absence

In the kitchen, she fumbles with the whiskey—the bottle seeming too weighty for her frail arms, the cap slipping between shaking fingers. She pours the liquid straight into the glass without measuring it, either too tired to follow his decades-old procedure or too lonely without him to care.

How many times in my life did I hear her call to him out the window as she turned on the tv in the evening? She would have left the beginnings of dinner to simmer on the stove while she watched the news. “Donald, it’s time!” was always her first refrain, heralding him into the corner of the kitchen between the sink and the refrigerator, adeptly located beside the liquor cabinet, the glassware, and the icebox. Thirty minutes later would come her second commentary—the same every night I’ve ever spent here; the same, I’m sure, every night for 69.5 years: “Donald, are you going to fix that?”—her voice tinged with expectation but not judgment. Slowly he always plodded back into the kitchen, his exercise socks and tennis shoes padding his footsteps across the wood floor. Soon enough I’d hear the rattle of ice against glass walls as he carried each of their second drinks back into the living room. Without averting her eyes from the television screen, she’d take her glass gently from his hand, dip her thin upper lip into it, and sip in the alcohol along with that day’s news.  

*

After dinner, she thanks me as I clear the plates from the table. As I reach the dishwasher, I look instinctively over my shoulder for him, accustomed to sending him back to his seat because when I’m here, I like to relieve them both of some of their usual duties.

I fill the dishwasher in silence, Grandma waiting quietly at the table. Even though he is not here, I can hear his voice telling a story, animated by his jovial laughter and dramatic or mischievous tone; or I can clearly see him waiting quietly with his hands crossed before him in his seat at the head of the table. In the spot, I realize now, where I inadvertently set her place tonight, putting myself in her chair. Why did I do that? To make sure both of their seats were still filled?

*

He was never allowed in the kitchen other than for those two tasks. But they were daily tasks, executed repeatedly and identically for seven decades. He was never allowed to spend much time in the kitchen, yet it is here where I find his absence to be inescapably present.

You matter too.

Let it go—the

smashed word broken

open vow or

the oath cracked length

wise—let it go it

was sworn to

                        go

let them go—the

truthful liars and

the false fair friends

and the boths and

neithers—you must let them go they

were born

                    to go

let all go—the

big small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things—let all go

dear

      so comes love

-- E.E. Cummings

“You matter too.” I’ve woken up whispering it. I’ve spoken it aloud into the mirror. I’ve had to take it on like a mantra because something about this job has compelled me to let it impose itself on my life like a tangle of fishing net or a blanket that’s too heavy to kick down to the end of the bed.

“You matter too.” The first time I said it I cried it. It shouldn’t have to be either/or—doing work that’s about serving others shouldn’t diminish one’s sense of the importance of meeting one’s own needs. But there’s something about the field of education—especially the subfield focused on equity in education, on helping low-income kids get what they deserve—that creates a culture of martyrs. I think we let ourselves become that because we’re in it in the first place because we see that a whole lot of kids are getting the short end of the stick; that the resources necessary to create the educational experience that all kids should have access to just aren’t there; so we bring ourselves to the table in hopes of filling the gaps; and we end up stuffing our fingers in ten holes and then pulling out our toes to fill in ten more and then sticking an elbow in here and a shoulder in there. We come because we are compassionate, and we have a belief in fairness, and we know the benefits of making it. We come to be of use. But we run ourselves dry—we all do, I watch it happening all around me, in my own organization and in others, among my friends from graduate school, within sister agencies and the schools we work in. We run ourselves dry because the kids are so fabulous, and the resources so unfairly in short supply, and the meaning of every day so evident. We find purpose in the work. We are like missionaries. We believe that to turn away from our work would be like turning a cheek to God. The work feels sanctified. And for those of us, like me, who’ve done more mundane work in the past, that quality of the work is enthralling. It’s like we’ve drunk from a divine fountain and now shun any return to regular water.

