It had been a long winter for Mom and me. Nine years. The ice was thawing. It was spring. It was finally spring.
I lost the roll of film I shot during that visit. Three years later, I found it under a radiator in my apartment. The photo lab was only able to salvage one picture. The color is radically distorted, as if the chemicals were intentionally manipulated during the developing. Mom and I are in the center of the photo, smiling, our arms around each other, she in her paisley kerchief and pale blue shirt; me in that peasant blouse. Framing us is a psychedelic blaze of bright red, orange, and purple streaks, as if we’re being engulfed by flames.
FOUR
It’s the New Year, 2009, and Eliana doesn’t want to go back to school. I encourage her to talk about her feelings. She hates being different, doesn’t want to be stared at because she needs a walker. She doesn’t want to rejoin the class when she’s so far behind. She’s been isolated for six weeks, while the life of the classroom has gone on without her, and she feels estranged.
“I’m so sorry, Honey. It’ll take a long time to get better. But you can talk to me as much as you want.”
“I don’t want to go to school. Please don’t make me go.”
I let her cry. I hold her. But she has to go back. She is assigned a full-time health paraprofessional to take her up and down the elevator (which makes her feel even more self-conscious), while the other fourth graders sprint boisterously up the stairs to their third-floor classroom.
The winter storms begin. I’m petrified that Eliana will fall and rebreak her surgically broken leg. There’s a snowdrift in front of the school, right outside the cab door, and ice on the ramp to the handicap entry. How do I help her walk safely through a snowdrift with a walker? The wheels get clogged with the gunk in the dirty snow. The wheelchair-accessible door is jammed, and I have to throw my full weight into it to get it open. Why doesn’t the school take care of the handicap entrance? I’m an irate parent, and I’m going to have a word with the principal.
“I hate myself for subjecting her to this,” I confess to Michael.
Michael is torn between rolling his eyes in exasperation and wanting to comfort me. I’m grateful that he chooses the latter.
“We did what’s best for Eliana in the long run,” he says, wrapping his arms around me.
“She used to play soccer. Now she can’t walk.”
“She’ll play soccer again,” says Michael. “This is temporary.”
“I hate myself.”
“Let it go.”
“ELIANA, THERE’S A counselor at school who can help you talk about your feelings if you want—”
“I don’t need help talking! I have too much therapy already. Physical therapy at school and at home. I don’t have time for more therapy.” I can’t argue with that. “Anyway, I only want to talk to you and Daddy about my feelings.”
“You can talk to us about anything, any time you want.”
“I know that.”
ON THE X RAYS every other week at the surgeon’s office, there’s a widening gap between the upper and lower halves of Eliana’s femur.
“This looks great. Perfect. Your bone is growing beautifully, Eliana,” says Dr. Campbell.
Michael and I look at the same X ray, but all we see is a scary gap in the middle of her severed femur. The Emperor’s New Clothes comes to mind.
“I don’t see new bone,” says Michael. “It looks like nothing’s there.”
“It’s there,” says Dr. Campbell. “You have to know how to look for it. The new bone is still soft, like cartilage, which is good. We don’t want it to harden too quickly while we’re still lengthening it. If that happens, and it sometimes does, we can’t lengthen the leg any more.”
That would be a total bummer.
After a few weeks of lengthening, her leg is visibly longer. I don’t have time to go downtown to have Herman adjust her lift, so I bring her shoe to the Ecuadorian shoemaker on our block and ask him to reduce her shoe lift by half an inch.
“You want I make her lift smaller?” he asks, incredulously. “Explain, please,” he says, handing me a pen and a newly cut leather shoe sole to draw on. I sketch a picture on the leather of Eliana’s leg with the fixator attached; and another sketch of her bone with the gap in it, narrating as I draw.
He nods thoughtfully. “My niece in Ecuador, she has one arm shorter,” he says. “Maybe one day she will have her arm lengthened.”
THE FRESH-FALLEN SNOW is off limits to Eliana. Elevator doors are treacherous. Stairs are out of the question. Madeline tailors sweatpants for her, with extra fabric in the right leg to fit over the bulky fixator. She can’t go outside for recess where the other kids are throwing snowballs. She has to sit in the cafeteria with the “homework club” kids, who haven’t finished their schoolwork.
