Straddling The Picket Fence
an excerpt

I never wanted a picket-fence life. You know the life I’m talking about; the job, the kids, the keeping up with the Jones’. I didn’t want that. Yes, I wanted a job and I wanted –and have!—a beautiful child, but I wanted my life to have some flavor and zest. An intellectual’s life of dinner parties, or an artist’s life of happy chaos. Not the clean, sterile life of suburbia.

So when Pierre, my husband, wrapped Bear-bear and I up into a hug and told us we were going to move to Storm City, I dropped my brushes and hugged them both back. It would be an adventure! Our son Bear-bear (his name is Robert) did not share my enthusiasm. So it took all of my energy to explain to him the merits of adventure while we were packing and organizing, and otherwise frantically engaged in what more pedantic people call “moving”.

“It’ll be fun, you’ll see.” I said.

“Storm City is great; it has weather like you’ll never see again. It has tornadoes and hurricanes and ball lightning.” I enthused.

“Your favorite part will be the volcanoes,” I opined.

But Bear-bear was my son, as stubborn as a constipated troll, and would have none of it. Sure, he smiled and talked around it happily, “We’re moving, don’t you think that’s wonderful?”, but his ears stayed firmly down and his shoulders drooped. He was smiling for society, saying aphorisms to prove his “positive mental attitude”. Luckily body-language wasn’t yet regulated.

“You know,” I said to him one day while Pierre was running errands, “this isn’t helping. You’re moping, and so not only are we trying to actually change your mind about the move, but we’re worried you’re going to get sent early.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, seven-year-old cartoon head cocked to one side.

“The asteroid we’re going to live on, Gilgamesh? That’s where the Depression Colony is.”

This tidbit was news to him. Apparently, although every child old enough to talk knows what the Depression Colony is (especially one of mine), they didn’t know where it was. Suddenly, as the information assimilated in his brain, his ears tipped up and back, and his smile became real. “Dad’s going to work in the Depression colony? Cool!”

“That’s right. So we all need to be especially careful there, but it will be interesting, too.”

After that, Bear-bear was more helpful and certainly less of a drain.