Except we get exhausted. Except we put the rest of our lives on hold. Except those of us, like me, who are intellectuals find the work so much more stimulating to the heart than to the mind. I feel guilty wanting to get something out of it too (shouldn’t it be enough that the kids get all these wonderful experiences?), but I can’t help wishing for that. It’s my nature. This is my constitution. I’m empathetic, yes, but even more so I seem to be academic. I need to be learning.

And yet the work is so satisfying to the heart.

I can talk myself in circles. But no matter how long I do that, I know, deep down, that a few things are true. First, I know what I told my boss, and he told the board, and for a time, everyone in the organization repeated it: for the kids to thrive, the staff has to thrive. Second, I know what it takes to make me thrive, and it’s not what I’ve been doing. What it takes to make me thrive includes thought work and continual learning. Third, I MATTER TOO. I know that part, but it gets lost so easily. Because fourth, this work can lay on a thick layer of guilt. It feels selfish to choose my own wants over what 900 kids or five schools or the whole of three communities need. It IS selfish. But there will be someone else to fill my shoes. And I will find other ways to help. I know from the headaches and the snapping at co-workers and the biting off my best friend’s head that I need to find other ways.

And so I have come to a conclusion. I matter more than any job. It’s hard to say that without feeling awful, but I, my wellbeing, my sanity and my physical health and even my intellectual and emotional joys—they matter too. I will find another way to take part in this work in which I believe so strongly. I will find new shoes to fill.

As a first step, tomorrow I will quit.

I will let it all go. And so, I hope, will come at least self-love, if not, perhaps, other types of love too.

ode to Beantown

Though I never lived in Boston proper, for 10 years I lived "on the other side of the river" and loved so much about the Boston lifestyle. I'd grown up Southern but only somewhat; my mom was from New England, my summers were spent in New England, my mentality was a lot more New England, I learned pretty quickly after moving there, than anything I'd experienced before. Still, the hustle-bustle of pedestrian-packed sidewalks, the incomprehensible nature of the subway (at first just the act of riding public transportation was shock enough; then I had to sort out a subway system that relied on me to know whether I was headed "inbound" or "outbound" at any given moment); the persistent, interminable winter; the accents that were incomprehensible sometimes (just ask a local to say "mirror" or "drawer" and you'll understand my confusion); the frozen ice of winter on the Charles River; the darkness mid-day, a 4:30 start to night-time for a quarter of the year... oh, there were so many things to adjust to. And adjust I did; fall in love with so much of it I did. 

I grew up there. I found my intellectual curiosity there, got my heart broken for the first few times there, embraced a broad extended family of relatives and very dear friends there, learned how to cook there, established myself successfully in a first career there, discovered and explored deeply motivating passions like volunteering and photography there, learned to not only feel but actually be whimsical there. I grew up there; not through childhood but rather into adulthood. At age 18, I was timid; by 28, I'd become a person who would quit her job all of a sudden after a lovely lunch break in Copley Plaza on a beautiful summer day and up and move, with no new job lined up, to San Francisco -- for the sake of adventure (and, of course, warmer weather). 

I left that place behind with the fullest of hearts; I walked away smitten, so that each year when I come back I feel the sensation of falling for it all over again. I walked away toward something equally new -- and equally easy to nestle into, to find my place in. I think of myself almost as a Californian now, eight years into living here, but when you ask me where home is, I am just as likely to say New England as the Bay. Home is where the heart is indeed. 

first draft of "Ode to Grandpa"

In my favorite memory of Grandpa, we’re in the garden outside the living room and the tv is on just inside the window, the jingle that opens the nightly news letting us know it’ll soon be time for dinner. Grandma is in the kitchen preparing something delicious. Her focus on the food plus the noise of the newscast prevent her from knowing what Grandpa’s up to. He’s shushing us as we giggle and reminding us not to tell Grandma as he does something she has strictly instructed him not to: he’s standing on his head, his tennis shoes reaching toward the rooftop as his socks slide down his calves. He loves standing on his head for us; loves entertaining us; loves the mischief of it too. In this memory, my cousin Alex and I are probably 10 and 11, but Grandpa seems too gleeful to really be the 68 years old that that would have made him.

