by Glynis Astie
All my love,
Me
Forgetting my need for pantyhose (and my need to get ready for work for that matter), I put the book on my nightstand, picked up the phone and dialed the only person who could reason with me. Well, the only person who could reason with me whose kids were already on their way to school.
As soon as she picked up, I blurted, “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?” she asked distractedly. The telltale clanking in the background indicated she was washing the breakfast dishes. Just like clockwork.
“I can’t…live my life without her.”
“Hang on a sec, Syd.”
I heard the sounds of the water being turned off, dish gloves being removed and the scraping of a chair at the kitchen table.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she sighed, “what happened to make you feel this way?”
“Um, our mom died?” I spat through clenched teeth.
I could almost hear her counting to ten before responding. I knew I was being rude, but I couldn’t make myself stop. Between the grief, the hormones, the fatigue and the lack of sleep, I was the proverbial hot mess.
“I meant, what happened this morning, sweetie?”
I could always count on my sister to ask the right questions.
“I found a book.”
“Was it another book with a close mother-daughter relationship? I thought we decided to wait on those for a few more months.”
Poor Kate had been so patient with me over the last two months. Last week I had lost it over a book recommended to me by an employee because the relationship between the main character and her mother was disturbingly similar to the one I used to have with our mother. I distinctly remember telling Kate the book was mocking me, knowing our relationship was over. I think I might have even mentioned finding the author and giving her a piece of my mind. (Dear God! Was there no hope for me?)
“No, it was a book she gave me for my birthday.” I paused, gathering the strength to tell her the rest. “She wrote the most beautiful inscription.”
Tears slid down my face and I felt the pain of loss envelop me once more.
“Oh, sweetie, no wonder you’re so upset.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore, Kate. It’s too hard.”
“I know it is, but we don’t have a choice.”
“I’m just so…” I searched for the right words to explain my emotions. “I’m so angry. I hate that her life is over. I hate how painfully it ended. I hate that she won’t see our kids grow up. I hate that she won’t be at their plays, their graduations, their weddings! I hate every single thing about this.”
“I understand.”
“I can’t make it stop, Kate. I keep trying to move on, because I want to be a good mother for Luc and a good wife for Louis, but I’m struggling. I’m in a perpetual state of agony and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say or how to act. When is it going to get easier?”
“I wish I could answer that,” she murmured. “I think we just have to take it day by day, knowing some days will be easier than others. But you also have to remember, you have a crazy amount of hormones coursing through your body right now, so it’s going to be a little harder for you to manage your emotions. Cut yourself a little slack.”
I was pretty sure Louis was cutting me enough slack for the both of us. I had to remember to thank him tonight…
“Great,” I muttered. “Just what I need! Another challenge.”
“Life is full of them, Syd. We can only do our best to get through them.”
“I’m just so tired, Kate.”
“I know you are. It will get easier. You have to remind yourself, Mom was a crucial part of your life for thirty-five years. You aren’t going to be able to move on easily, nor should you. Take the time to grieve. It’s awful, but it will help you get to a better place in the end.”
“Well, past experience has shown you’re always right, so I have no choice, do I?”
“Exactly,” she crowed.
“Rats.”
Kate chuckled. “But seriously, I’m here for you, Syd. No matter what.”
“Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate that.” I squeezed my eyes shut in frustration. “I only wish I was better at being there for you.” No matter how hard I tried, Kate had always done a better job taking care of me than I had taking care of her. The guilt I felt over this fact was immeasurable.
“You do far more than you realize, Syd.”
“If you say so.”
I hoped rather than knew she was telling the truth. Right now I didn’t feel like I was doing anything for anyone other than driving them nuts.
“Hey, do you guys want to come over for dinner tonight?”
“I would love nothing more, but I promised Maya we would come visit.”
“Ah!” Kate giggled. “Is it time for another viewing of Coco, baby extraordinaire?”
“Indeed it is.”
The past couple of months had been filled with surprises. To begin with, Maya had had her baby at the end of January—a scheduled C-section, of course—and she had taken to motherhood with surprising ease. It hadn’t hurt that her mother-in-law had hired a night nurse, thereby enabling Maya to have a full eight hours of sleep every night. She had also hired a team of nannies, so one might say Maya was enjoying quite the vacation during her maternity leave. Unfortunately for me, the additional time on her hands meant that helping me through my grief was her most interesting pet project, once she had styled Coco’s outfits for the week, of course.
“What do you think she has up her sleeve this time?”
“I don’t have the mental capacity to imagine the degree of horrors I will be going through, Kate. Frankly, she’s starting to scare me.”
Not that it took much, mind you. Maya had always possessed the capacity to scare people. But her tendencies had veered toward deranged as of late. She had somehow gotten the idea in her head that the way for me to get over my sadness was to become a stay-at-home mom. But not just any stay-at-home mom, a stay-at-home mom modeled after her new favorite TV show, The Donna Reed Show. (Someone had a little too much time on her hands.) Every time I visited her, I found a stack of pamphlets for a variety of ladies’ teas, events given by several high-end charitable foundations and as always, a Brooks Brothers catalogue.
