Dear Edwina,
Unless we name you something else
Forgive this if you can. We lived through a time when a story wasn’t epic enough unless someone’s mom died. It wasn’t just the princesses of the Disney renaissance that weren’t allowed to have moms. It was also the sitcoms of the no-fault divorce era. Finally, it was Game of Thrones. From 2011 to nearly 2018 everyone in the whole world was surrounded by this show whether they cared or not, and the most important characters lost their moms as they were born. Even as the vast majority of people walked bitterly away from the show in disappointment for plummeting quality, some of us stuck around and begged for it to be good again. The sequel series — there was only one so far in the year before you— couldn’t even have its own theme song, but it stuck hard to the tradition of maternal mortality.
So, until you arrive, I’m not going to read the books. I read all of them as library books, except the library didn’t have the first book. Then last year I had a wild shopping spree and I bought all the official coffee table books of dubious quality and read those, too. Consistently, the deaths of parents, especially moms, is an essential part of that world.
There was a Bollywood film a while ago. I never learned the name, but I suspect someone out there in the collective internet brain knows what I’m talking about. I thought of it as Anjali’s Ashes, like Angela’s Ashes, except it was nothing like Angela’s Ashes. For one thing, the mom who died was not named Anjali or Unjali. In fact, the ex-girlfriend was named Anjali and the guy named his daughter after her, and the meet cute was the fact that he was scolding little Anjali on the phone, not knowing little Anjali was Sleepless in Seattle-ing the Dad with grown Anjali. What sticks out about this interesting film with an interesting wish-fulfillment premise was that while dying and knowing she was dying, the mom wrote eight letters for her daughter, and possibly the last one was instructions to find the old flame and get her back together with the dad.
My roommate and I agreed this was the top plothole. As much as we didn’t buy the notion that someone’s dying ambition would be to get her husband back together with his Ex, it was even more unbelievable that someone could both be beyond medical help and also have the time and clarity of thought to write eight coherent letters to a child. Also, to do this instead of any of the other things one could do in their last hours of life. We were ok with not understanding the writing conventions — even the clunky tropes that fell flat — of another society’s media and settled to appreciate the comedy of errors that was the real point of the film, and that was good. Bollywood has a lot to offer.
The point is that I’m not a fast, concise writer. I can crank out a good word-count from all the NaNoWriMo and blog practice, but the rambling has only gotten looser over time. I can barely get two articles written in a week when I have all my blood intact and no epidurals or other meds.
Your father doesn’t have a long-lost first love. Either that or he and his friends are much better at keeping secrets than I could ever hope to be. Even so, helping a parent find love isn’t your problem. In a decent world, none of the adult crap we worry about is your problem. Your duty is to develop properly and enjoy the fact that you don’t have to pay taxes, work, or spend days recovering from minor injuries. Hopefully also learn healthy ways to cope with whatever bad deals you got to begin with, like ADHD. Maybe vision issues. I’m nearsighted and your Dad is farsighted so maybe you’ll have perfect Goldilocks vision.
But enough about stories I like. Two or three of my friends had dangerous deliveries in which they lost a lot of blood and nearly died.
I don’t expect to die, but it’s hard not to think about it as a nonzero possibility. The best case scenario is for our family of three to survive and thrive. I don’t know how the medical experts would weigh my life against yours. Hopefully they will never have to. That’s all we can hope. For many years, before you and your father were present, I was prepared to die at any moment. I had accomplished as much as I thought I ever could, and most of my interactions with other human beings gave me the impression that I wasn’t needed or wanted anywhere. I would be tolerated if I performed and provided perfectly, but only up to a point. I still had a time limit and I wasn’t invited to really know people. I was an afterthought acquaintance, not a top ten friend. I had a few friends that expected to be speed-dials on my phone, but couldn’t do the same for me.
Your father is possibly the kindest and the bravest person in the whole world. For the first time in a long time, I have been the most important person to someone. I’m still not totally adjusted to that, and now that you exist, I have to get used to being the most important person to two different people. I couldn’t leave you and you father alone in the world. That would be the saddest thing I could imagine. As bad as life is most of the time, being around your father makes it all worth continuing to live through.
We will be relieved when you arrive and get us past the first fear of death. I probably still won’t try to finish A Game of Thrones for a while after that. That’s a weird thing to read while breastfeeding and I have so many other books.
My grandma was my age when she had your grandma. Baby Mary was so tiny and sickly that she was read her last rites three times. She told me this story often and once I learned to read I discovered it was rites like “rites of passage” — I guess like Rite Aid, the great coming-of-age ritual supplier — and not like rights, as though Catholicism gives you one last right to remain silent, or maybe you have the right to say one cuss word for free before you go to heaven or baby purgatory.
I didn’t imagine all of this as a child hearing this story. I only understood it was an important part of your Grandma Mary’s origin story and must be heard often.
Your origin story is still in drafts.
