Cassie Burkhardt
THREE FLASH ON MOTHERHOOD
MUD KITCHEN
Dirt is the bane of my existence, but my kids love it—can’t resist it, never met a mud puddle they didn’t immediately want to wade in barefoot. All I see is laundry. We live in woodsy Pennsylvania, so they have plenty of access to the stuff. I like snow. I love sand, which wipes clean. They love mud. Their favorite game is mud kitchen. Give them a forgotten plastic spoon, teacups, Tupperware containers, access to a hose and voilà, two hours of entertainment. I’m watching them from the kitchen window right now as I boil pasta for dinner at the stove. Perched behind the trampoline, my son is folding a leaf taco with mud hot sauce for an appetizer, stirring a silty stew with mud meatballs as the main course and for dessert, my daughters emerge from the playhouse with various mud cakes decorated with flower petals, baby pinecones and fern fronds. They are breathlessly directing each other as if on a movie set, sweating and half-naked even though it’s October, full of ideas, filthy dirty. I sigh, pour myself a giant glass of wine, try to understand, to remember. Did I love mud as a kid? I mean I must have, right? The oozy squish between fingers and toes, the velvety thickness of it, the creamy malleability of it as an artistic medium, claylike, chocolatey. Did I too admire the versatility of these two simple ingredients: dirt and water? Did I paint my face with it? Ella does. Paints it on her eyelids, her lips, says she likes the taste of it. “All right, give me a mud makeover too,” I say, wandering out to the backyard with my glass of wine. Really?? She laughs, paints my lips with her fingers. I pucker up, kiss Ella, then lick my mud-lips, laughing. Yuck. I have to say it tastes vaguely familiar, which makes me happy. I guess I haven’t forgotten the taste of joy after all. It tastes creamy, wet, gritty, with a hint of rain, mica, fern roots, worm. A Michelin-star-worthy earth-soup, I tell her. I laugh again, wipe my lips and head back inside to jot this down. “Five more minutes, OK, guys? Then I’m hosing you down.”
ON CHILDBIRTH
I don’t want to have any more children. But I would like to give birth one more time–if I could? Just that. Not actually raising the kid again, hunched over cleaning a spaghetti-smeared high-chair, no, but I love giving birth. My first got sliced out in an emergency C, the second barreled into the world like a bowling ball on fire, a week early, bright red in the face. My third was the most velvet-y. I was a professional by that point. At five am I knew exactly that she would come in the next two hours. I declined the epidural, didn’t want anything to slow me down. I was well acquainted with pain; it no longer scared me. I let the contractions course through me. Three slow, pre-dawn hours. I waited patiently in my pain on the hospital bed in what I can only describe as a pulsating tunnel of light. When it came time to push, I felt it acutely. Flipped over onto all fours like a mother lion. Call it a catlike reflex. She came out in one exquisite exhale. Velvet. The midwife practically tossed her to me. Meet your baby, catch! Oh my god, that moment. That is my favorite life moment. The sun is just coming up. My husband is there, but off stage. Hushed tones. A little blood. Warm skin. So quiet the edges of the room fade away. I’m alone in the world with my baby. My jewel. My third and last. My warm pickle. I clutched her so close in my half-nakedness and everything else disappeared.
THE WORLD MIGHT EAT YOU
Brazos Bend, Texas
I’ve made a lot of dumb decisions as a mother but taking my kids to a state park that was also an alligator refuge might’ve been the dumbest. Is it any surprise that along the path a big kahuna appeared before us, mouth agape, perfectly still in all its reptilian glory? I could feel the sweat dripping down my butt crack, heart thumping in my chest, but also thought to myself, oh come on—seriously?, was actually a little pissed that the gator had the nerve to put me in this dilemma with my kids and I had to decide then and there, should we take the long way back in one-hundred-degree-Texas-heat with no water (we drank it all) or hold hands, brace ourselves and make a go for it—me, the infant strapped to my chest in a moist Ergo Baby, the three- and five-year-old on my right and what, I’d be the shield? OK, give me some credit—I did wait and let a few other park-goers pass the gator first, including one couple with a dog on a leash and when the gator wasn’t spooked and no one got eaten, I said OK, kids, let’s go, walk, and we walked (bravely?) past the beast and lived! See?I knew it, I cheered internally, he wasn’t threatening after all, the gator still hadn’t moved, just continued to stand there, regal, deckle-edged specimen cooling himself through the mouth. I took the deepest exhale in the world, picked up the pace, my son said nothing, wasn’t even phased, to be honest I was practically devastated, but also relieved by his unwavering trust in me in the face of death and then as if on cue, a family of Roseate spoonbills flew above our heads and dropped pink feathers from the sky, which by the way (just saying) was the other reason I had wanted to go to the park—it was a spoonbill rookery! Overlooking a tapestry of purple flowers that the swamp wore like a skirt, lush greenery all around us, the Spanish moss on the live oaks doing an allongé in the breeze that reminded us of the branches of The Giving Tree, rugged, playful branches that never lose their leaves, never ever, they will cling forever to the great tree to protect it, children, I’m sorry I didn’t want to tell you but the world might eat you, maybe not today, but in sneaky ways over the years it will try and I’ll do my best to protect you, but you know what? Scratch that, forget it, don’t be afraid, take the world as is, all of it, the terrifying and the beautiful and yes, always believe in a mother’s intuition, but also, do me a favor, don’t count on it.
Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #47.
Submit to Cleaver!
