Baby Race

Heather Hamilton-Post

for Chilli

That time I was knocked to the floor, gasping at the tenderheartedness of a cartoon dog, held hostage by my own shallow breath in the moonlit moments before bed.

My own child, struggling to grip a pencil or complete work, his friends already reading sentences and sitting quietly. Comparison the thief of joy, my own incessant need for competition turning him into a problem to be fixed.

Cartoon dogs attend cartoon mom’s group, worried that baby Bluey isn’t walking yet and goddamnit, I’ve never, in a moment, felt so seen.

If I had known that the baby stage was the easy stage––but what is easy about the entirety of parenthood, always changing, demanding different, a constant pivot toward or away from the thing that was, only yesterday, certain?

When Bella, the experienced mama poodle, sits on Chilli’s front porch and tells her that she’s doing great, I cry, not for the first time, at a cartoon, but never this hard.

When, at the end of the episode, Bluey shuffles unsteadily, arms reaching toward her mother, the screen flashing to the present moment, an older Bluey asking why she took her first steps there, in the kitchen, and Chilli says, Maybe you just saw something you wanted.

MOON BEAM

It’s good to be black on the moon.

CAPT. ANGELA ALI, SPACE FORCE

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