She said it like she meant it

In Kabul, there is a cemetery on a mountainside that is running out of room. Years ago, I read an article about it in the New York Times. For a fee, a group of boys perform grave care, and a six-year-old girl joins them on the hill. She brags about taking in mourners like the boys—too young to understand how much we mourners want to be taken in. She boasts about what her father will bring her from Iran when he arrives. She wishes for a Samsung Galaxy phone. I still think about her prayers and the importance of prayer, which I was taught about as a child.

Men's graves are marked by poems and artistic portraits. The cemetery is popular because women, especially wives and mothers, are not allowed to attend burials, so they arrive the next morning and families picnic. Cotton candy is available for purchase. It's probably for the best—I remember hearing that one a lot as a kid.

The lads tease the girl, saying, "He'll never come home." “He isn't even in Iran,” says the narrator. She lets them say it because she's made enough money in tips to feed her family for a week. She claims she prays for a Galaxy, but what she truly wants is the moment when her father delivers her the phone and demonstrates he exists, and that he exists with her in mind.

“If the bird's body doesn't suffer, it won't learn how to fight,” according to a quote from the article, which I typed into my phone. That's only one man's theory on how to coach good cock fighters from his grave.

My husband drew up a list of objectives for the coming year. He wrote: Are you ready to start a family? We've already put out some work. My doctor assures me that loss is typical, even normal, at my age, and while I recognize that this is accurate, a scientific truth, I promise you that the experience seems far from normal.

A mother's body, by all accounts, is in pain. My mother's uterus swung inside her by a thread of tissue after giving birth to twins. She flipped over in bed for six years while holding her stomach and cradling organs in her hand. She did it while she was sleeping! It's been six years! She claimed she first noticed the difference after undergoing surgery to keep her uterus from slipping out. She explained that she'd merely developed a practice of keeping her cool.

An Afghani mother whose teenage son committed suicide due to unrequited love claimed she has nightmares about the boy's cemetery being engulfed in flames, so she sprays water on his tombstone, which depicts him in a jacket and tie, to keep the flames at bay, to absolve him, to restore him. One of the scariest aspects of motherhood, in my opinion, is the constant multitasking.

She has buckets of well water with her in her dreams. She throws water on the fire, but it doesn't go out, and she realizes she's dreaming. She sips water from a plastic bottle with her son on Thursdays and stays as long as it takes to drink. She then absolves her son by wetting her hands. When the flames don't go out, she knows it's a nightmare; when she doesn't see any flames, she knows it's real life. I'm curious as to what she intends to do with the plastic bottle. On the congested mountainside, are there recycling bins?

I feel a smidgeon of relief for that mother because she's been granted one pitiful reprieve: she doesn't believe fires can burn on in her dreams, but of course they can. Wildfires that are the hottest and most widespread cannot be put out with water or retardant; they can be managed, but not drowned. I'm not sure whether I read the bit about the dream. It doesn't sound like anything that would make the first page of a newspaper.

Plastic bottles, like a mother's love, are eternal. A late-night talk-show presenter who lost his father and two brothers in an aircraft crash when he was ten years old said he had to learn to embrace the crash, which he described as the worst experience of his life. With his mother, I'd like to enjoy a lasagna. Multitasking as a mother appears to me to be risky.

I don't go to the cemetery of a dearly departed buddy. She died after giving birth; it happens more often than you might suppose. Last year, I went to our hometown in California a few times for weddings, holidays, and when my parents relocated from one suburb to another to avoid wildfires, but I haven't seen her since the day we shoveled dirt into the grave. I don't speak to her mother very often, but when I do, she is overjoyed that I continue to celebrate my friend's birthday.

The thing about my hometown is that there’s no avoiding the wildfires, which I know my mom knows.

Natalia Ginzburg, an Italian author, wrote about her own deceased buddy, describing seeing him out wandering the streets of their city after his death. She declared that she was almost certain it wasn't him. “I don't relate,” I remember thinking as I read it. Of course, I can't seem to locate the passage.

My New Year's resolution is to learn the names of the birds in Central Park and to observe them. It turns out that I prefer to see hooded mergansers over seeing my deceased pal on a walk. I'd like to see geese.

My spouse met me midway through a guided tour of the park's waterfowl the other day. “Bufflehead, ruddy-something, Plower", mallard,” I remarked, repeating the park ranger, pointing to the birds on the Reservoir. “Mallard?” my spouse asked, pointing to a Plower. The ranger then pointed to an American kestrel flying overhead—not a brightly colored songbird, but a brightly colored falcon that flies against the wind, hovering, surveying the terrain for a real songbird to snare in its claws. They sink into the songbird's ribcage as the songbird's spine is severed by its hooked beak. “It's a mercy,” the ranger explained.

My mother watches church on Sunday morning TV and talks about being shocked by "the best," how it sneaks up on you, and how a misfortune turned out to be, wow, for the best years later. “Who is the best for?” I've started asking questions. “For whom could this be the best?” says the narrator.

Kabul's entire city is tired from housing the dead. They must have exhausted the mountainside by this point.