The first time I hold my daughter's daughter I feel so sad.
I don't remember feeling this when her sons were born. It is a strange feeling,
the wrong emotion for this happy time, but I can't help it. I'm remembering
when the baby in my arms was my daughter, when it was all still to come. So
many things did not go as I would have wished. There is so much I can't undo.
The baby is beautiful, as my daughter was, as all my children were and are.
When I kiss my daughter she seems barely to feel it, seems almost to turn away.
I wonder what she is thinking. "What a beautiful girl you have," I
say, but my voice doesn't sound real. My daughter nods distractedly. I try to
remember how it is when the baby is born and you are intent only on milk, milk,
milk. But she feels distant to me, although I may be imagining it. This is not
what I expected. I expected pure joy, and here are joy and sorrow mixing into
the same moment.
Back home the family makes its adjustments, some painful. I find myself
interfering, making unnecessary and unwelcome suggestions. My daughter's
husband, the older boys' stepfather, asks them to do some household chore.
Twice, three times, he has to ask. His voice has an edge. Everyone is tired.
The older boy mutters something under his breath. Voices are raised.
"You're being rude," says my daughter to her eldest son, and I jump
up. I can't seem to stop myself. "He wasn't!" I shout. "You
weren't listening. You're being unfair!" I am trembling with emotion.
"Mother," my daughter finally has to say. "Please stop."
And heartsick I leave the room. But I am remembering another family, different
days. I don't know what to do with this mixture of emotions, this blurring of
the present and the past, and I hate it. Instead I want one pure feeling, like
water in a cup.
But the baby is beautiful. Her eyes are big and round and blue. She reminds me
of one of the creatures in the Hall of Darkness, the nocturnal animals whose
forms you make out only by letting your own eyes adjust, and then there they
are, in the branches or among the grasses, slowly taking shape, motionless,
wise, looking out at you. Beings from another world. She sleeps and wakes and
nurses. She doesn't fuss. I like to carry her around the house, whispering to
her, but I can't call her by her name, my name. I am humbled by the honor and
don't deserve it. "What's wrong," my daughter asks from time to time.
"Nothing," I say, but my heart is heavy. I feel as if my daughter and
I gaze at each other on opposite banks of some body of water. "This is a
happy time, Mom," she says, and I take it as a reproach.
So I cook. It comforts me to be slicing onions and frying garlic. It comforts
me to be chopping tomatoes and browning meat. "You don't have to start so
early, Mom," says my daughter. "It's only three o'clock, and we don't
eat until seven." We laugh, but I keep on cooking "She keeps trying
to get me to eat," I hear her telling a friend on the telephone, "at
ten in the morning, 'Have a chicken sandwich,' she says to me." My daughter
laughs again. I look at her across the room. Her little boy is playing with
trains and puzzles on the rug, occasionally climbing up next to her to look at
the baby. The two older boys are in school, sixth and seventh grades. Later
there will be a fire in the fireplace and a family eating supper together. I
try not to think of the way she grew up, the upheavals. The ordinary things she
didn't do, the mistakes I made. . . .
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