“Has she given up on the twin sets yet?”
“Not a chance!” I smiled. “She’s convinced she can style me into a new occupation which will ultimately lead to my salvation.”
I had no issue with the idea of staying at home with my children. In fact, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. Caring for a baby all day, and handling Luc for all but six hours of the day would require an enormous amount of stamina. But what an adventure it would be…
I had made it through the day by the skin of my teeth and was relieved to find myself in Maya’s dining room with a fruity mocktail and a salad. Although I was pleased to have time to catch up with my feisty friend, I would have been happier with Devon, Louis and Luc in the living room, where they were dining on fried chicken and fries while watching college basketball.
After gazing longingly at the chicken, I turned back to my salad and poked at it.
“If you finish your salad like a good girl, I’ll give you a piece of that nasty fried stuff,” Maya drawled.
Maya had sworn off meat years ago, but grudgingly tolerated her husband’s desire for it. Given that he cheerfully tolerated her moods, I think she got the better end of the deal.
Maya had given me a healthy salad filled with fresh veggies and low-fat cheese. It was most definitely nutritious, but not all that delicious. I was suddenly overtaken by an image of Phoebe from Friends saying, “The baby wants meat!”
A noise from the video monitor quickly turned our attention away from my hunger. Coco often gurgled in her sleep and Maya took great pleasure in watching her. The look of tenderness on he
r face as she gazed at her daughter was priceless.
“Isn’t she incredible?” Maya gushed.
This sentimental side of my sarcastic bestie still caught me off guard. It would certainly be an excellent time for payback…
Sydney! Do not make fun of her. Do not!
“She is,” I agreed.
The gurgling had now become fussing and it wouldn’t be long before it became full on howling. I glanced around to see which nurse was on duty this evening.
“Marta is off tonight,” Maya remarked, “So we’ll have to manage on our own.
As expected, Devon jumped up, but it seemed Maya had other plans. She held up her hand and said, “Don’t worry, hon, Syd’s got it.”
Bewildered, I whispered, “I do?”
“You want a little practice, don’t you?” she smiled. “It’s been a while since you’ve had a baby to contend with.”
She had a good point. But people didn’t forget these things, did they? I mean, caring for a baby through the first year was like living through a war. Only the strong survived. Surely those memories would be burned in your brain forever, right?
Unsure of the answer to this question, my mind started whirling with random baby-related concerns. How often do you feed a newborn? How long to they sleep at a time? What do you bathe them with? Do you bathe them every day? Is that bad for their skin?
Apparently, you could forget these things. You could also forget what you were supposed to be doing at that moment in time.
“Better get going, Syd!” Maya sang.
I sprang up from the table and sprinted down the hall to Coco’s room. It was probably more like a klutzy gallop, but I preferred to imagine myself with a more dignified gait.
I carefully opened the door. “Shhhh…it’s okay, Coco. Auntie Syd is here.” After turning on the lamp next to her crib, the room was filled with a soft glow. Coco took one look at me and cried harder. I reached for her and instantly knew the reason for her distress.
“You poor thing! You’re soaked.” I carefully picked her up and brought her to the changing table. “I would be in a bad mood too. Yes, I would.”
Apparently I didn’t forget my vomit-inducing baby talk. I knew I sounded like an idiot, but I couldn’t help it. I often wondered if babies thought their caregivers sounded like idiots too. Maybe that was why they cried so much under these circumstances.
After removing her soaked onesie and wiping her down, I prepared a clean diaper. It was then that all hell broke loose. A veritable fountain of poop shot from this tiny baby’s bottom through the bars of the changing table and onto my light blue maternity blouse.
I gasped in horror before exclaiming, “Son of a—”
I pulled out as many wipes as I could, simultaneously trying to clean Coco once more and calm her down following the crazy lady’s outburst.
Maya’s laughter filled the room. “What are you? A novice?”
“Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
“You can’t leave her without a diaper for that long. She’s a newborn! Things are very unpredictable.”
“Clearly I had forgotten.” Grabbing another fistful of wipes, I turned to her angrily, “These earth friendly wipes don’t clean for shit.”
“I think the idea is to actually clean the shit, Syd.”
I froze, knowing this was something my mother would have said. I gazed at Maya, completely unsure of how to process my emotions.
“Are you okay, Syd?”
There I was, standing in Coco’s perfectly decorated nursery, covered in poop, staring at my wiseacre friend and I immediately knew I was okay. Or at least I knew I was going to be. My mother may have died, but she was with me wherever I went. She was in my heart, in my mind, in my very soul. And nothing would ever change that.
“Yes,” I murmured. “I think I am.”
She smiled. “Then let’s take this show on the road.”
