Three Hour Lunch with Antique Mommy: A Triptych

A few months ago, I read Thom Satterlee’s poem “The Black Friars Beg Wyclif to Recant of his Chief Heresy and Die in Peace; a Triptych.” The poem stayed with me, and I started musing about using it as a form for a blog post. Then I had lunch with the wonderful Antique Mommy and thought, “Aha!” (we’ve been reading In Which Kanga And Baby Roo Come To The Forest And Piglet Has A Bath, and Aha! is something heard often around here). So I thought “Aha! I will post my lunch with Antique Mommy as a triptych!” (If you don’t know what a triptych is, click here or here.)

Left Piece

I am driving down the highway, Antique Mommy sitting beside me. My baby is in a carseat behind us. Az the Husband and Antique Daddy and Sean are in the car ahead of us.

I am talking. I am talking a lot. Nervously and non-stop. I gradually become aware that in my gabbling, I am telling AM every scandal my family has ever had. Why don’t I stop talking? O sweet merciful stars, did I just tell her that?

“I should probably warn you,” I say, half-joking, “that I have only been driving an automatic for about two weeks now, and there is a possibility that at some point my foot will jam on the brake, looking for a clutch that isn’t there.”

“Oh. Okay,” she replies evenly, and grips the door handle with white knuckles.

Well, at least she didn’t leap screaming from the car. Maybe this will go well. Maybe we will even do this again sometime.

We’ll have to. I’ve thought of two family scandals I haven’t told her yet.

—————————————————

Hinge

An interlace of the diaper bags I forgot, the diaper I had to beg off Antique Mommy and the large piece of basil I found in my front teeth after we said goodbye.

———————————————————

Center Piece

We are all sitting together at lunch. The baby is crying. I try to feed her, but she refuses. She wants to be moving.

I stand and sway and bounce and we try to continue the conversation.

“…blogging brings us so many different voices that we never heard when publishers controlled things…”

Antique Mommy offers to take the baby. She, I and Az take turns walking the baby, circling around and around the table, into the bar, catching new snatches of words on the return trip, passing the baby onto the next person.

“…feels like such a privilege to get to know people who would never let us get so close in person once they knew who we are…”

I take the baby and pace, walking round the tables, pausing for a few grandmotherly women to adore her. I return to our table, bouncing, and Az takes her and starts walking. I sit down once again, distracted but at home with these other parents, Antique Mommy and Antique Daddy, who have also stumbled upon this truth:

The uninterrupted life is not worth living.

———————————————————–

Hinge

An interlace of pacifiers on ribbons, ribbons turning to vines, vines blooming into sweetpeas.

—————————————————-

Left Piece

At meeting, Sean is in his daddy’s arms, head buried in his daddy’s neck. Occasionally he raises his head enough to peep at me with one eye, then burrows deeper into the safety of his father.

After our meal, we are sitting at the table, and Sean climbs down from his chair and begins to dance. Whirl and stomp, skip and swing, full of glee, joy radiating out his fingertips. He asks AM to dance, too.

“I think people would rather see you dance than me,” she declines, smiling.

We say our farewells, and Az and the baby and I drive home. “That is one little boy,” Az says as we drive, “supremely confident in his parents’ love.”

The rain continues to fall.