KATHERINE KINDRED
The Accidental Mother
“Kate! There’s a monster in my room!”
Still mostly asleep, I notice that without the help of my conscious mind to direct them, my legs have somehow begun on their own, swinging over the side of the bed, moving me toward the door of my room as my arms reach out in the dark for the small boy I know is somewhere near. I take his hand as my pupils begin to dilate enough to allow me to see down the hallway toward the glow of his bedroom nightlight.
“Let’s go see,” I whisper, and pull him gently along, reaching for the light switch the moment we pass through the doorway. The room is suddenly filled with light, and my eyes squint as I look around. I see an unmade bed with a Spiderman pillow in the middle of it, tiny jeans lying on the floor (next to the laundry basket) and storybooks on the table beside the bed.
“I don’t see a monster,” I say, and look down into tear-rimmed eyes.
“It was in my dreams!” he tells me, and I notice he’s been dragging his teddy bear along with him the whole time.
We’re making progress, I think. For a long while, he was convinced the monster was somewhere in his room. The fact that he understands it was only in his dream is a giant step forward.
I pick him up to comfort him; he just turned five and is almost too big to hold, but he wraps his arms and legs around me and lays his head on my shoulder. I notice he is trembling. It only takes me a few minutes to get him snuggled back into bed, reassuring him the monster dream is over, telling him that instead he can dream about Grandma and Papa’s house and going to the movies with his cousins.
I climb back into bed, now wide-awake.
“Thanks for getting up with him,” Jim whispers beside me.
“You’re welcome,” I whisper back.
That’s when I realize the boy called out for me, not his dad, to protect him from the monster.
Me. Kate. Not his real mother, but his accidental one.
•
I’ve never made any apologies for the fact that my only “child” turned out to be a Border Collie named Annie. I adopted her when she was two years old, and having come from an abusive home, she was skittish and needy. She’s been with me for more than a decade, and I’m certain it is because of my patient and nurturing care that she now feels so well loved and secure she disobeys nearly every command I offer—unless, of course, a biscuit is involved. She’s smart and manipulative, and I love her all the more for it, yet she’s well behaved enough that she travels with me everywhere, which includes coming to work with me on a daily basis.
We survived two failed relationships together, and after the second divorce, I realized my opportunity to have children of the human kind had just passed me by. I accepted this fact gracefully, content to pretend Annie proof that had I wanted to, I could have successfully raised a kind and loving child. Knowing my eggs weren’t getting any younger, I opted for tubal ligation. Certain that I could live a full life without children, I did not embrace a life of post-divorce solitude. Welcoming the barrage of blind dates that followed, I soon learned that being childless at forty is unusual. At my age, nearly everyone single has at one point been married and many of those marriages have resulted in a child or two. And so I joked to all of my girlfriends that surely I was meant to be a stepmother instead of a birthmother. I would meet someone, I said, with two teenagers on their way to college who did not need a new mother, and whose father was financially and emotionally prepared for a less traditional relationship.
Obviously, I hadn’t fully evaluated other possible outcomes.
Welcome Michael, just months shy of four years old, dark blonde hair, big blue eyes and in dire need of a mother. Oh, and did I mention Jim, the handsome and charming father of said boy? The first time this little boy tested me with the word “mom” and then looked up into my eyes with a tiny grin, waiting, waiting, waiting, to see what my response would be, I knew I was in deep trouble.