He doesn’t, naturally, say anything.
And I am, naturally, okay. Unnaturally? I am remarkably okay. Zero is better than four. I am a thousand times relieved that it’s zero instead of four. I really am. I am so … okay!
“But I’m sorry, Anna,” I’m saying. “I was thinking perhaps I could make you a brother or sister. I was really thinking I could. But it appears I can’t. And I’m sorry, sweetie.”
Sweetie.
And why is everything getting so blurry?
The thing is, I am not one hundred percent okay. But I am like my mother. I have the knack. Don’t I? I can spin misery into a lesson, tragedy into a tool for learning.
The knack. I should have asked my mother about the knack. Where did she get it? Um, I thought I had it.
I don’t think I have it.
No, I’m quite sure I don’t.
I need to pull over. I need to pull over right now. I am looking for a place to pull over. I skid into the entrance of an old coal mine, feel the car drop into a pothole, then another, and then, finally, stop. Stop.
I just need to breathe. I just need to know. I just need to breathe. I just need to ask: Why? Why didn’t they stick? Why didn’t any of them stick? What’s the matter with me?
I lower my head onto the steering wheel. And it’s here, outside an abandoned coal mine, sitting in a car next to a beagle wearing a bright red bow, that I sob the sob of a lifetime.
In the end, I turn the car around and take Sparky home. It’s too much good-bye for one person. It just is. I am taking Sparky home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
One thing I think is: Don’t look back. I get this from my mother. Growing up I’d hear her say, “Who has time for yesterday?” with a wave of her arm. “I’m too busy with today.”
I don’t know what yesterdays she was trying to forget. But in general I’m pro-forgetting. I mean, if what you’re trying to do is learn how to be present in the moment, one of the easiest things you can do is just dump history.
It’s November, more than a year and a half since my mom succumbed to GBS, and so naturally I’m hearing a lot of her don’t-look-back rhetoric these days. She’s mostly recovered, still receives outpatient therapy; they say she may always have some degree of numbness and tingling in her toes. Her walk is not, and never will again be, the forceful clip CLOP it once was. It’s more of a plop, plop now, over the white carpet of Riddle Village. Her feet, she says, sometimes feel like dead flounders. But with a cane she can get around just fine. She’s already accumulated a small collection of canes, including a colorful cloisonné one my dad got her from the Smithsonian catalog. The knack: She can turn canes from symbols of disability into a hobby.
And so she is not looking back. Last night on the phone she told me, she said, “Just because I survived this stupid disease doesn’t mean I have to define myself in terms of it.” She said, “I am not going to keep reliving the darn thing.”
“No,” I said.
“I am not a re-liver,” she said.
“No, you are not,” I said.
She said she’s done with GBS. Just … done. “Nothing more to say. It’s time to go forward. That’s me, I’m a moving-forward kind of person.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, because I believe her. Or I want to.
And I’m a here-and-now kind of person. Or I’m trying to be. My mother is a help. A mother’s example is a kind of permission. A mother’s example gets hardwired into you. My mother’s example, I think, virtually assured that I wouldn’t end up an emotional lingerer, a pouter, a moper.
But I don’t think it was just her indelible sway that helped me let go of the events of last spring—the sadness over the discovery that I probably would never carry a child. There was, of course, now another influence. Anna. I had a baby to think about, a little girl somewhere in China to pray for and shop for and worry a mother’s worry over.
I love the bookend effect of all this. My mother on one side, my daughter on the other. The two of them holding me in their embrace while I grieved what I had to grieve.
Eventually, the fact that a baby wasn’t growing inside me became just that: a fact. A fact that came to separate itself from emotion, like a moth after the light goes out. A fact of my life. But not a fact that would define my life.
We are, each of us, managers of our own memory. There really are choices we make.
But I am making this sound too simple. There is, of course, more to the story. There is probably always more to the story.
