Because I Said So (44 page)

She does not yet know how glorifying and intimidating and political and personal motherhood is, nor does she know long nights and exhaustion, nor has she made the mistakes I’ve made, nor has she reveled as I have reveled, nor has she stolen so many gorgeous moments, snapshots, blessed details from a child’s finally inexplicable life. She is not yet so riled with regret, so blasphemous with pride, so prone to lying awake at night, when she would rather be, she needs to be, sleeping. I want to have a baby, she turns to her husband and says. I want a baby, something she’s longed for for years. And this night it is raining. It will rain that whole night long. It will rain. The color will be sweet and tender blue.

I have lived too many years to be that woman again. There is grammar in my skin, gray in my hair. There is less speed in my feet; the old bike is rusty; I walk where once I ran. I have learned not to call myself a poet anymore, and when I dance, I dance where nobody can see me, to music that I play at a drearily decent decibel. The exhaustion of motherhood is cumulative.

Exuberance is tempered by the many choices a mother makes.

Pathways narrow when a woman has a child, because incautious-ness yields consequences, and irresponsibility is selfish, and the dreams one dreams on behalf of a child are the dreams one does not dream for one’s self.

Still and nevertheless, I honor that not-yet-mother in quiet hours now. I remember her, and return to her, and restore what was never fully forsaken. Lately I find myself growing bolder when telling my own versions of my stories. Lately I grow ever more truly predisposed toward neighbor ladies who invite me into their homes. Lately I go hunting for things my son would
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never care to see. Lately, and more and more lately, I sit outside and dream.

We bring our own selves and stories forward when the first long sprint of motherhood is through. We reconcile who we were to who we’ll be. We look at the face that has changed over time and seek the child who won ribbons, the young wife who loved to dance, the mother who gave her child both all she had and not enough. We bring ourselves, our stories forward, adding fractions to make a whole, singing our seafaring songs.

Dude, Where’s My Family?

M a r g a r e t R e m i c k

I met my husband
at college when I was nineteen. Compared with my pale family of armchair dwellers and poetry readers, his golden boy athleticism and carefree, youthful outlook were utterly foreign and mesmerizing to me. Here was someone who didn’t overthink or discuss everything. What clarity! Besides getting good grades, he was preoccupied with the hippest music and clothes, the hot parties on campus and in Manhattan. These seemed perfectly legitimate pursuits to me since they were mine as well. We were inseparable, whether up all hours cramming for exams or dashing around barefoot in winter from adventure to adventure, somehow untouchable by germs or bad luck. We were recklessly, stupidly in love.

Our fast life accelerated after college when we moved to Los Angeles and fell in with a crowd of blue chip heirs and young celebrities. A typical party took place over several days at a Malibu or Brentwood estate. No pool was left un–skinny dipped, or un-drained and skateboarded. We imbibed and smoked with abandon, 1920s style, as if no one had ever heard of lung cancer or addiction, and it was pure, irresponsible fun. At one particularly decadent party, we alighted on a mansion in the Hollywood Hills and were handed sledgehammers and crowbars. Although in mint condition, the house was to be redesigned, and we were encouraged to smash it to bits. Have a drink and take a swing at a
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sconce or a diamond-paned window. Rome before the fall. My husband and I, fiancés then, were team players, partners in harm-less, pointless crimes.

Immaturity in my mate
wasn’t a drawback until we had babies. By then we had left Los Angeles. I was twenty-four years old, my husband twenty-six, when twins appeared on the ultrasound, and my life changed irrevocably. I took a swan dive into mothering, never understanding all the comments from people sympathizing about the hardship of having infant twins. I loved every minute of it. Never having had a solo baby, I had no point of comparison: these were my two beautiful boys, and I was so relieved the three of us had survived a tricky birth that the rest seemed easy. Although a trouper about diaper changes when the boys were tiny, my spouse generally continued in his merry ways, working as an animation producer while pursuing, with intense drive, a second career as a competitive windsurfer. He maintained a suntan, partied with his beach pals, and bought himself a motorcycle.

