Newbie

A few days ago, I went with my niece, the new mother, to lunch. As we ate, the newbie slept away the hour in her carrier, her neck curled in an extreme position that reminded me of the bent-necked, headed, cooked chickens one sees hanging in food stalls and restaurant windows in Singapore. It’s the position everyone on airplanes is trying to avoid by using those U-shaped, inflatable neck pillows. My niece explained that the newbie, even when manually straightened, will curl her neck back into that position as she sleeps.

As we ate our sandwiches, my niece asked me the question that every childless woman in her 30’s finds herself being asked from time to time, some variation of “Do you ever want to have a baby?”

I don’t remember exactly how she phrased the question, but it was interesting because it was more along the lines of did I think I might’ve had such an interesting and adventurous life had I had children. When she asked me that, one part of my heart crumbled a bit because I was compelled to wonder how she sees her own life and her own limitations. Does she know that she has the ability to travel or get an education or go out into the world? I’m afraid that, even sans children, she might never make those things a priority.

And here are two things:

One: It’s interesting that she sees my life as interesting and adventurous considering I’ve spent a great big chunk of my life recently sleeping on Dave’s couch, mired in a kind of thick, dull darkness. My life hasn’t been interesting or adventurous in a long time, feels like. But I know that as little as I’ve traveled, as little as I am educated, I would hazard that I am the most well-traveled and well-educated woman in my family. (I say this not to insult or disparage the women in my family whose own acts of bravery and whose abilities to navigate the everyday miracles of living are beyond my reach. All I mean is that I’ve got the degrees and I’ve got a few more countries under my belt. That’s all.)

I answered my niece’s question by saying that I have chosen not to have children in part because I wanted to finish school and travel. For me, it was simply a matter of understanding that those who travel fastest, travel light.

Two: I remember two years ago when I returned to attend her father’s slash my brother’s funeral and at lunch we were talking about my living in Japan and my niece said to me that she could never imagine leaving her home. Then, I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t imagine it either. (Now, I wanted to tell her that once you have that strong sense of home, you take it with you wherever you go. You may get lost, but you’re never as lost as those souls who leave home in search of home.)

I realize that for my niece the idea of leaving this place feels like losing her home. She is young, only eighteen, and leaving is unimaginable for her. It’s an unimaginable quantity, this kind of freedom and independence that I value to the extent that when it is absent from my life, I feel a deep kind of sadness. When I lose that feeling of freedom, I wrestle with wanting to do nothing but run away and I have to be careful with how I allow that to manifest itself.

As we drove around, as we ate lunch, she brought up my brother, her father. She is able to speak very calmly about his dying, about her last days with him. Because she can do this, I feel as though I owe her the courtesy of outward placidity. As we talk, I try to sound calm even though I don’t feel calm. I want to cry and tell her how much I miss her father and how I was responsible for him and how I failed him. I choke back tears and I try my hardest not to change the subject. My throat tightens up and in an effort to loosen it, I take a drink of a watery, warm diet soda that’s been sitting in the car for hours.

Her calmness about her father’s death is a new quality. Soon after I returned from Japan, we had lunch at the Frontier and I brought up her father. “I miss your dad,” I said to her and she was overcome with a deep sadness. It was too soon to talk about him to her. Now, it’s too much for me.

Now she wants to know if maybe, if he were alive, if he’d be a good grandfather or if he’d be happy for her. I tell her that I’m sure he would be a good grandfather, that he would be happy for her. It's true that their relationship was troubled when he died. He was using more and harder drugs and she was a teenager desperate for independence. I tell her that her struggle for independence was normal, their disagreements over it perfectly normal. Their troubles with one another only seem abnormal because that completely natural process was interrupted by his dying. I tell her that her father was a generous person; he was certainly less judgmental and more compassionate than I’ve ever been.

And, too, there is something that I didn’t tell her: I didn’t tell her that there are very few differences between the living and the dead. One of those differences, the only one important to her at the moment perhaps, is that the dead are often more willing to forgive than are the living.