How We Do It: Part IV in an ongoing series

Sophie and Henry, 1999

When Sophie had a big seizure at breakfast this morning, like she does most mornings, I undid her seat-belt and tried to prevent her arms and legs from banging into the table. I gathered her, jerking, into my arms and sat in the seat myself and noticed that her bony limbs were cushioned by my soft, perhaps too soft but then again, maybe in a good way, soft hips and arms and breasts and that is what I thought about as I sat there, enclosing her, Henry tipping his blue and black baseball hat to me and stroking Sophie's leg with his own broad hands. I thought of bones and tissue, what knits the two together, the point of her elbow wedged into the soft curve of my breast, a hip sharp in my stomach, an extended leg stiff against my thigh. Her bones grew inside me and still, I hold them, awkward and tensed, articulate in the folds.