This was during the early nineties, when any self-respecting woman was expected to go barreling off to a job the instant her baby’s mouth could fasten on a bottle. Generations of women before us had struggled to carve out their places in the work force, so it would be sacrilege to give up those gains now. I waited until the boys were eighteen months old to return to work, which at that time seemed preposterously, indulgently late. So began one of the most miserable, lonely stretches in my adult life. I dropped my darlings off at day care, and they cried. I worked, fetched the twins for hurried dinners and bedtimes, and then I cried—over missing them and over this wretched, unnatural arrangement.

Meanwhile, Mr. Suntan worked, sailed, and partied. He was all smiles and happiness when present, and clearly loved his baby boys; he just wasn’t around much. He saw nothing wrong with seeing his kids nominally during the week and partying through Fridays and Saturdays. A hung over, albeit cuddly and fun Sunday
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afternoon spent with his sons was plenty for him. To me, going out seemed absurd: weekends were the only real time I had to be with my boys.

The situation worsened when he invited one of his swinging single friends to move into our basement and said friend started bringing home loud sex partners. Their downstairs thrashing never actually woke the twins, but it was an odd background noise to rock a baby to sleep to. Forget about cherishing the sweetness and innocence of two bouncy boys: no, our household, our frat house, was too cool to acknowledge life evolving in that way, and I was too exhausted to do anything but plod on. I laugh now, but it was awful at the time. When you’ve had only broken sleep for two years, sensible clothes for three, and are permanently smeared with baby paste, it’s disheartening to have some frowzy vixen stagger into your kitchen to get water or a piece of toast after her appetite-building sessions downstairs. “Hi, good morning, Donna/Rhonda/Jeanette! I haven’t had more than a back-room quickie set to Looney Tunes music in ages, but, by all means, carry on. I’m glad you’re here to highlight how very unsingle I am.

Instead of peek-a-boo, let’s play the walls aren’t paper thin.”

What became abundantly clear at this juncture was the disparity between my priorities and my husband’s. His friends had always been important to him, but I had no idea how important.

The nastiness between us went way beyond the usual parental scorekeeping. I ended up with the role of the teeth-gritter, the bitter domestic, the sometime hysteric, and this naturally justified even longer absences for my husband, whether he was skipping off to Burning Man with his buddies or flying to South America for a windsurfing race. The vicious cycle lasted four years. My resentment was made surreal by Mr. Suntan’s continued ebul-lience and good humor whenever he was actually present. I would mock his effusive greetings to the kids, knowing that the louder the “Hiiiiii, boys,” the less time he actually planned on being around.

The funny thing was, we all got used to this dynamic. The twins loved him like Santa, or some mythical, hard-to-spot creature. I
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loved him as I always had, despite being deeply angry. Eventually, my husband and I got used to our grinding differences, and what emerged was our alternative family, the core being my boys and me, with their father as a satellite; one son actually called him “Uncle.”

One of the perks of his 24-7 career and growing income was that I was able to reduce my working hours to part time. I made the most of the situation, figuring I was essentially a well-sponsored single parent. The twins and I became very, very close. As it is for many women with husbands in absentia, my children were, without a doubt, my central source of love and comfort, and I theirs. We went on all sorts of adventures, just the three of us, ransacking the city, museums, zoos, and parks. Looking back, I marvel at the ridiculous optimism a new mother has: I would go tent camping with two toddlers by myself, hauling coolers, lanterns, cookstoves, sand toys, books, diapers, and all the rest.

I also became ruthless about borrowing dads—meaning we tagged along with friends whose husbands weren’t too busy to do things with their families on weekends. If all four of us did spend time together, it was at the beach, at windsurfing competitions. The boys and I, along with other windsurfing widows and orphans, hud-dled like Bedouins under blankets or inside vans to stay out of the flying sand. This was often great fun, and my husband’s surf friends would play with the boys in the unmeasured, energetic way only childless people play. Occasionally we’d have pizza delivered to the beach, our family’s version of the time-honored ritual of Sunday dinner—sort of Norman Rockwell meets
Baywatch
—happy windblown kids, exhilarated dad in a half-peeled wet suit, and me, glad all of us were together, if only for time scraps.