During my childhood, he opened me up to numerous other joys. One summer, he made sure my brother and I learned to sail. Others, he dragged us around the fields of Little Compton in the wheelbarrow attached to his tractor or led us on walking expeditions right through the neighbors’ yards to teach us the best routes to the beach or the cove. Once he took me on a walk through Cambridge in the falling snow. He must’ve felt for this kid who grew up in the warm climate of Atlanta; he must’ve thought it important that I know the joy of licking snowflakes off my lips, the crunch of the stuff beneath my shoes. When in college there years later, I tried to find the route he had taken me on, but all I could remember was returning to the house a different way than we had departed—returning through the parking lot of the Quaker meeting house and being delighted—at this point it getting dark out and me becoming quite cold—to find our house just on the other side.

He also took me to visit colleges. When I had narrowed it down to Dartmouth and Harvard, he and my mother got in cahoots and bought me a plane ticket so I could visit both one more time. Before I flew he called to ask me what kind of sandwich I wanted for the drive to Hanover. I assumed he’d pick something up at Au Bon Pain on the way to the airport, but when he met me he was carrying a sandwich he’d made himself, and because he had found my request for no tomatoes or mayonnaise ridiculous—he felt the sandwich would be too dry—he’d included cucumbers, and to this day that’s my favorite way to complete a sandwich. From the airport we drove to Dartmouth, where he left me overnight, then returned the next day to bring me back to Cambridge and leave me in Harvard Yard.

My first year of college, I was grateful to have my grandparents just six blocks away. There were a lot of things I loved about college, but I was a thousand miles from home and definitely homesick. Sometimes Grandpa would call me and invite me over for lunch. While there one day, I cried a little, feeling lonely for home. That day he told me two things: first, that I should think of their house as home too, and second, that there was a garden in the center of a museum in Boston where you could eat lunch in the springtime and where he sometimes liked to take a book and read. I remember the excitement I felt the first time I went to that museum, the satisfaction of knowing that I was sharing one of his favorite things.

My grandparents have given me a lot of life’s most precious moments. Letting me come to Little Compton every summer and just be a kid, enjoying the beach and the yard and the books I’d pull from the bedroom shelves; taking me to Europe for my first time; letting me live in their house in Cambridge in the summers during college—being a second set of parents, really, and the kind with a bit of fairy dust between their fingers. I have recordings I made a few years ago of Grandpa telling me some of my favorite of his stories—because if anything made this man magical to me it was the combination of his storytelling abilities and his insatiable appetite for satisfying his curiosity through adventure and exploration. Oh the stories he told—from his childhood, about the day at age seven that he put his little sister in a wagon and trekked her across Milwaukee to his family’s new home; and from Los Alamos—about the bomb, sure, but also his attempt to sneak off the premises, driving down a cliff-side trail he felt certain had no security gate—until he hit an enormous boulder blocking the path, leaving no need for any security whatsoever down that way; and his delight in Grandma’s being reassigned to the high explosives unit for her safety; and the way it tickled him to tell me every time I asked about the way he first met Grandma, and how their first date went, and how awed he was by her intrepidness at the end of that day.

This was a man who accomplished a great deal in his career, who is known by many people outside his family for his work on the Manhattan Project, in Washington, and in multiple universities. But he was also a man who delighted in heading up a large family, in educating us—for he certainly wasn’t shy about sharing his viewpoints or his knowledge base—and also in nurturing and inspiring us. My grandfather was a man who lived every day exemplifying what it means to really dig in to life and give it good reason to make you grin ear to ear, and that lesson is one I take from his life with appreciation and glee.

second thoughts

The feeling has not been fleeting. Two days after that first glimpse at the sperm bank’s website, I still don’t want those profiles to be the ones I’m perusing. A part of my brain is scurrying to think of all the new photos and text I could add to my online dating profile to try to make me more compelling; is thinking that maybe I should immediately join the various groups I’ve been meaning to become a member of for quite some time—the Sierra Club’s singles hiking group, Toastmasters, maybe another writing class with a new group of classmates—to give myself another chance at meeting someone whom I might fall for. And get to have this baby with. 

