After Claire arrived, during a morning so grueling that when I think about it my lady parts clamp shut in an involuntary, sustained Kegel, we moved out of a rental flat in Berkeley and into a well-priced fixer-upper in a tiny suburb with very good public schools. My mom gave us a check to cover the last chunk of the deposit; she had plenty of money saved—saying no adds up, Kelly—and was no longer afraid I would spoil.
I played house, turning doors into chalkboards, making benches from plywood, sewing an ottoman slipcover that my mother-in-law joked, after a couple glasses of Pinot Grigio, “doesn’t do your living room any favors.” I started building my new life, collecting my own Pigeons for the road ahead. And I began the transition from my father’s breezy relationship with the world to my mother’s determined navigation of it.
At first parenthood was as I’d expected. Exhausting, sometimes heinous, occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow. Then my days got more complicated, and although there’s nothing unusually challenging about my children, I often find myself responding to their sudden and inscrutable moods, mighty wills, and near-constant arguing by turning into a wild-eyed fishwife. Some interactions are so strangely familiar, it’s as if I once starred as Little Orphan Annie and then, decades later, found myself cast in the revival as Miss Hannigan.
By way of example, here’s a memorable excerpt from a conversation with Georgia regarding her third-grade report on cheetahs:
“You missed a section, honey.”
“No, I didn’t,” she replies without looking.
“This page on reproduction is totally blank.”
“I know. I Googled it, and there was nothing.”
“Oh, I bet there are half a million pages about cheetah reproduction.”
“Not on Google, not when I put it in the nav-bar thingy,” she says, air-typing as if I’m new to the Internet and might need a little help following her.
“Maybe you spelled it wrong,” I suggest in a gentle voice.
“I know how to spell cheetah. C-h-e—”
“I was thinking reproduction,” I clarify.
“R-e-p—”
I smile even as her relentless contrariness boils my insides. “Okay, stop. When we go upstairs, I’ll do it with you.”
“But I did it already, and there are zero-point-zero sites,” she says. I don’t know which one of us is more fed up.
“I promise you there are many sites on the Internet that discuss cheetah reproduction,” I say with great manufactured calm, trying a trick that involves pretending your child is not your child but, rather, just a child, any child, asking for your gentle guidance. Sometimes this works.
“There are no—” Sometimes it doesn’t.
“STOP. That. Is. E-nough. E-NOUGH! Work on something else, but do not say one more word!”
“Fine.”
After Georgia storms off, Edward says, “When I first met you, you didn’t drink coffee, and you were so mellow.” How can I tell him that I was a dog in show, high-stepping with my shiny hair and sparkly striped collar? Twelve years and two puppies later, I’m an ungroomed bitch who barks at flies.
Beneath my frustration is real fear. What if my kid lacks a handful of the critical Life Skills we’re always reading about in the school newsletter: Persistence, Coachability, Curiosity? What if there’s an iceberg hardening right now beneath this defeatism? If a child can’t find a single word online about cheetah propagation, what kind of future can she hope for? That’s why I snap and storm around and then spend long nights thinking of the most damaged adults I know and wondering if my particular brand of maternal fuckups are how they ended up like that.
My “passionate engagement” frees Edward from just about all worry. He sleeps fine. He talks to his friends about road bikes and tech start-ups and music apps. He stews about his job. Why should he fret about the girls when I’m pacing the sealant off the hardwood floors? It would be redundant.
Recently, he called with good news! We were invited up to Tahoe for four days with the O’Sullivans. “Our girls can ski with their girls, and we can have an adult day on the mountain.”
This was a flawed plan, or at the very least a plan that required some consideration. Ten years into our marriage, I’ve learned to push back using Fact Not Feeling. “I thought we were in a period of post-Christmas austerity. Didn’t you say we needed to get our burn rate back under control, build up the 529s, maybe pay down some of our mortgage …”
“Yes, but the place is free.”
“Four days at Squaw equals sixteen lift tickets.” I don’t like being the family comptroller, but apparently it’s a job that must be done.
“So are we just not going to ski, ever?”
The real problem with Freddy Fun’s Tahoe plan was that the O’Sullivan girls skied twenty days last winter, on double-black diamonds. Our girls are what the savvy ski schools call Advanced Beginners, which meant two things:
1. Without a parent to slow her down, Claire would hop off a ski lift and fly in whatever direction the slope took her, fly with her hands high and her skis tight together, fly until she met a tree or another skier or the cliff’s edge. There was no helmet hard enough to protect her from her own recklessness.
