Show Me the Way : A Memoir in Stories

by Jennifer Lauck

• ISBN13: 9780743476386
• ISBN10: 0743476387
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-06
• Publisher: Atria

Summary

Carl Jung said, "Children are driven, unconsciously, in a direction that is intended to compensate for everything that was left unfulfilled in the life of their parents." It is this very statement that haunts Jennifer Lauck, and inspires Show Me the Way, a marvelous book of honest, funny, and touching stories from the trenches of motherhood.Having lost both of her parents at an early age, Jennifer Lauck, acclaimed author of the memoir Blackbird, as well as its follow-up, Still Waters, has in Show Me the Way come to terms with her past in order to move forward as a mother to her own children.A luminous writer who is always observing, whose self-examination is frank, poignant, and never cloying, Lauck's stories touch upon themes common to so many of her readers: labor, delivery, and the physical details of giving birth; the decision to have a second child; the struggle to maintain independence against the pull of motherhood; the tenuous work/life balancing act; the gossamer threads holding family together; the soul-defining nature of caring for children; and the ultimate surrender of finally "getting it."Illustrating the author's wonderful insight, irreverence, and core of inner strength, Show Me the Way is a book for all mothers, and a rewarding conclusion for fans of Jennifer Lauck.

Table of Contents

The Past
Show Me the Way	p. 3
Never Say Never	p. 43
Brothers and Sisters	p. 65
Links	p. 77
Naked Trees	p. 85
The Present
Breast-feeding Rebel	p. 99
Getting the Blues	p. 119
What Haunts the Night	p. 139
Child Abuse Awareness Week	p. 153
On Drugs	p. 167
The Future
The Orchid	p. 191
The First Pancake	p. 213
It Takes a Village	p. 233
Bubbles	p. 257
Life Is What Happens	p. 267
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Show Me The Way It's Mother's Day, actually Mother's Day night, and I lie in bed with Steve. The windows are open, a row of three side by side, and they are draped with linen sheers that dance on the air of May.Just outside, the wisteria and the lilac bloom purple. Out front, the vines of the white roses tangle around the wood pillars of the porch. Under today's long show of sun, hundreds of those rosebuds burst open, bright white, as if they had a secret they could no longer contain.As I fall asleep, there are two things: the cool wind with its smell of flowers and the feel of Steve, who breathes deep in his chest on his inhales and lets out little puffs on his exhales.Then there is something else.I open my eyes.Steve's on his back, his puffy breathing shifting into a low snore.I lie on my side with my legs and arms wound around a pile of pillows and between my legs, there is a wet feeling like I just had an accident.I roll out of the pillow nest and move the covers aside. I arch my back into the mattress and shove out of bed, stomach first.I leave Steve and sleep behind, barefoot over the cool wood floors. A hairline of wet runs down the inside of my thigh.In the bathroom, I close the door and snap on the light.The white of the bulb makes my eyes burn.I wad my nightgown in one hand and pull my underwear down with the other. I have to twist and bend to see past my stomach but down there, it's true. My underwear is soaked through.I waddle-step myself to the toilet and sit down to get a closer look. The wet spot has no color I can see. I push my underwear off and kick it into the corner. I pull tissue off the roll, dab at myself, once, twice, three times and look at the wad in my hand. I dab again and look. There is no blood there at all, there's not even a shade of pink. It's just amniotic fluid, the bag of waters broken, the baby's indoor swimming pool with a hole in it and that's fine, except my baby isn't due for six more weeks.I drop the wad of toilet paper into the toilet and rub my hands hard into my face, into my eyes. Black-and-white dots of nothing race wild inside my head.In the dark of another night, I am seven years old and the heavy shake of a hand opens my eyes."Get up, Juniper," my father says.He lets me go, stands up, and shakes B.J. where he sleeps on the top bunk of our beds."Wake up, son," my father says. "We've got to take your mom to a doctor." Down the hall of our apartment, light spills out of their bedroom and my mother calls for my father in a voice that sounds broken. He walks long steps out of our room and talks back at us."Come on, kids," he says, "get up now." I get out of bed quick and take up pants folded neat at the end of the bed.B.J. stays up there in his top bunk and rolls to face the wall.He's always like that when we get woken up at night.I snap my pants together and my hands shake hard. I run down the hall, pushing my nightgown into the waistband of my pants.In their bedroom bathroom, my mother's crumpled on the floor with her bare legs out from her nightgown. She holds the toilet with both hands like she can't let go."Momma?" I say.Her face is shaped like a heart and her eyes are as black as Egyptian stones. On her mouth, I can't tell if it's lipstick or blood. She wipes the red away with the back of her hand and searches for me as if I'm not right there.I move in closer and when she sees me in the light, she smiles like this is fine, like everything is just fine.This is fine, I tell myself, everything is just fine.I flush the toilet and it takes the wadded tissues away.The walls in our bathroom are a deep green and when we first painted this room, I dipped a duster into silver paint and whispered the edges of feathers over the walls. It was something I read about in a book, this way to blend the seams where plaster meets Sheetrock, but right