It is October, the month in which both my daughters were born. I guess back in March of the year in which each was conceived, I thought that to have an autumn birthday in Maryland would be to celebrate the rest of your life in the prettiest month of the year, and somehow that worked out not once, but twice.  

We lived in a neighborhood that had long been a working-class fishing community but as waterfront property became coveted by Washington professionals willing to commute, the peninsula was becoming slowly gentrified. At the time we brought our firstborn home, however, it still possessed an eclectic diversity we were drawn to as young adults, but worried about now that we were parents. There were sirens at night, and once, gunfire right down the street. 

We pulled up in front of our white stucco Victorian with the picket fence I’d painted in the last days of my pregnancy, and I lifted my two-day-old daughter from her car seat for the first time. This was to be a private homecoming, with my mother arriving after we got settled to make us her Hawaiian chicken for dinner. Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated Mrs. Rosman next door. She was old and eccentric, unkempt in an unpleasant way, and her silent, staring husband was very strange. I was young and superficially friendly but kept my distance.  

What I didn’t know was that she had been waiting for this moment since seeing me lowered gingerly into the passenger seat of the car and an overnight bag stowed in the back. She emerged from her house with the sagging sofa on the porch, and hobbled out onto the sidewalk, her thin hair lifting in the breeze. 

“Let me see the baby,” she demanded. She stared critically at the little face. “Well, what is it?”

“It’s a girl,” I said, leaving the blanket partially covering the baby’s mouth like a miniature surgeon’s mask. I smiled and tried to turn away, to get to the safety of my own front door, when Mrs. Hosfeld’s claw-like hand grabbed my arm and twisted the baby towards her. She lowered her face and planted a big, wet, germ-laden kiss right on my new baby’s face. Hormones surging, ready to cry at everything, and completely irrational, I was horrified. “Oh my God,” I thought, with all the sense of the sleep-deprived, “She just ruined my baby!” 

Once in the house, I needed to take a shower. Should I bring the baby into the bathroom with me? The idea of not being in the same room seemed intolerable, like breaking the law. I think I thought I had to carry her around in her carrier like a purse.

Over the next few weeks, I realized protecting my daughter was more immediate, more irrational, and more primal than love. The need to keep her safe, encountered for the first time there on the sidewalk, was the first fierce attachment I had felt as an adult. It was in the following days of feeding, rocking, diapering, and bathing that protection took on its true identity, which was, of course, profound and abiding love. I have thought about this often since then, having learned that love can be inspired by service, not the other way around. But there was another lesson here. 

Sometimes we are the recipients of miracles and too distracted or oblivious to notice. It is only years afterward that it dawns on us that, but for an alert stranger on the beach, we might have drowned, or two seconds later into that intersection, we might have crashed. 

So, it was years later that I realized I had not thanked God for the biggest miracle in my life. 

The night this child was born, I’d been in prodromal labor for the preceding 24 hours, where you suffer contractions hour after hour that do not move the baby down. Eventually hospitalized, with some intervention, labor finally became productive, but she was a very large baby and had been unceasingly active in the womb most of those nine months.

 By 3 am, I’d been pushing for two hours, and my doctor wanted to leave for a hunting trip on the Eastern Shore in the morning. The decision was made to use forceps for the last couple of pushes to get this show (and him) on the road. It worked. But until that moment, no one realized that the umbilical cord had been wrapped tightly around the baby’s neck throughout the entire ordeal. Not wrapped around once. Not twice. But cinched around her tiny neck three times like a belt, strangling her through all those crushing contractions and hours of pushing. 

“Jesus!” the nurse exclaimed as the doctor uncoiled loop after loop after loop. 

They put her in my arms, and all I saw was a perfect baby. It didn’t occur to me then or for years how easily we could have lost her. And it makes me want to heap retroactive gratitude upon the universe for sparing me that near-miss tragedy and for giving me that joy. 

How many miracles have gone unheralded? Having missed this one, I’m assuming on principle that my life and yours have been flooded with them.

 Like having been lucky enough to live next door to an elderly lady who had waited all night and all day to welcome home the new little life next door. Who gave the only thing she had to give: a kiss. 