A part of me doesn’t want to have given up on (or put a multi-year pause on) that sort of love.

But some love would be better than no love, the other part of me seems to be saying, and you have never been lucky in romantic love. And familial love is pretty hard to rival. When I think about my grandma or my mom and the way they’ve nurtured me, everything in me aches at the thought of not getting to offer my own little one the same. I absolutely do not want to miss out on that. But am I rushing into it? That, I think, is the question of the day.

A number of mothers have questioned whether I am really prepared for this baby. What’s your plan for daycare? they’ve each asked me, appalled at the thought of me leaving a three-month-old at a daycare facility once maternity leave ends but knowing I can’t afford to hire a nanny or stay home longer. What is my plan? I’ve had to ask myself. Mostly, I daydream of hiring one of my co-worker’s moms, who is currently out of work as a nanny and is a truly lovely woman who raised the most amazing son (one of my favorite employees) so I’d be thrilled to have her help raise my own munchkin. But I don’t honestly know anything about the cost of that option or any other. I have definitely not done my homework in this regard. This week I’m wondering if maybe I should.

The thing is, I think my heart is, for once, winning out over my head.

Two images have been floating around my mind for the past few weeks as I’ve undertaken the first few steps of this process. They float, and they fill my heart with commitment to having this kid.

One image is of my nieces and nephew—their faces hover, and I am filled with a sensation of the deepest love I’ve ever known. It is painful to think that I go a whole year between visits with them. The ten precious days I get with them annually are ten of the richest in emotion that I ever experience. Every inch of my body responds to the thought of them with a desire to feel that way daily, yearly, for all the rest of my life.

The other image is of a bookstore in Harvard Yard. I am standing by a display table covered in books, my dear friend Lauren at my side. I’m crying, and she’s holding my hand and cooing at me in the way that a person who doesn’t hug others but who really really wishes at that moment she did will coo. In front of us is the book Our Bodies, Our Selves, and we have just read the section on the ovarian condition that I have recently been diagnosed with. We are 19, and though we are too young to have thought about having babies yet, now we know that my body may not be able to do it, and I am mourning for the child I might never have. I am too young to have thought about having babies yet, but knowing I might not be able to makes me know something else: I badly want to. And I immediately take on a sense of guilt, of disappointment for someone else—because I believe that eventually someone will fall in love with me, and that he’ll want to have children, and that I will break his heart if I can’t. I write my first long work of fiction from his perspective; I watch him struggle as he and his sister fall in love with her first child and he tries to accept that he may not get to have his own. How could a young me have foreseen my own future so vividly when I wrote him into being?

His almost-breaking point comes while watching his newborn niece sleep and reading this letter that hangs over her crib:

                                                                                                                                     December 9, 1998

Gracie, my angel,                                                       

     I am writing this letter to welcome you into the world, into our lives, into your life. I have awaited your arrival endlessly and now I await my (and your) discovery of you.

     We hardly even know you (you burst out to join us only two days ago), and yet we count you as our greatest blessing. You are our most precious thing. We are so eager to watch you develop, to see your life unfold—and yet we take joy in every moment, we savor each gurgle in your throat, each contortion of your wrinkled face. 

     We watch you sleep and we see promise—never ending promise. Please grow up knowing that your Mommy and Daddy will always be watching you like this: with wonder.

                                    with love the size of the ocean and then some,
                                                                        Mommy

That letter, I want to write that in real life. I have so much love to give, such a depth of emotional capacity. I know that I will be an amazing mom, and I know that I can’t let myself miss out on doing so.

