Which then brings me to my daughter – Olivia Tabitha Harrison. Naming her after Tabby and her mom had added more beauty to the little person who joined her aunt in being my entire world. That baby was the most amazing and beautiful little girl in the world, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her mother and I have to. She had a way of wrapping people around her tiny little finger the second they looked at her. Every day she did something new and blew me away, and now that she was seven months old, she was learning new tricks fast. She was the sun, the moon, the earth, the seas, and the stars in the sky. Larry not wanting to be part of her life was not her loss, it was his. Which led me to now. Was I scarred? Hell no. I was a woman and a Mama Bear who was going to live life and make her dreams a reality. I was going to give my daughter and myself the best life imaginable, laugh every day, cry when I needed to and then just let it go. I was going to learn from every mistake and embrace every achievement… I was going to live my best life. Actually, I’ll rephrase that – I was going to live my best mammaroni life. Why mammaroni? It’s what Tabby called what happened to a mother’s nipples after she has a baby. It was gross, it was hilarious, it was embarrassing, but I was proud of those things and the fact I was feeding my daughter with them. Nature was taking its course, and the milk was starting to dry up, so those days were numbered - which sucked, but it was just the way it was. I embraced those huge nipples even more now because of it, though. Well, under my bra and shirt and in private I did, because Jesus those things were no joke. Well, they kinda were which was why I was staring at the notebook I’d just gotten from Tabby with #LivingMyBestMammaroniLife on it. This was my sister – you said something once, she made it into a hashtag and a notebook. “I’m also getting tank tops made for us with it on,” Tabby squealed as she bounced in her seat. “How awesome can you get? I think we can make this an actual thing.”
It took me a second to get over what I was looking at. “A thing?”
“Yeah, like a new mama bear type slogan. The mama bear thing has been done a trillion times over, so now we need to introduce the world to mammaroni power.”
“And you really think mammaronis are the answer?”
She was silent as her thumb skimmed across the screen of her phone, finally nodding and then looking up at me. “Of course, they are,” she replied seriously, leaning forward and swapping her phone for her cup of coffee. “Jose, those puppies feed your precious baby girl. Even when I give her a bottle, your mammaronis are to thank for it. Some women never get that chance with their kids for a variety of reasons, but a lot do. Hell, some women never want to whip them out in public and shove a booby in their baby’s mouth,” I winced and nodded at that – I was one of those women. I wasn’t ashamed of it, far from it, but I’d read a book about a guy who got off on lactating mothers and took videos on his cellphone to jack off to afterward. The thought of someone intruding on that beautiful moment between me and my daughter in such a gross way meant that, unless I was in a safe place when I was out in public, Olivia got a bottle with my milk, or formula if it was an emergency. “Some women don’t mind,” she continued. “But if you can be a mama bear, then you sure as hell can be living your best mammaroni life, even if yours aren’t what your baby is living off of. Studies show that a majority of women who bottle feed their baby do so with its head as close to the area of their breasts as possible without realizing it, and babies get comfort from that. Booby, mammaroni, bottle, mama bear, biological or not, whatever – mammaronis are the answer.”
I had absolutely nothing to say to this whatsoever. In a way it made sense to me, and in a way I wanted to check and see if she’d made her coffee an Irish one. Fortunately, Liv made a noise at that moment, distracting us both from the awkwardness that we’d just found ourselves in. Getting up, I walked over and grinned down at her. “Hey, princess,” I cooed, picking her up and breathing her in, regretting it almost instantly. Normally it was a beautiful and fresh scent that followed her, but right now it was making me wish I’d not taken such a deep breath in.