My Family in Parallel Universes
On reading Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths”
My two-year-old son climbed on to my lap, effectively distracting me from the work I was doing on my laptop. Whatever enjoyment I derived from that caffeinated, early morning’s work, before everyone else was up to ask what’s for breakfast, I quickly forgot when Joaquin woke up earlier than usual and, not finding me in bed, toddled to where I was. To lay his chest on mine, and his sleepy head on my shoulder. To enclose me in his chubby little arms.
That was when, melting in my son’s love, and with my initial joy from work melting away as well, the thought hit me. What if we’re already dead and this is what heaven is like? What if I didn’t know that we both already passed — Joaquin and I — when I was rushed to surgery when he was 36 weeks in the womb and my blood pressure shot up to 180/150?
Morbid thoughts aside, when Joaquin and I got out of it alive, I knew since then that I’m now on my second shot at life. Not just me, but my husband and seven-year-old daughter at that time, whose lives I can’t imagine had I been taken away so suddenly, so violently, by a potentially blissful future with a longed-for new baby that turned awry.
My daughter Dione, now nine years old, has lately been wondering about parallel universes. Her…