But am I really prepared? And do I really need to do it right now??

I hit pause after looking at the sperm bank website. It’s not that I’m having second thoughts about having this baby, or even about being a single mom. I still want to do it. I will plan to do it. I am not wimping out. Nothing makes me feel more zen than thinking about my baby. But I may slow the process down a bit. My doctor told me, after I passed all the initial tests, that the next steps were to pick out a sperm donor, then go off the pill, then get two more fertility tests done when I get my period naturally, and then inject the sperm. I’m thinking I may instead go off the pill, get my period, and get those two tests done—minus picking out the sperm. And if the tests come back clear, just as the others have, then maybe instead of starting to make this baby artificially, I can take six months to be the most proactive dater you’ve ever seen. Maybe I can make one last try at doing this naturally. The reason I felt the need to start now was that I thought my ovarian condition would make it take years to get pregnant. But my doctor says cheerfully that with fertility treatments, it could take just a few months. And I’m only just now turning 36. So maybe I still have time. Maybe. It’s really hard to know.

baby daddy blues

This is that moment – the one I’ve been almost glad to be working 70 hours a week to avoid. This evening I left the office at a reasonable hour for the first time in four weeks. I went to the mall and made some returns; I went to the grocery store and restocked my fridge. Then I got home, nestled into the couch with some hummus and vegetables to munch on, and opened the web page my infertility doctor wrote down for me.

I thought I would just read on the website what the hours of the sperm bank are and then figure out a time when I can go there to flip through large binders until I find my baby’s papa. But this is the 21^st century; of course the profiles are online. And it turns out they look and read a heck of a lot like match.com profiles—which is freaking me out, so I’ve closed the web page after reading about just two of the men. Or, I think I should say, two of the donors.

This is the most surreal thing I have ever done.

The write-ups feel like dating profiles; these guys sound great. It’s hard to wrap my brain around never meeting them. Around not really knowing what their faces look like, or what accents they have, or what the timbre of their voices is like. In daily life, my eye tends to be caught by people’s hands—I study the shape of fingernails, the length of fingers, the structure of knuckles. In my own family, I see all kinds of relationships in physical features like these. My forefingers and maybe thumbs are my Grandma Raia’s; my thighs and eyebrows definitely are too. My ring fingers and pinkies look more like my Grandpa Don’s; my feet, calves, and arm bones are just like my father’s. These boobs could come from either grandmother, but I think my double-F Grandma Lilli is the more likely source. This hair is Mom’s in color and Dad’s in fineness. This Cheshire cat grin, for certain, is Dad’s too, as is my brother’s. My giggle, my voice—I don’t know whom they come from; but I know my brother’s laughter is just like Dad’s, and my Uncle Tom’s is just like Grandma Raia’s. My mom sounds like her father so much of the time it’s uncanny. I want to know these things about my baby and his or her daddy. I want to know who I see in my little one when it’s not someone from my own family reflecting back at me.

To do it this way, the surreal-but-at-least-I’m-not-left-out-of-it-altogether-way, I’ll have to decide on a few factors, and then I’ll have to accept whatever they preordain without any real knowledge of their likely outcomes. The choices I’m given on the website seem so limited. I think I’ll construct a man like the ones in my family, in hopes of concocting a good blend with me. I can pick someone tall like my dad and brother, because I can pick my baby’s daddy’s height. I can pick someone with our family’s dark hair. Someone with our educational levels. From the profiles I can figure out who claims to be other things that tend to have meaning for me—whose profile states that he is poetic, or artistic, or inclined toward making music. Whose profile sounds beatific about nature. But how will I know whose heart is kind, whose arms will spawn snuggly, hug-loving arms like mine? 

What this brief visit to a website makes me realize is that what I really want to pick is an actual daddy for my little one. I know I can love the heck out of this kid, but man does it feel bad to set him or her up for a single-parent life right off the bat. Man at this moment would I like fate to finally get its shit together and put a living, breathing daddy in my and my baby’s path.