Cut to: The Dawning of a New Age,
or Move Over, Shrunk Shanks!!

My boys are now teenagers and excelling so mightily at everything they do, it’s almost spooky. They are handsome, ferocious on the soccer pitch, surpassing their teacher in chess. Their knees barely fit in the car, and one boy has a beautiful, low, gravelly
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voice, far deeper than his father’s. My boys, now these young men, emanate potential and power just beginning to unfurl, and it’s thrilling to witness.

Meanwhile, my husband and his swingin’ cronies are pushing forty and beyond. The “buzzards” party on (although not as much), and do things like “pants” each other and get head injuries from wrestling. My husband showed up late to our family party, but at least he finally showed up. While not relinquishing his own boyish ways, he cherishes his kids and spends a lot more time with them. His many achievements now serve as an excellent example to our children.

The buzzards still enjoy spending time with our family, and they are always welcome. Very few have married, and several seem to envy us for having gotten through child-rearing, even if by the skin of our teeth. A couple of the guys have taken the conventional path but leap-frogged ahead a few steps and have married women who have children from previous marriages.

Although juvenile in lifestyle, the buzzards are big-hearted. These core guys have become dear friends to all of us.

But their larger social crowd of ever-young singles is another kind of beast altogether. At a recent surf-snob party I attended, this tall, hulking Aussie jock pushed past me on his way to the kitchen for a “beah.” His sunglasses were perched strategically on his thinning hair. His hair itself was artificially lightened—and not in an up-the-establishment way, but in an unconvincing, cover-the-gray way—and he was squeezed into a snappy, name-brand T-shirt that was a bit too snug, something perhaps from the juniors department. His pecs, no doubt once perfect shields of muscle mass, were gone soft. Yet the teen spirit was far from extinguished in this mid-lifer. He gave me a nasty, demeaning look, as if to say “What are
you
doing here? You must be thirty-five or,
gasp,
forty!” I am in fact thirty-eight, a solid ten years older than the women usually welcome at these bacchanals. And I do not resemble an inflatable pleasure doll. I glared back at him.

He struck me as terribly funny—this middle-aged man trying so hard to look twenty, drinking his lite beers and clinging to raver
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status. Mutton dressed as lamb, man-wise! I kept picturing my boys, real youth—the real thing—next to this buffoon.

And then the other night my husband’s new garage band was jamming when the boys returned from a museum costume party with their dates, one in belly dancer garb, the other in a green plastic go-go outfit, both fourteen years old. The girls filed past the band on the way to the boys’ room, and the band nearly skipped a beat. The girls barely noticed them despite their racket of music and oh-so-hipness. I would be lying if I said I don’t get a huge kick in the pants watching this phenomenon, watching the old men step down. I should be sympathetic to my husband’s slowly being humbled by time, like all of us. But there’s still this germ of bitterness from those lonely days with my little boys that makes me want to laugh meanly and revel in the fact that I may have missed some Saturday parties, but my stars are shining now.

My Surrogate

C h a r o G o n z a l e z

1.

I hold her clothes
outside the changing room. We talk through the curtains about injections, side effects, and a new beginning for both of us. She calculates a possible due date. Was I late when I delivered my children? How much did they weigh? This is good, a pause; a respite from the past three weeks of groping my way through the fog of fertility drugs, preparing for the retrieval of my eggs and this procedure—the only way, I learned two years ago, that I would be able to have another baby of my own.

I am surprised at how comfortable and natural this physical closeness feels, just to stand on the other side of the curtain from this woman I have met only twice before. I pass her the gown and socks she needs to put on. She passes me her backpack. This is what you do for your sister, I think, for your best friend—you fold her clothes; you hold her hand through a surgical procedure.