And just like learning that service generates love, retroactive gratitude is now a continuous wave, a spiritual practice, especially in October, when I find myself saying thank you for the gifts I recognize, like you, beloveds, and for all those I will become aware of in the fullness of time. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

I spent the weekend with my two older sisters and their husbands in what has become a regular sister-gathering now that our parents are dead. 

 As usual, there were some retellings of family tales, some stories that were revelations, and some that were three variations on a theme. There was no right or wrong to them; they were just each of us sharing our differing perspectives—like who was Mom’s favorite, what we inherited from Dad, and how things might have turned out differently. That kind of thing. 

And for the record, I’ll say it again, I was not Mom’s favorite. That distinction varied, the recipient being, in Mom’s words, “Whomever needs me the most.” 

A role to which no one aspired. 

This powwow was in the hills of Western Maryland, where my firstborn sister’s place overlooks a valley of golden fields bisected by a picturesque railroad track. In the morning, fall mist draped the tree line, giving the illusion of mountains and memories far bigger than the hills.

Because looking back often includes a confession of sorts, I shared this one because it involved a talent for which I have always been a bit vain, and which may demonstrate a learned response to those who need me as well. I am, after all, my mother’s (third) daughter.

Don’t judge too harshly. About the only things I was good at were kickball, running, and making eye contact with my teachers. Kickball and running have not turned out to be particularly valuable life skills, but eye contact is probably why I have three kids and own my own home today. 

We were lingering at the dinner table over my brother-in-law’s peach upside-down cake. “I was at the post office,” I said, “and the line was about 12 patrons deep waiting to get up to one of the three service windows. There was an 8-foot-long, narrow table, about 12 inches wide and chest-high, down the center of the room, where we could queue up to await our turn, simultaneously writing last-minute addresses on envelopes without losing our place in line. I set my purse down and started addressing a package while several other customers did the same.”

 As each person finished their business at the windows, our line slid along the table, I explained. A man ahead of me in line was frumping around pretty anxious about how long the whole process was taking, and I sympathized. It was like being on the beltway in a slowdown—where I always remind myself that every car in front of me has the same goal I do–to get to the next exit as quickly as possible. So, I relax about what I can’t control, knowing my anxiety contributes nothing, and that everyone working towards their goal is inadvertently working towards mine.

The man, fastidious in a button-down-collar, blue shirt, rolled up sleeves, and black jeans, was about three customers ahead of me, so we got to our windows simultaneously—he all the way down the row, me at the one nearest the end of the table. But as I turned in my parcel, I noticed he had not left the building but was frantically searching for something on the floor. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw he was now roaming the entire room, looking a tad panicked. Then he bolted out the door. 

I asked when I could expect my package to be delivered, thanked the clerk helping me, and turned to leave when this man burst back in frantically scanning the room again. 

“Did you lose something?” I asked, looking him right in the eye, because what can I say? It’s a gift. And because my only other gift, besides kickball and running fast, is that I am a really good finder. When the kids lost something, or Mr. Oliver could be witnessed searching his car, I’d always ask, “What are you looking for?” then calmly scan my intuition and within a minute or two produce the missing object.

My finder-sense was coming online, my helper-sensibility was on high alert. He had a need, and I was going to help him meet it. It was the role I was born for.

“My keys!” he groaned, panicked. “I can’t find my car keys, and I’ve got to get home. My wife has to get to an appointment and I’m already late.”

I felt into an image of his keys, imagined them in my mind’s eye—scanned my internal vibe-meter for where they might be lying in a corner of the room behind a table leg, or under a one-day delivery envelope left on the counter. I lifted a pile of label debris by the postal packaging display.

Then I began looking with him in earnest, and now his problem felt like my problem, which meant I was kind of in my element. I could almost feel the sense of happy satisfaction the moment I’d be able to say, ‘Are these yours?” 

He left the building again and I continued to search. Finally, I walked out into the wide shallow parking lot where cars were parked like teeth in a comb, in case he had found them and left, but he was out there peering under a Subaru. 

I needed to get home myself, and having completely failed to use my superpower for good, I called out, “I’m so sorry! Hope you find them!” 

I opened my purse for my sunglasses, and to my horror, there sat a clump of keys I had never seen before. 