The truth is, you can’t just dump history. You can’t. History leaves scars. History is what moved you from then and there to here-and-now. History leaves skid marks.
I can see them in my mother’s story—the leftover stuff she doesn’t talk about. You know, before GBS, she knew herself to be an artist. She had worked and worked at becoming an accomplished painter. The paralysis hit, and so of course she couldn’t paint. And as she struggled to regain control of her body, painting hardly seemed to matter. But now her body is back. So … where is the painter? She hasn’t even taken her brushes out of the boxes we put them in when we helped move my parents to Riddle Village. Her easel sits collapsed in the corner of the spare bedroom.
Collapsed.
When I broached the subject recently, she said, “Forget it.” She said she’s probably done with painting. She said it’s just not important to her anymore.
The disease robbed her of her art?
That seems like a pretty serious scar. Why is she not struggling with this? Is she struggling with it? Perhaps, for her, it’s something that comes up only briefly, in those moments between sleep and wake, those tiny blasts of consciousness you do your best to ignore.
As for me, I suppose my recent history has left plenty of skid marks worth noting and tracking and calculating. And I suppose one day I may recognize them. But right now, in these moments, I can’t see any at all. I am not looking back.
Right now, in this moment, I think: Hey, I got a dog out of the deal. Sparky. He’s doing great. Almost too great, actually. He’s house-trained now, although he’s having some trouble understanding house rules. He sleeps on the bed, on the couch, anywhere he feels like—just the other day I found that he had figured out a way to climb up, and was now sleeping on, Alex’s brand-new, beautiful mahogany pool table.
(Indeed, the pool table has moved out of the realm of abstract notion and into, well, pool table.) Sparky was curled up right there by the eleven ball, poised as it was to drop into the corner pocket. “Spark!” I screamed, waking him, and he jumped down. I said, “The pool table?” And he had a look of “Well, I didn’t know.” Pretty much the same look he had when I found him sitting on the dining room table eating a hamburger—a hamburger I had let out of my sight only so as to locate some pickles, and I came back with the pickles and there was Sparky. “Spark!” He had that same look. A look of “What? You mean, I’m wrong?”
See, he really doesn’t know. How is a dog that has spent his entire life thus far roaming the great outdoors supposed to understand boundaries and ownership and entitlement?
More to the point: How is it that Sparky ended up belonging, really belonging, here at Sweetwater Farm? I mean, isn’t that strange? Here? He’s part of this family? Sometimes I just sit around and wonder just how exactly that happened.
Sometimes I think this whole thing, this whole journey to motherhood I’m on, it’s all about belonging. The formation of a family—however you define the family unit. It’s all about belonging. And the more I figure out about belonging, the more I realize I can’t figure it out at all. How does anybody end up belonging where they belong? Is it really all a random mess? Are we really just a bunch of helium balloons floating in the wind, waiting to land? Do we belong nowhere until we simply land somewhere?
Okay, let’s say we do. Let’s say that’s how it works. Well then, who or what controls the wind?
I need to get to the bottom of this. Or the top of it. The truth is, I don’t want to b
e a helium balloon floating in the wind, and I don’t want Alex to be a helium balloon floating in the wind, and mostly I don’t want Anna to be a helium balloon floating in the wind. I want to know that this family that is about to happen is about to happen for a reason. That it is inevitable. Maybe anyone who adopts a baby has this question, in some form, at her core. How will you know that this baby really belongs to you?
Okay, this may be a stupid example. Well, I suppose holding a beagle up as an example is no more stupid than holding a Chihuahua up. But I have to say, I don’t think Sparky was a random accident. I think of Sparky as a kind of bumbling, stinky angel. You know, just a dog. But a dog that ended up filling a most urgent vacancy in my heart. He came into my life when I didn’t need him, couldn’t even deal with him, and then he turned out to be right there in the seat beside me, with a red bow around his neck, when my heart was breaking. I needed him more than I knew.