Maya and I spent the next ten minutes bathing poor, poop-covered Coco, while Devon changed her sheets. Once she was restored to her former bedtime glory (and I had cleaned myself up), I took her in my arms and rocked her back to sleep.
Maya tiptoed into the room. “You see? I told you it wouldn’t be hard.”
I smirked. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
She shook her head slightly before nodding. “I can’t deny it. The look on your face was unforgettable.”
“Do you think we’ll ever get to the root of why you enjoy seeing me suffer?”
Maya shrugged. “I doubt it.”
“Fan-freakin’-tastic.”
She carefully scooped her daughter out of my arms before saying, “You sure you’re ready for this again?”
“I can handle it.”
After she settled Coco in her crib, she took my hand and we tiptoed out of the room.
“You know, Syd, those penises are pretty wily—gives the kid much longer range and better aim. You can’t try to pull what you did tonight or you’ll spend the entire first year of this kid’s life covered in pee.”
This particular surprise had been revealed to us a couple of weeks ago. I shouldn’t say surprise really, since we had a fifty-fifty shot of the result, but somehow I thought I was going to have a daughter. My siblings each had a daughter, I suppose I thought I would follow suit, since I already had a son. And if I were being really honest, I treasured the relationship I had with my mother so much, I wanted to experience it from the other side, even if she weren’t here to advise me.
I rolled my eyes. “Nothing I haven’t been through before.”
“Yeah, but you were a lot younger then,” she reasoned. “Your brain has started to degenerate already—”
I placed a finger over her lips. “After what I just went through, you owe me some chicken.”
She began to protest, but I silenced her with a good old-fashioned death glare.
“And some really, really good chocolate.”
She snorted. “Won’t that simply remind you of the atrocity you just went through?”
“Only if your gourmet chocolate smells like sh—”
“Perish the thought, Syd. Perish the thought.”
Chapter Thirteen
I wasn’t depressed about having another boy. Not really. Although the idea that Louis was now in a rather difficult position with his female relatives made me chuckle just a little. He had given his grandmother’s bracelet to me in the sweetest expression of agreement to have another child. (Giving me the bracelet before the guarantee of a girl was rather ballsy—especially since his mother had never had possession of the cherished piece of jewelry due to his possession of, well, balls.) However, he was now technically in violation of the familial order, since we weren’t having a daughter. As far as I knew, he wanted to stop after two, which would mean the bracelet would have to return to his aunt’s possession.
Something told me he wasn’t very concerned about the consequences of his rash actions. He was far too busy buying things for his second son amidst planning all the masculine activities he could think of with the help of his first son. I saw my future filled with Lego (which I adored, but lacked the skill to manipulate), sports equipment (which I knew nothing about), video games (which I sucked at) and action figures (which I didn’t know what to do with). I cringed when I realized I was going to spend the rest of my life literally surrounded by testosterone. But I would also be cherished as the sole female of the family, so it couldn’t be all bad.
There had been a period of three days when I had thought I was going to have a daughter. The nurse who gave me my regular check-ups did a brief ultrasound and she believed our baby to be a girl. She warned me her equipment wasn’t as powerful as the machine which would be used for my twenty-week ultrasound the following week, but she had a good feeling about her deduction. While I was thrilled, Louis didn’t have anything remotely resembling her good feeling.
His fear of having a girl gave me the giggles. When I was pregnant with Luc, he was beside himself at the thought
of protecting a daughter and announced, should we have a girl, she wouldn’t date until she was thirty—and even then he would chaperone all her outings. (He knew he was operating under a total double standard, but he didn’t care. It was the first time I had seen my annoyingly logical husband behave in such an irrational manner.) I, of course, believed this to be all talk, and once he met his little girl, she would instantly wrap him around her little finger. Alas, I was not given the chance to observe my fantasy come to life.
Fate clearly had other plans for us this time around as well. When the hospital technician asked if we wanted to know the baby’s sex and we agreed, Louis sprang up into a happy dance as soon as he heard ‘it’s a b—.’ We’re talking booty shaking with both fists pumping in the air, followed by an emphatic, “Yesssssss!!!”
The technician cracked up while I marveled that Louis could still surprise me with a spark of juvenile behavior. He certainly kept me on my toes.
My fond reminiscence of last month’s gender-revelation adventure was interrupted by the sound of Luc’s extreme displeasure.
“It’s not fair, Daddy.”
“Life isn’t fair, Minou.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
Luc turned to me with teary eyes. “I want to be with you at the airport when you pick up Opa tomorrow.”
Nick and Kate were preparing to throw Sam a blowout seventh birthday party and there was no way Opa could miss such lively festivities. If the past few months had taught us anything, it was the fleeting nature of life itself.
“I know you do, my darling, but you have school.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s no big deal to miss one day.”
Louis and I exchanged glances. We agreed with him in spirit, but didn’t want to set a precedent which would last for years to come.
Louis cleared his throat. “Luc, Opa will be here for seven days, three of which you have off from school.”