"...and that's when Cinderella tried on that glass slipper and knew that she had earned the heart of her Prince Charming. The next day they married in front of the entire city, and they both lived happily ever after," I used my Good-Mother-trying-to-send-her-little-boy-into-the-realm-of-sleep voice as I shut the children's book filled with more color than plot. I let my gaze find its way to my son's face, anticipating drooping eyes. But instead they glowed a fierce white in the dimmed light, blinking at me with a worried alertness.

This startled me, really threw me. Maybe I hadn't added enough Johnson's Baby Lotion to my voice. That formula that promised relaxation amongst tiny offspring across the world had failed me, or maybe it was my own fault.

My mother read me stories when I was his age, but they'd always left me dry. Itchy. Wanting something else. Something more. I knew that I was a failure as a mother in the subject of bedtime-story-telling, and I'd been so sure for so long that I wasn't just a repeat of a part of childhood that I'd hated. I didn't doubt that I was awful, but I hadn't thought I was my mother. His alert eyes made me want to cry, but I knew I couldn't.

"What's wrong, honey?" I asked, slipping several notes of worry into my words that struck a chord that came out flat. I flinched.

At first he wouldn't say anything. I had to do something to tear myself away from his eyes.

His blonde curls were illuminated by the reflection of his Sesame Street nightlight as it bounced off the blank window four feet away. They looked like God had scraped them off the floor and superglued them hastily in place. They looked beautiful. I wanted to reach my hand out and stroke those curls- wanted to make my hands those of comfort, but his quiet, steady voice stopped my fingers inches from his face, dangling like parts of a splintered tree limb.

"It's always 'happily ever after,'" he said so simply.

My tongue was paralyzed, and all I could do was sit there with my mouth hanging open.

"How come you didn't get a 'happily ever after,' Mommy? Couldn't Daddy find your glass slipper?"

His innocence sent tears down my cheeks and on a mission to my chin. Why didn't I pick another story that night? The cardboard box beside his bunk bed was full of every fairy tale ever created and more. Why Cinderella? Why now?

"No sweetie," I said, pulling him close in a hug, "I guess he couldn't."

"That's not fair."

"No. It isn't."

I released him, needing a bed for myself now. Goodnight, I muttered with a peck on his forehead, just below those glowing strands of hair. I love you. I love you too, Mommy, he said. I closed his little door and walked into the next room.

It was my fault. It was all my fault that my little boy didn't have a Dad. I wasn't good enough for him, he had said so himself. He had another girl in another town that really loved him, he had said. Too bad it wasn't you, huh, he had said.

Too bad it wasn't you, huh.

His last words to me rang through my head every night as I tried to sleep with his beautiful baby boy in the next room.

It was all my fault.

My failure to his father meant that my boy was destined to grow up in this feeble trailer, with worn clothes and worn books and worn eyes. Hands that were too delicate for a young boy. Hands that revealed him to be Fatherless.

It was all my fault.

Too bad it wasn't you, huh.

I cried myself to sleep that night.



When I woke up, the sun hadn't even risen. I dusted off clothes that still looked dirty and put them on anyway. I kissed my baby goodbye, just like any other morning. The baby-sitter would arrive shortly, and the work day passed me in a blur.

I was twenty-four that day. An age where most women would be partying and just moving into their new social statuses. I didn't know if my blonde-curled child would remember, so when he was outside waiting for me when I got home that night, I was shocked.

"Happy Birthday, Mommy!" He tried to tackle me with a hug, so I bent down and scooped him into my arms, covering his shiny head with the kisses of a horrible mother.

That night I plunged my hand into the worn cardboard box, willing my fingers hastily past Cinderella. I settled for Snow White and began.

He was tense throughout my telling, as though waiting for something. More Johnson's Baby Lotion, I thought, as I tried to imagine swallowing a bottle and coating my words with it.

The pads of my fingers slid over the next worn page and- there wasn't another following it. But the story wasn't over. There was no 'happily ever after,' I thought desperately.

He smiled. "Try another story."

I looked at him, confused, and picked up Peter Pan, but it too lacked an ending.

"What's going on?" I asked, completely puzzled. "The stories have no endings. No 'happily ever after's."

"I know," he said seriously, "I spent the day ripping the last few pages out of every story."

"Why?" I asked, truly amazed.

"It's your birthday present. Now you won't cry every night. And yes," he added, "the stories aren't over. But they do have endings."

That night I held my child tighter than I ever had before or ever have since. A few years later I moved the box to my room, because he was "too big" for bedtime stories. After that night, I stopped crying myself to sleep, and I learned over time to accept that it wasn't all my fault and that I wasn't a horrible mother.

My story just wasn't finished at that time, but I'm still living out my own ending and even my own 'happily ever after.' The knowledge that it took a five-year-old to tell me that will never cease to amaze me, and I still smile at the wisdom of children, who have room only to love in their young hearts.