No wisecracks this week. If you’re looking for curmudgeonly mom, check back in next week. This week I have too much to ponder.
Most of my friends in my ‘burb were made through a new mom’s group. Some of the moms became my closest friends. Others I simply nod at and smile to when I see them at the playground. And a few fell into the middle ground. They weren’t the ones I invited to Doodles’s birthday parties or called to tell about Sweetie Pie from the hospital. I haven’t been to their houses and they haven’t been to mine. But they are friends nonetheless, women I make playdates with at the park, women I look forward to seeing and chatting with. I know volumes about their lives here and now, but little outside of relatively confined world of mommyhood.
It’s been like that with G. (not even her real initial, but I don’t feel comfortable using the real details). I’m incredibly fond of G. She and her family are originally from Europe, but her husband’s job brought them here. Her son, H., is five days older than Doodles. I know she runs, she’s incredibly fit; that it took her ten years to conceive her very much wanted son and that she would be happy to have another; that she breastfed H. for over a year as he never took a bottle; that she looks fabulous in a bikini and loves spending time near water; that she isn’t much of a meat eater; that she’s hoping to move back some day to her home country; that she put an amber necklace around her son’s neck when he was very young, one that he still wears, to ward off evil; that she’s not sure if she’s going to return to her work or not. After a morning of playing with them at the park, Doodles says, “H! H! H!” for awhile afterwards.
G. and her family spent the 4th of July of us, as it’s not a true Independence Day without with a good ol’ American backyard barbecue. We enjoyed their company. Even my father, when he met them at the reservoir, found G.’s husband immensely interesting. So everyone thought it was a good idea to invite them over for Thanksgiving. G. seemed excited–wanted to cook something–for the first Thanksgiving she’d celebrate. It was fun for me because it gave me extra oomph for planning my menu–I didn’t want to miss anything. Dinner included hot mulled cider, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. Turkey, stuffing, and gravy of course. My best cranberry sauce recipe. Green beans and salad. Pecan pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I really wanted to show them what an American Thanksgiving was like.
When I saw on Thanksgiving morning that I had an e-mail from her account, I was disappointed, as I imagined it meant she must be canceling.
I had to read the e-mail three times before it began to sink in. It was from G.’s husband. He wrote that they wouldn’t be attending Thanksgiving. G. was in the hospital. The night before she had suffered a massive stroke and at that point, they were trying to determine how badly her brain was damaged.
As you can imagine, it’s shaken up the mom community here. Everyone is taking close stock of her life, trying to imagine if this had happened to her. G.’s out of the life or death danger, but there is a question of how much can she be rehabiliatated. Will she be able to walk again? Feed herself? Talk? Her husband tells me that she will never again be able to do something like read a book and comprehend what it says. He says she won’t be herself ever again.
I’ve been having dreams about G. I can’t stop thinking about her. I baked cookies with Doodles on Sunday, and I couldn’t help but feel sad that G. will never bake with H. Why didn’t I get to know her better? Why don’t I know who her parents are or what she wanted to be when she grew up? I don’t know her favorite color or if she gets lonely here in the States. Of course, it’s easy to say that now. I think of all the moms–and people in general–on the fringe of my life. There simply isn’t time to open yourself up to the world.
How does this happen? One week you’re reading the paper together, arguing over the messy counters, laughing at your kid’s funny faces, cooing with he baby; the next week a vital part of your family is gone. Overnight your life as you know it could disappear. Overnight, decisions have to be made about what kind of life you could have, what that quality would be. We try to protect our kids. We teach them to be wary of strangers. We vaccinate them to protect them from disease. We make sure they look both ways before crossing the street. We don’t let them swing on the scary-steep slide. Yet who can protect them from losing us? Who can protect them from the betrayal of their own bodies. What do we do when we’re no longer in control of our own body?
When something bad happens to someone, you go over all the details, trying to figure out where you’re different, why that bad thing won’t happen to you. I cry every time I read an article about a baby who died of S.I.D.S. And then I scour the article for comfort. “Her baby wouldn’t sleep on his back? Well, thank God. Mine does. Oh, she smoked? No one in our house smokes. The baby drank formula? Well, I breastfeed.” Nothing makes us safe. But it doesn’t stop us for searching for talismans and mantras that will protect us.
You’d think that this would make me a better person. And it does make me feel very grateful for my family. Yet I still snip at Adam. I still feel impatient at Doodles. I still long for Sweetie Pie to let me sleep. And I was feeling guilty about that until I realized, that’s just part of living. On one hand, I feel like I should be living every day as if it were my last, but the fact is that’s not just impractical, it’s impossible. Someone needs to clean out the back of the fridge and pay the car insurance and change the burnt out lightbulbs. But on the flip side, it does justify playing peek-a-boo with the baby, writing even if no one is going to read it, and reading Bark, George twelve times to a toddler.
I feel so very, very sad. G. was such a good person. She still is a good person, I’m just not sure what kind of person she will be anymore. My heart breaks for her husband and son. Sweetie Pie is too young to know me on any level that we can comprehend, but what would Doodles do if I just disappeared from his life? Whenever Doodles has been sick (Sweetie Pie, happily, has had no illnesses yet), I make a bargain with whatever higher power there may be. “If it has to be something serious, make it be me. If someone has to go, let it be me.” As horrible an image it is to me to think of Doodles and Sweetie Pie without a mother, it’s at least a bearable thought. Losing a child…I can’t even begin to understand the chasm in my being it would create. Did G. make the same bargain? Is this her way of protecting H.? Is she sacrificing herself for him?
Everything feels so fragile. Everything is so fragile.
