The Malting.

There is a woman in my town. I see her at the supermarket. She pushes a cart full of children - two boys and a girl. The children are nondescript. Not terribly behaved, so I take little note of them. The mother is who I watch. I see her at the library, gathering books and movies, but mostly staring blankly at the shelves, as if she is remembering something. Like she is somewhere else.

I saw her today at the park, nursing her smallest - a baby in a pajama suit spotted with red and blue trains. As the baby clung to her mid-section and the older kids played in the near distance, the woman seemed swept away again. I could look at her from my perch and observe without her ever taking notice.

Her hair is long, and uncut, bluntly falling down to the middle of her back. It is dull in color, but looks as if it might once have shone some shade of cinnamon. Her clothes are of no particular style or fit, amorphous much like her body. A long sleeved shirt - brown and soiled by the wiping of children's mouths and noses. Jeans, medium wash, no holes. She is not yet at the age where pleated jeans are appropriate, but they are more the tight-fitting boot cut jeans of her college years. Her shoes are indistinguishable from slippers.

She looks as if, in the frenzy of the morning, she has forgotten herself. But, it is not as if, with all the jam hands and dirty diapers, she is no where to be found. She is very much a mother - central and surrounded by heavy layers of family. She laughs as a small girl, her daughter, runs up with a story to tell. Or tends to a scrape on her young son's knee. And, she herself cries as she realizes she's misplaced the favorite stuffed rhinoceros of the smallest child. It is only the in rarest moments that she has the luxury of going elsewhere in her mind.

I see a woman on my street who runs. I suppose she is a "runner." Her head is shaved. Nearly to the scalp, but not quite. Just a sheath of dark hair remains. In place of a shirt, she wears only the tightest fitting sports bra. I sometimes wonder if there are any breasts at all beneath the fabric. Her shorts graze just her upper thigh; they are barely there. Her sneakers are state-of-the-art. The best on the market for pounding pavement. For getting somewhere fast - or for a quick escape. She is not terribly thin, but simply-built and vaguely muscular. She was created for speed. She never seems to look behind her or to the sides - as if she knows her place in relation to the world around her, even as the landscape changes. I watch her as she strides by. Feet, slapping rhythmically; she is stretched long, lean, free across the sidewalk. Each time I look out my bedroom window, there she seems to be.

Suddenly, I am jerked back to consciousness. The doorbell rings around mail time, and upon hearing it my young son startles awake in my arms. He has fallen asleep on my soft, unshapely chest again. I whip on my brown shirt, drizzled with breast milk and yogurt, and crusty with residue about the sleeves. I set him down and hear over the monitors that the postman has woken the other children - they are already crying out for me. I am heavy and weary of holding small, needy bodies. So, I leave them to their tears. I walk to the door, where the postman holds two packages for which I must sign. The first has been shipped by a toy company - a small, purple rhinoceros waits inside the cardboard box. The second is an electric razor.