Once Upon a Time Prompts Booklet

The First Time

Henry is three the first time he sees his mother cry. She's sitting on an armchair in her study holding a piece of paper and a crumpled tissue and her back is to him. It's an hour or two past his bedtime but his room is too dark and lonely and and he can't remember how to sleep and he finds her like this. He doesn't say a word. He listens to her sniff and shudder and breathe. He knows about crying. He cries when he falls or has a nightmare or loses a toy. He has seen other kids cry. But he has never seen a grown-up cry. Especially not his mother.

He'd never thought about her needing or wanting to cry. He'd never thought of her losing her composure for a moment. But he's three years old and standing unnoticed in a doorway, and for the first time he realizes that his mother is human.

He starts to cry.

She turns around in a moment, wide glassy eyes and open mouth, and flies across her study to collect him in her arms. "My little prince," she says, and he feels at home right away. But she doesn't stop crying.

"Mommy, what's wrong?" He asks her, voice incredibly small and scared, and he thinks maybe he doesn't understand a thing. It's then when he notices the paper in her hand. It's a drawing of her and himself he had made that afternoon, and there's drops of saltwater seeping through the paper. "Is it bad?" He bites his lip, suddenly feeling very wrong, very imperfect and as though everything is his fault.

But she shakes her head and holds him tighter, picking him up and sitting down on the couch, fingers combing through his hair and scratching his scalp. "No, no, no," she keeps repeating, and Henry feels himself calm down, even though he doesn't understand. "I love it, Henry. I love you." She's rocking him back and forth in her arms, and there's a world of truth in her words.

He still doesn't understand, but he's not afraid anymore and he falls asleep in her arms.

-

Henry is five the first time he falls off of his bike. It's a warm summer day, and his mother had insisted he wear sunscreen and a helmet, and he's learning how to ride without training wheels. The sidewalk is rough and hot from the heat, and he doesn't feel much on impact, but then then there's stinging and when he looks at his hands he sees blood. He hurts and cries a little, but in a moment, his mother is beside him, collecting him in her strong arms even though he's almost too big for this, and she carries him as though he's nothing into the house. He gets to sit on the toilet seat and pick his favorite colored band aids and lay in bed next to his mother and watch nature channels.

He doesn't say that he doesn't even mind that he fell off of his bike because now he can feel her arm rubbing his back and he can have lemonade through a straw on his mother's big bed, and he feels the safest, maybe, that he's ever been.

-

Henry is nine the first time he yells at his mother. He had been at school earlier that day and a few older kids had cornered him and asked him why he didn't look like his mother, and he'd been scared and he didn't know why. His back had hit the cold metal of a locker, and for the first time, he realized that her eyes are chocolate and his are green; her skin is olive and warm and tan and his is pale; she knows how to speak pretty words in Spanish that he's learning, but no one else knows them. And he'd felt scared. He'd felt scared and lost and confused and left out on something important. Like he should know, but didn't. He'd been boxed once on the ear before he left for home, blinded by tears and banged the front door shut.

He screams at her, "why don't I look like you?" And she looks at him with shock and surprise and sadness and love. And it makes him mad and confused but he loves her and he doesn't know what any of this means.