A Mother's Goodbye

That evening after work I stop by the Barnes & Noble on Eighty-Sixth and Lexington and stock up on baby books, feeling both furtive and excited, hoping I don’t bump into anyone I know, even as part of me wishes I would, so I could share some of my excitement. My joy.

I don’t see anyone, though, and the multi-pierced teen at the checkout looks bored by my book choices. I clutch them to my chest all the way home, and then back at my apartment I curl up on the sofa with a large glass of wine and an order of sushi, the books scattered all around me. I feel as if I’m about to open Christmas presents. I want to learn all this stuff; I want to become an expert in this new, unexpected field.

I pick up the first book, First Days with Your Newborn. I study the pictures of the babies on the front; they are wide-eyed and skinny-limbed, and they remind me a little bit of humanoid aliens. I haven’t held a baby since I was a teenager, babysitting for some neighbors. I haven’t talked to a toddler in twenty years. I’m entering a whole new universe, going where no woman has gone before, at least none I know,

and I am determined to do it.

I take a sip of wine and flip to the opening chapter, skipping the cutesy intro for the factual details I need. Like, how do you actually hold a newborn baby? Or put on a diaper? Or feed them a bottle?

As I read more of the book, and then skim through the others, I realize how completely unprepared I am. Cradle cap, colic, night feeds, RSV, gas, fever, baby acne… I never even knew such things existed. But I’ll learn.

Restless now, I rise from the sofa and take my wine to my study. When the baby comes, she’ll have this room and I’ll have to move my study to the little maid’s room off the kitchen, which is currently filled with boxes of stuff from my dad’s condo. Going through the photos, the mementoes, the sweaters that still smelled of him, holding his reading glasses and breathing in his aftershave… it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I boxed up what mattered and brought it back here.

I walk slowly around my study, looking at all the photos. Dad and me when I was a gap-toothed seven-year-old, grinning wildly at the camera on a fishing trip. My mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before, and Dad stepped right up, taking over all the little duties as well as the big ones. Doing everything for me, being everyone to me.

I pause in front of a photo of my mom from her college days, her hair a dark cloud around her face, her expression dreamy. Sometimes I feel like the cancer kept me from getting to know her properly. I loved my mom, but I think I miss the idea of her more than the real person, because I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t sick.

Throughout my childhood, she was always in and out of the hospital, pale and sick, needing chemo treatments, wanting to hug me, too tired to talk. Her death wasn’t the devastation my father’s was, and that makes me feel both sad and guilty.

I look at another picture, this one of Dad and me at my graduation from Tufts. My cap is at a rakish angle, and my smile is a little smug. I’d already been accepted into a two-year competitive internship in the city, with a deferred entry to Harvard’s MBA program. Next to me Dad looks proud and happy, with his salt and pepper buzz-cut, his bright blue eyes, his slight paunch that he used to joke about. My beer belly, he’d say, even though he never drank beer.

I picture myself telling my daughter about my dad, sharing the stories that now only matter to me. It can be lonely, being an only child, especially when your parents die. No one else feels the way you do. Absolutely no one else is bearing the grief you feel in that moment.

Of course, this daughter of mine will be an only child too. It will be the two of us against the world, just like Dad and me. A team, a partnership, an unbreakable bond. I’ll just have to do a better job of preparing her for when I’m gone.

A week later, Joanne, my best friend from my MBA days, calls to tell me she’s in the city for work and asks if I’m free for dinner. We meet at Ocean Prime on West Fifty-Second, near her hotel. Joanne looks just as sharp and savvy as she did a year or so ago, when I last saw her. We do a quick air kiss and sit down, reaching for menus. Even this feels like a business meeting, as we prepare to exchange the relevant data about our lives.

‘So, how are you?’ she asks, her gaze sweeping down the list of seafood appetizers. ‘Are we doing three courses?’

‘Why not?’ I feel expansive. I want to tell her about my adoption plans, but I don’t know how she’ll react. We order our drinks and then Joanne sits back, her eyes narrowed as she inspects me.

‘You look different.’

‘Older.’ I roll my eyes and take a sip of the restaurant’s signature cocktail, whiskey, honey water, and lemon and orange. My dad would tell me it was a waste of Gentleman Jack; he liked his neat.

‘Well, yes, we both are,’ Joanne says as she sips her wine. ‘But you look… I don’t know. Are you seeing someone?’

‘No.’ I’m amazed that she can sense something is different, and yet of course something huge has happened. In the last week, I’ve cleared out my study and bought paint samples. Paint samples, me. No pink for this baby girl. I picked a fresh, minty green with an antique white trim.

I could have hired someone to paint the room, to decorate the whole thing, and I admit, I was a little bit tempted, because time is something I don’t have a lot of. But I decided to do it myself because I want to own this. And with every dab of paint, every throw pillow or sleepsuit I buy, I feel like I am putting down a deposit to make this more real.

‘What, then?’ Joanne asks. ‘Because you look like you’re dying to tell me something.’

‘Not dying… but something has changed.’ I take a deep breath, plunge. ‘I’m adopting a baby. A little girl.’

Joanne’s eyebrows arc toward her hairline. ‘Seriously? What about work?’

I take a sip of my cocktail, trying to mask my hurt. Couldn’t she have just said congratulations? ‘What about it?’

‘You’re going to be Mommy-tracked.’ She shakes her head. ‘Don’t you want to make partner?’

‘Yes, and I think it’s going to happen soon.’ There’s a meeting of all the partners in mid-April, and I’m fully expecting Bruce to tell me the good news afterward. ‘Besides, I haven’t actually told anyone at work about this.’ Suddenly that seems absurd. I’m adopting a child and I’m going to keep it from everyone at work, which is basically everyone I know? Why should I keep something so exciting, so important, a secret?

Joanne stares at me for a good thirty seconds. ‘I understand why you haven’t,’ she says finally. ‘But you’re going to have to sometime, aren’t you? I mean, kids always mean time off. They’re sick, the nanny cancels, they have some show at school you’ve got to attend. Parent meetings…’

‘I won’t have to go to those for a while.’

‘But you know what I mean.’