2025 Short Story & Essay Contest: Third Place, Adult Essay Contest
By Lisa Park
My daughter used to wave at me from the school bus window and blow me kisses. Now, she gives me a hug and traverses the big steps onto the bus. I follow her shadowy outline as she finds a seat with a friend. I wave to the back of her head.
She used to love peek-a-boo. I covered my face with her favorite blanket, Where’s Mama? then dropped the blanket. Her face—all chub and cheek back then—erupted into an elfin cackle. I did it again. Cackle. The best sound.
She had developed object permanence. When babies realize that objects out of sight still exist, they search in expectation. She anticipated my return.
On Sunday nights, an ache would begin somewhere between my heart and head. I couldn’t localize it; it was nowhere anatomic. I kept busy, kept going. I packed milk for the next day. I stuffed my work bag with breast pump and clean bottles. By Monday morning, as we stepped through the daycare doors, I held her tightly to my chest, inhaling her baby shampoo and milk scent. She’ll be okay, the teachers said. You can go now.
I wonder how long my daughter watched my outline through the door. I imagined her looking and looking, crying at this game of peek-a-boo gone wrong.
Her teachers sent me pictures. My daughter finger painting, red paint crossing over paper margins to color the table, my daughter sitting, dimple-thighed on the grass; in each picture, she was attached to another being—the teacher’s arms around her, the teacher’s hand holding her hand. I held her pictures while I sat in my office pumping milk for her.
When I picked her up after work, our bodies relaxed into each other. Our brains had mastered object permanence, but our bodies had not been sure.
The way to make separations less painful, they say, is to make sure your child knows that you will come back. Practice the returns. The moment when the blanket drops, and you both are there, face-to-face.
My third grader sits in the back of the bus with the big kids. As her confidence grows, my trust in the world wanes. She has object permanence, but I waver. I can’t forget an image of an elementary school-age girl crying in the window of a bus, after a school shooting, being driven somewhere to reunite with her parents. I don’t even remember which school shooting. The world is impermanent. So are people.
Because I’m the parent, I keep these thoughts to myself. I hold them back when I would rather hold onto her. I stay steady and calm so she stays steady and calm. The tense muscles in my neck tell the truth, but only to me.
The best part of the day is when she returns from school. The ache relents. The muscles relax. Her delighted face, inches from my delighted face. When I’m not sure what to do, I remember the returns.
