is it a tree?”
“Yes!” Walt exclaimed, swiveling his head in my direction and dropping his jaw in amazement, as if I had just performed some sort of magic trick. “How did you know?”
We played a couple more rounds. Walt spied only green things—a bush, a bench, his boots, maybe it was the only color he knew—continuing to be astounded every time I guessed right. He was the cutest little boy, sweet enough to spread on toast, as Calpurnia used to say. And for those ten minutes, I got to live my fantasy. I was just a mom in the park, charged with the care of two lovely, perfect little humans. Nobody walking by would have guessed they weren’t mine. My heart was happy and completely full. That was the wonderful part.
Did she know, that weary and worn-out Mother of Dragons, how incredibly lucky she was? To have such abundance? A husband and home, more children than one set of arms could hold? Did she have any idea what other women, those who’d spent time, money, and anguish on fertility treatments that didn’t work, penned desperate “Dear Birth Mother” letters that went unanswered, felt when she told them that, for her, conception was as easy as using her husband’s toothbrush?
Jealousy, yes. But much more than that. Jealousy and longing and the fear that somehow they themselves must be undeserving or unfit, angry to be denied something so simple and natural, a gift that others opened again and again without effort or thought. I’d have given anything to trade places with her.
Those ten minutes were precious but, of course, they didn’t last. The young