I suppose the stinky-angel identity is another reason Sparky tends to get preferred treatment around here. But still, you can’t let your dog sleep on your husband’s pool table. You just can’t. There are limits.
The pool table arrived on September 22. It was Alex’s birthday present. Of course it was. Why was he so surprised? I really don’t think he was expecting it; we’d been living on a tight budget, saving every extra nickel for the adoption. But I figured, well, what are credit cards for? So of course I did it. I wanted to make Alex the happiest man alive, seeing as he was making me the happiest woman alive by agreeing to parent a child with me.
That’s the thing about love. The more you get, the more you have to give, and the more you give, the more you get. It is just a straight get-give-get-give equation. No subtraction necessary, no division. Love is particularly easy on those of us who are bad at math.
For my forty-first birthday, Alex surprised me with a stroller. A fancy model with thick-treaded tires designed for use over rough terrain such as our dirt road. The SUV of strollers. How thrilling it was. What a symbol of motherhood! I put Sparky in it, just to try it out. He seemed to like it. Maybe too much. I think he believes that part of what it is to live in a family is you get to ride in a cushioned chariot.
For now, I let him believe. I can use the strolling practice anyway. Once each day we stroll, me and Sparky, down the driveway. Sometimes we go left to the mailbox, and sometimes we go right to visit the old lady. The old lady greets us as if there is nothing at all unusual about taking a beagle for a walk in a stroller. See why I like her? It doesn’t even occur to her to comment.
I’ve grown to love this new version of my walks in the country. I love the feel of pushing a baby down a bumpy road. I love being … attached to something. It’s somewhat like holding hands with the love of your life, only with more responsibility. You’re not just attached, you’re steering, you’re watching out for ruts and puddles and worms.
“I think I’m going to like this parenthood thing,” I said to Sparky the other day as we avoided a rut or a puddle or a worm. He was sound asleep, his chin resting on the front tray. I had the most profound urge to pick him up and burp him.
See, that’s not good. It’s definitely not good to get an urge to burp your beagle. And I made a mental note to go home and start working on remembering that you burp babies, not beagles.
And so. There you have pretty much the sum total of my parenting thoughts thus far. Burping is for babies, not beagles. And see, that’s not good. Definitely not good. I should be … preparing for parenthood. Why am I not preparing? I haven’t much thought about what kind of parent I’ll be. I haven’t thought once about what my philosophy of discipline might be, nor have I taken a firm stance on sugar consumption. I haven’t, for that matter, thought about what will happen to my marriage when Alex and I become parents together. How will our little love fest change with the presence of a new, constant companion? I haven’t even begun to plan for the larger, most serious challenges of raising a child born of another ethnic heritage, raising her with an awareness of a cultural identity I know so little about.
Then again, I haven’t thought about what I’m going to have for dinner three weeks from now, or how I’m going to digest it.
You can get too far ahead of yourself. That’s what I think. The future is a place inhabited mostly by dragons that have as good a chance of being friendly as foe—so why slay them now? That’s the way I look at it. You know: Don’t look forward. Anti-anticipation, that’s me. Yep. Pro-forgetting and anti-anticipation. Wedge yourself in the here-and-now. At least this is what I’m trying to do.
Coping with the idea of something really huge looming on the horizon of your life is often just a matter of turning off that imagination. Off!
Anna. Must go get Anna. Must go to China and get Anna. I’ve been containing most of my anxiety right here in that thought, which is plenty big.
We’re expecting to hear from the adoption agency any day. If all goes as planned, this next call will be one hundred percent good news: “Congratulations! Here she is! Here is Anna!” Something like that. In adoption lingo, it’s called the referral. It’s the big moment of truth. You find out who your baby is, where she is living. You get a medical report and a photo. You can reject a referral, but people almost never do. Most people see the picture, and they’re goners. The adoptive parents I’ve spoken to describe receiving the referral in similar terms to those that a woman giving birth might. A baby is handed to you. You fall in love. There’s a pull no one can possibly understand until they feel it. That’s what they say. I can only go by what they say.