2. Georgia, who does not like to be a beginner and will not ask for, or accept, help, would ride to the top of the mountain with the very able Maggie O and go wherever she led, even the Olympic runs, crying behind her ill-fitting loaner goggles, hating her inexperience and inferiority. Did Edward not know this? Could he not feel her insides clench like I could? God help them if anything ever happened to me.
“How are they going to learn if we don’t let them try?” Edward wanted to know. “I don’t want them to grow up scared of mountains and rivers and whatever else makes you nervous. I want them to be gamers, to be on the go team.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Here I thought I married George Corrigan’s daughter,” Edward said, playing to my identity. “Don’t tell me I married—”
“Watch it.”
I’m not sure who Edward married. Maybe the person he married became a different person. Because maybe that different person is the right person for the job. Maybe that person will take on the cheetah report, and protect over- and under-confident children on ski slopes, and manage the unsettling situations that often bubble up right around bedtime.
One particularly tough night, I’d broken a wineglass while I was doing dishes, and Claire was still upset that I’d forgotten to take her down to the softball field that afternoon so she could be in the team picture, and my lower back ached, and let’s just say the day was pleading to be done.
“Okay, girls, bedtime,” I announced.
“I get to stay up longer,” Georgia said.
“Why?” Claire asked.
“Because I’m two years older.”
“Not for long,” Claire said.
“Forever,” Georgia replied, too casually for a truth so cruel.
“Nuh-uh. Someday I’ll be nine.”
“Right, but when you’re nine, I’ll be eleven.” Claire’s eyebrows knotted. “I will always be older than you,” Georgia explained. Claire looked at me then at her sister, then back at me. Surely this was not the case.
“She’s right, honey.” This was as bad as anything I’d had to tell her over the years, as bad as Everything Dies. Even People. Even People You Know.
“Older,” Georgia said, possibly ignorant of the existential magnitude. “Always and forever.”
Claire made the face that preceded the noise that meant she was going to wail, and then it would be all over, because when she goes, she goes to 11.
“Georgia, please, stop!” I snapped. “She gets it, okay? You made your point.”
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“I’m not!” I yelled. “Upstairs, bed, now.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair.”
I wrangled them into their rooms. As I closed Georgia’s door, I heard Claire crying.
I leaned into her room. “What’s the matter, Clairey?”
“Are you mad at Georgia?” she asked me.
“Yes. I’m frustrated. The bickering makes me crazy. And I’ve talked to Georgia—”
“What did you say?”
“The same thing I always say: Leave It Alone. Walk Away.” She broke into a sob. “It’s okay, Claire. I’m just saying—”
“It’s not that!” she snapped, winding herself up in a way that racked me to watch.
“Claire, honey, what is it?” I readied myself for a confession.
When she finally spoke, her voice was very small. “Do you love one of us more than the other?”
“No, do you think I do?”
“Yes!” she spat out, the deepest possible betrayal in her voice.
“You think I love Georgia more than I love you?”
“No,” she sobbed, confusing me. “I think you love me more than you love Georgia!” To her mind, this was the most unforgivable treason; this violated a fundamental maternal vow.
Dropping off the girls the next morning, I looked for anyone I might be able to talk to about the night before. I ran into Beth and then Kristi, but I didn’t know how to launch into the story, and I felt strangely self-conscious about Claire’s concern, like I may have done something very wrong to surface such a fear. Besides, every mother on campus had her own problems. So I turned back toward Mountain Avenue and dialed my mom.
“Hey. So, did you—did we ever—okay, so Claire said the most disturbing thing last night. She said she thinks I love her more than I love Georgia. What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” she started, “you do your damnedest to keep things even-Steven. And I mean everything: presents, sleepovers, eye contact. Your brothers once fought over tube socks. I’d put them in their stockings and GT ended up with an extra pair and I swear to God, it almost ruined Christmas.”
“It’s gonna be a long ten years.”
“Ten? I still keep lists. Loans, visits, babysitting … You never stop tracking that one.”
“Lovey!” My dad picked up the other phone.
“Hi, Greenie.”
“Lovey! Great to hear your voice!”
While he told me about playing golf last week with Cousin Tommy and some other youngsters, I gnawed on the fact that in addition to helping the girls parse the world and all its awful truths—time goes only one way, things end, affections wax and wane—I was the sole distributor of the strongest currency they would ever know: maternal love.