Fresh air did do wonders. Angeni inhaled deeply the moment she stepped outside, felt her inner world make sense again, the ragged edges smoothing. She walked quickly to catch up to Sitka and Freya. From a distance, she saw they had stopped in the clearing up ahead. It was a perfect space between the trees, a space Angeni envisioned using for prayer circles and other rituals. She pictured groups of people visiting The Land for healing, sitting on stools made from tree trunks, flowers woven in their hair. In her visions, the gatherings were always in the open air, but she knew it would be wise to build a yurt as well. It rained so often. The Clearing Project, as Erik had dubbed it, was number two on their list of priorities. The first priority was their outdoor sauna and ice bath, what Angeni referred to as The Pharmacy because it offered what their bodies needed more than actual drugs made by greedy pharmaceutical companies.
Angeni stopped about a hundred feet from Sitka and Freya. She watched them, the ease they had with each other. Sitka seemed like a different person whenever Angeni witnessed her alone with Freya. She laughed with her whole body. She smiled so big, her white teethgleaming. Around Angeni, Sitka’s smiles were always tight; Angeni never saw teeth.
In this moment, Sitka was holding Freya above her head and spinning around. Freya giggled with a gusto that filled Angeni with a mix of joy and doubt. Was Angeni too serious with Freya? Did Freya prefer someone younger and more fun? Was this just the classic mother-daughter friction already revealing itself? Freya knew she had her mother’s love, so it was less interesting than the love of this person who was a stranger until just recently. Freya would spend her life pushing against her mother’s love, testing its fortitude, in a way she would never push against any other human being’s. It was an honor and it was torture.
Angeni resumed walking, picking up her pace, nearly jogging through the grass.
“Hi, you two,” she called out.
Sitka stopped spinning and held Freya against her chest. When Angeni got to them, she said, “Mommy’s here” and reached for Freya. She analyzed Freya’s facial expression, looking for disappointment. There was none that she could decipher.
“See how nature makes us feel better?” she said to Freya, lifting her over her head as Sitka had been doing, then sitting on the ground with Freya in her lap.
Angeni let Freya touch the dirt and the ferns with her tiny hands. This was her dream, to have her daughter create an intimate relationship with The Land, to know every inch of the forest, to be tuned in to nature in a way that so many children these days were not. Angeni was horrified by the realities of iPads and YouTube, couldn’t believe that so many parents allowed their children to while away hours on devices. She had to be careful she didn’t come across as judgmental, though. She’d received enough flak already:
Your kid isn’t even 1 yet. Wait til she’s 2 and you need a fucking second to yourself
You seem kinda clueless about your privilege. You don’t work a regular job. You have all kinds of helpers living with you. If I had that, my kid wouldn’t be on the iPad either
I’m catching a whiff of mommy wars. Can we just not? We all have diff circumstances and we’re all doing our best
Single mama here and ya, I use the iPad. tbh u have no idea what it’s like to not have help
Angeni didn’t bother responding to any of these people. She’d learned that some people were just dead set on criticizing her. This was social media—a venue for people to vent their grievances and express their bitterness in. Angeni was a perfect target because she had this life that so many envied. Did that make her a bad person? She hadn’t always had this life. She’d manifested it with care and intention. Too few people took responsibility for their existence.
Sitka placed a small pebble in Freya’s palm, and Angeni watched as she, predictably, lifted it to her mouth.
“Oh, no, sweetie, we don’t eat rocks,” she said with a nervous laugh, taking the pebble from Freya’s hand.
This led to the return of Crying Freya. Angeni cradled the baby in her arms, offered her a pinkie finger to grasp in place of the pebble. Within a few seconds, Freya settled, but Angeni still harbored irritation with Sitka for offering Freya the pebble.
“She will literally try to eat anything you give her,” Angeni said.
She expected an immediate apology from Sitka, but Sitka said, “I was watching her. I wouldn’t, like, let her eat arock.”
“She can be quick about it. She could swallow it, and you wouldn’t even know.”
“I watch her,” Sitka said. “Carefully.”
Angeni didn’t like the defensiveness in her tone. Angeni was the mother. Angeni was in charge. She had a passing thought that she should check Freya’s poop more carefully, in search of pebbles or whatever other evidence that Sitka did not watch as carefully as she should.
“I’m sorry, though,” Sitka said as if reading Angeni’s mind.
Angeni always softened in response to apologies.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Erik says I’m too protective.”
This seemed to pique Sitka’s interest. “Does he?”
“Well, yeah. He’s always been more laid back than me, I suppose. Every relationship has to have one person who is more anxious and one person who is telling the other to be less anxious.”
She laughed to alert Sitka to the fact that this was nothing to take terribly seriously. She and Erik, they were solid. They’d spent years together working through their differences and had arrived at a peaceful place of allowing each other to be authentically themselves.
“Have you had many serious relationships?” she asked Sitka.
“Not serious, no,” Sitka said.
That was what Angeni had assumed. Sitka was so young. She had so much to uncover about herself, and if or when she had serious relationships, there would be even more to uncover. That was what Angeni talked about in her Conscious Couples Communicating webinars—how relationships revealed things that we simply could not know in the comfort of our own company. Relationships were our greatest teachers.