He was incredulous. To be fair, so was I. “You mean you’ve had my keys all this time?” he asked, eyebrows raised, face flushed, and voice rising.

Sometimes you just can’t do anything but say you’re sorry and know that, for the moment at least, you have legitimately earned the title: Mom’s Favorite Child. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

I have a philosophy which is, if a little is good, more is better. A teaspoon of Miracle-Gro once a week makes the flowers bloom? How about a tablespoon every day? Kaboom. 

Leah-dog agrees with me on this philosophy. One walk a day is good? Three is waaay better, mama. 

This does not pertain to everything, however, as you shall see. 

Someone we will just call Not-Me, over-ordered mulch for this small city yard—to the tune of six yards–which is a mound, no lie, the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. And since this house has no driveway or off-street parking, the tractor-trailer that delivered this astonishing order had to dump it on the sidewalk and street in front of the house. 

Immediately, city traffic enforcement began cruising by, very excited at this new development. Parking had been compromised. Scofflaws were afoot! That was me, now doomed to haul the mulch, one wheelbarrow load at a time, up the 3 brick steps into the front yard, behind the wrought iron fence, to free the avenue of parking obstacles. 

Professional landscaping trucks cruised by hour after hour, the employees in the cabs looking down, shaking their heads with incredulity, and probably placing bets on the impossible task. As the hours wore on, parking officials cased the situation more frequently, waiting for that one opportunity, say, during a break for water, that they could claim the mulch had been abandoned and was now a legitimate violation. 

I shoveled, heaved, and dragged for 7 hours without pause. I missed a physical therapy appointment; lunch was on the fly. But by 4 o’clock that afternoon, the car-sized mound of mulch on the street was now a car-sized mound in the front yard. 

It was a lot of a lot, as Taylor Swift would say.

What if something crawls in there over the winter I asked Not-Me, eyeing the mountain, which was as tall as my head. I had encountered this once before, you remember. In my previous neighborhood, forty snakes had come slithering out of a mulch pile in the spring, in which they had been incubating for God knows how long. All of which I had had to kill by myself for the safety of a two-year-old toddler standing on the far side of the pile.

I was assured this would not happen twice. Yeah, what are the chances that something creepy wants to live in the new mulch pile? 

Yet when I went to move more of the mulch to places that didn’t need it a week later, the rake hit two big eggs. Perfect, unbroken, and yet buried deep within Magic Mountain. Too big to be snake eggs, I told myself, yet what mother duck would burrow into a mulch pile and abandon her eggs there? Maybe they had been stolen by a raccoon! A little bandit with a black mask and little black hands! Stowed away for future use. 

I pulled the eggs out and left them next to the house foundation to admire and wonder over. Two days later, they had disappeared without a trace. 

But this weekend, I was taking the dog for a walk, and on the side of the house between the remnants of Mulch Mountain and the street, I looked down and spied a snake slithering along next to my shoe. Had he come from the mulch? Were we going there again? I snapped a quick photo and checked him out on my phone. A harmless rat snake. 

There was a time in my life, I would have run for a shovel anyway, but those days are gone. I carry flies out of the house. Run down three stories to release spiders. (Not always. If a bug doesn’t cooperate with capture, sometimes it has to go into the light…), because I’m not extreme about anything. I’d say I’m a very medium person. 

But everything seems more sacred now. Although a bit squeamish, I captured the snake in a cardboard box and carried it down to the creek, where I let it go among the kudzu vines, the violet asters, and burgundy coneflowers. The breeze blew up the bank carrying the scent of saltwater and sun. Live long and prosper, snake. 

But I feel bad that whatever was in those eggs didn’t have a chance to live. Although I don’t know how this could be true, I suspect that it is: there isn’t life that doesn’t matter and life that does. Life is diverse in its expression, yet universally holy. Indivisible. And, I’m beginning to believe, somehow conscious.

 As Kate Forster points out, spiders dream, dolphins have accents, otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. And I’d add, elephants grieve, cephalopods hold grudges, and gray wolves mate for life.

We are islands in an ocean, and it is not the ocean that connects us but the floor of the sea.

I think “if a little is good, more is better” refers only to love and how it shows up in the world. Through you. Through me.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.