muddied.
“What did they say?” Sara asked her father. He looked down at her and smiled.
“They said—Adults need to have fun so children will want to grow up.”
And so, for the next ten years, Sara and Henry’s summers had been filled with screwdrivers and wrenches and bicycle and boat parts, with dreams of flying and floating and racing down hills in cars that looked like butterflies, bicycles that felt like small boats sailing through air.
And for ten winters they waited for the moment when the whole process would start over again, when their father would look up, eyes lit with excitement, and say, “ I have an idea .”
SARA HAD MET her future husband during her freshman year in college when they were assigned as lab partners in an art photography class. Dan had just needed another elective in his schedule, but it was clear to everyone that he had an eye that saw moments more than things, his photographs reaching out to the viewer, making them step closer into the story held on the paper.
Dan always said later that he had had a head start with Sara, getting to spend all that time with her in the darkroom, with its heady mix of chemicals and soft red light. Sara knew better. She had fallen in love with him the moment she saw his hands gently unrolling the developed film from the round metal cylinder, the way his fingers seemed to caress the edges of the ribbon of negatives, the anticipation in his face as he waited to see what had made its way into the camera. Some people said you could know before you looked, but Dan didn’t agree. He said half the fun was seeing what you didn’t know you’d taken, the story that had found you.
And yet when Dan, despite the urgings of the teacher, had declined to see photography as more than an extracurricular activity and chose instead to stay with the architecture major that would provide a living for Sara and the children they wanted to have, she had stepped under the wing of his practicality with relief. They got married the minute after they graduated.
From the beginning, Sara had felt the pull toward procreation, toward Dan, as strong as the current of a river, deep and sensual, impossible to resist when she was ovulating. During the weeks when she was not fertile, she had felt like paper, thin and insubstantial, ready to blow away with the next wind. Then the current would return and she would slide into it, let go, roll over to Dan and trace the lines of his shoulder blades with the tip of her tongue, let her fingers slide down the muscular lengths of his legs. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hormones, Dan said with a laugh, but he had loved the feeling of the river as much as she did, the way it turned his wife into something fluid and rich and powerful, so absolutely sure of what she wanted. It had taken all the willpower they had to wait to conceive a baby until Dan was through architecture school and they had more than a studio apartment and a beat-up Volkswagen bus.
But when it finally happened, Sara loved being pregnant, the mystery of not knowing who was inside her, her own roll of film waiting to be developed. She and Dan would go to movies and scan the credits for names they liked. Dan would write the top contenders on strips of paper and lay them across Sara’s burgeoning stomach—to see if they fit, they would joke. They had spent weekends painting the baby’s room, evenings putting together the crib, and Sara had fallen in love with her husband’s hands all over again, the way they held a paintbrush or a screwdriver or the small of her back, the seemingly effortless capability of them.
While most women she knew wanted only bland food when they were pregnant, Sara was ravenous for new spices, the taste of heat. Coriander and cumin, habanero peppers, fish oil and red pepper flakes, a hot sauce from New Orleans that had them all sweating. She traveled among the spices, searching out the new and different, her ever-increasing stomach preceding her like a
“What did they say?” Sara asked her father. He looked down at her and smiled.
“They said—Adults need to have fun so children will want to grow up.”
And so, for the next ten years, Sara and Henry’s summers had been filled with screwdrivers and wrenches and bicycle and boat parts, with dreams of flying and floating and racing down hills in cars that looked like butterflies, bicycles that felt like small boats sailing through air.
And for ten winters they waited for the moment when the whole process would start over again, when their father would look up, eyes lit with excitement, and say, “ I have an idea .”
SARA HAD MET her future husband during her freshman year in college when they were assigned as lab partners in an art photography class. Dan had just needed another elective in his schedule, but it was clear to everyone that he had an eye that saw moments more than things, his photographs reaching out to the viewer, making them step closer into the story held on the paper.
Dan always said later that he had had a head start with Sara, getting to spend all that time with her in the darkroom, with its heady mix of chemicals and soft red light. Sara knew better. She had fallen in love with him the moment she saw his hands gently unrolling the developed film from the round metal cylinder, the way his fingers seemed to caress the edges of the ribbon of negatives, the anticipation in his face as he waited to see what had made its way into the camera. Some people said you could know before you looked, but Dan didn’t agree. He said half the fun was seeing what you didn’t know you’d taken, the story that had found you.
And yet when Dan, despite the urgings of the teacher, had declined to see photography as more than an extracurricular activity and chose instead to stay with the architecture major that would provide a living for Sara and the children they wanted to have, she had stepped under the wing of his practicality with relief. They got married the minute after they graduated.
From the beginning, Sara had felt the pull toward procreation, toward Dan, as strong as the current of a river, deep and sensual, impossible to resist when she was ovulating. During the weeks when she was not fertile, she had felt like paper, thin and insubstantial, ready to blow away with the next wind. Then the current would return and she would slide into it, let go, roll over to Dan and trace the lines of his shoulder blades with the tip of her tongue, let her fingers slide down the muscular lengths of his legs. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hormones, Dan said with a laugh, but he had loved the feeling of the river as much as she did, the way it turned his wife into something fluid and rich and powerful, so absolutely sure of what she wanted. It had taken all the willpower they had to wait to conceive a baby until Dan was through architecture school and they had more than a studio apartment and a beat-up Volkswagen bus.
But when it finally happened, Sara loved being pregnant, the mystery of not knowing who was inside her, her own roll of film waiting to be developed. She and Dan would go to movies and scan the credits for names they liked. Dan would write the top contenders on strips of paper and lay them across Sara’s burgeoning stomach—to see if they fit, they would joke. They had spent weekends painting the baby’s room, evenings putting together the crib, and Sara had fallen in love with her husband’s hands all over again, the way they held a paintbrush or a screwdriver or the small of her back, the seemingly effortless capability of them.
While most women she knew wanted only bland food when they were pregnant, Sara was ravenous for new spices, the taste of heat. Coriander and cumin, habanero peppers, fish oil and red pepper flakes, a hot sauce from New Orleans that had them all sweating. She traveled among the spices, searching out the new and different, her ever-increasing stomach preceding her like a
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