Many people adopting from China like to speculate about what happens in the Matching Room, the actual office where all the files are: a pile of paperwork about prospective adoptive parents over here, a pile of paperwork about babies available for adoption over there. Who goes with whom? How do they decide? And how is it that these matches end up being so utterly perfect? That’s what everyone ends up saying: “This is the perfect child for me!”
How can it happen over and over again? Is there some Chinese mystic on hand in the Matching Room, a skinny old wizard with a long beard rubbing sacred stones, receiving messages from the ancestors? Or is it just some clerk blindly filling out forms, matching the baby on top of one pile with the parents on top of another? Or something else?
As I sit and wait for Anna, wait for the call in which her identity will be revealed, I find that no matter what stance I take, no matter how anti-this or pro-that I become, no matter how good I am at containing my anxiety, I really can’t stop doubt from slipping in. I wonder about belonging. I wonder: How does it happen? How does the bond between mother and daughter happen?
And what if it doesn’t.
This morning, unlike most recent mornings, I am not sitting by the phone waiting for the call. This morning we are having some technical difficulties here at Sweetwater Farm.
Skippy.
Where is Skippy?
Alex and I are standing high on the ridge overlooking George’s farm, and we have our hands on our brows so as to help with long-distance viewing, and all I can say is, it’s a good thing I put an orange scarf on Skippy. It will be easier to spot a mule dressed in orange.
We see sheep. We see cows. No mule.
“I can’t believe this,” I say.
“This is not good,” Alex agrees.
“You think he’s been shot, don’t you?”
“I did not say that.”
Today is Monday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving. Translation: Today is opening day of hunting season. Around here it’s a holiday. Kids get the day off from school. This is a day for the family to be together, load their rifles, and—pow!—kill remarkably beautiful animals.
What a day for your mule to run away.
When I awoke this morning, I looked outside and did my usual equine roll call: “Horse, horse, mule, mule.” Except this morning I said, “Horse, horse, mule … mule?” So then I got Alex up, and we put on our mud boots and the blaze-orange hats we have learn
ed to always wear during hunting season, and we headed out to see where Skippy might have wandered off to. Apparently, a frightened deer came bounding through our fields and ripped down the electric fence, and Skippy took advantage of the opportunity. Cricket, Maggie, and Sassy are not intelligent enough to figure something like this out. But Skippy, as I may have mentioned, is gifted.
“Well, it looks like he didn’t head north,” Alex says, squinting in the morning sun.
“Not unless he went really north,” I say.
I cup my mouth, yell, “Heeeey, SKIP!” into the hills. “Mama’s here! Heeeey, SKIP! Come to Mama!”
Nothing.
“See, we should have made sure he had a cell phone,” I say to Alex.
“Or at least a beeper,” he says.
We are decidedly and uncomfortably low-tech. We are up on this ridge, high above civilization, and with little use for what civilization has to offer. We are two people with a lead rope and a bag of carrots.
We’ve never lost a mule before, and we don’t know what to do.
“Well, it’s a good thing you put the orange scarf on,” Alex says.
“Yeah,” I say. “And see, you thought that was crazy of me.”
“I did not!”
“Well, you were laughing.”
“I was laughing at Skippy,” he says. “It was the first time I’d ever seen him in a … babushka.”
“Yeah. He seemed to like it, though.”
“Yeah.”
“You think someone shot him?”
“No,” Alex says. “No, I do not.”
Skippy is, vaguely, the color of a deer. But he’s the size of a moose. I put the orange scarf on so as to offer a helpful hint to any confused hunter walking by our property. (Hey, George put orange tape on his llamas one year.) We don’t allow hunting—we have signs posted everywhere—but some hunters do get confused.
“See, now I think maybe he took it as some kind of permission,” I say to Alex.
“Huh?”
The Exact Same Moon Page 20