Random header image... Refresh for more!

Let's Play Guess Where I Am in My Cycle…(Children Mentioned)

My mother bought my kids a new book called Little Quack’s Bedtime and we were reading it at dinner tonight for the first time. It’s about a mother telling her five ducks to go to sleep. It’s a simple tale of ducks being scared of the dark, but of course, if you think as I do, you can see infertility references in everything. The ducks point out all the things that are scaring them about the dark and the mother reassures them.

And then that last duck…goddamn Little Quack…had to twist his figurative knife into my literal heart.

Puddle shut his eyes and went to sleep.
But Little Quack was still awake.
Little Quack looked. Little Quack listened.
All around was dark dark dark.

“Mama!” he cried. “Why, oh, why is the night so dark?”

Mama snuggled close, and then she said,
“So the stars can shine their twinkling light.
That’s why the night is, oh, so dark.”

And I bawled.

0 comments

1 Royalyne { 09.07.06 at 7:51 am }

Little Quack made me tear up just now. And that mommy duck is amazing, her ability to say something so profound, yet understandable to her children… I hope I’m as good a mother as that duck.

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
The contents of this website are protected by applicable copyright laws. All rights are reserved by the author