Sometimes her friend Jojo gives up her outdoor recess to sit with Eliana in the cafeteria and keep her company. They’re allowed to play quiet games together.
“I don’t want to go to school,” she says. Every day, I have to talk her into it. There are so many things she’s not allowed to do, so I say yes to every reasonable request.
“Can I invite my friends over after school?”
“Yes, Sweetheart, of course you can.”
Jojo comes over. They can’t roughhouse like they used to, so they play dress-up. James and Eliana play board games and watch Harry Potter movies. When Galia comes over, I film their fancy costumed tea party. Eliana’s Flip video camera is a big hit. Annika films Eliana expertly licking her right elbow. On her next visit, they ask me to film a contest: Without using their hands, Eliana and Annika have a race to see who can devour an ice-cream sundae fastest. I try not to laugh while I’m filming, but they’re so funny, like voracious kittens, their faces in the bowls, slurping vanilla ice cream with their noses dipped in chocolate. It’s a tie.
THE NEW BONE is finally visible on the X rays as a pale shadow, morphing from soft cartilage to solid bone. Eliana has finished the seven weeks of lengthening. No more quarter turns. But she still has six months of rehab ahead of her. There are endless physical therapy sessions and nightly pin care. Her daily regime has gotten more complex: in addition to an hour of stretching and strengthening exercises, she now has to wear an adjustable leg brace to straighten her knee for an hour, and another leg brace to bend her knee for a subsequent hour. For twenty minutes a day, she straps an ultrasound device onto her thigh, to escalate the rate of bone growth. (The insurance company tells us that the laptop-sized ultrasound machine is worth $20,000; we’re careful not to drop it.) She does her homework while lying on the couch, attached to one or more contraptions. Every waking minute of her day is scheduled. She’s sick of it, still sad and mad, but I think she’s beginning to feel better. Physically. At least I hope she is. I’m ready for Eliana to feel better. This is a long winter.
“HELLO, I’M CALLING from school about Eliana.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, in that instant, chest-tightening moment of panic every parent gets when they get a call from their child’s school. It’s a freezing January afternoon.
“Eliana is fine, but we have a little problem. Can Eliana walk down two flights of stairs?”
“No. Why?”
“The elevator is broken. But we have a plan. The fire department will carry her out of the building through the third-floor window.”
I picture Eliana floating through the icy winter sky, hoisted by a fireman out of the third-floor window and onto a telescoping ladder, which slowly, slowly, slowly descends down to the fire truck. I imagine Eliana—who is scared of heights, and who wishes she could be inconspicuous and invisible—being transported out the window in the middle of the school day, attracting stares from children who watch with amazement out their classroom windows, shouting, “Look at Eliana!”
“Don’t call the fire department. I’ll take her down the stairs myself.”
“Thank you, Ms. Cohen. We appreciate it.”
I hang up and burst into
tears. I have no idea how I’ll get Eliana down the stairs. Mothers all over the world carry their children to safety, but I’m not strong enough to carry her down two flights. Michael is out of town. Maybe I should just let the fire department carry her out the window. I’m afraid that if I try to help her, she’ll fall and break her compromised right femur, which appears, on the X ray, to be held in place purely by imagination.
My friend Eric offers to help. We meet the assistant principal in the school office. She has a different idea. “We think it’s safest to carry Eliana down the stairs in a wheelchair.”
Eric and I think that sounds riskier.
Eliana has another idea. “The easiest way is to slide down on my butt.”
With no help from us, she slides down two flights of stairs, using the banister to pull herself arm over arm, like a monkey.
“That was the most fun I’ve had since before my operation!” she says, face flushed, green eyes shining.
“You were amazing!”
I tell her about the fireman’s ladder idea, hoping to make her laugh, and expecting to score points with her for finding a less scary and conspicuous solution than being carried out a window.
“Aw, Mom! Why’d ya say no? It would have been so cool to go out the third-story window on a fireman’s ladder!”
Damn! I should have let her do it. She’s outgrown coddling. My protective instincts have segued to overprotective. I try to do the right thing, but the maternal perfection business is beyond me. Flying out the third-story window on a fireman’s ladder through the frozen air might have scared her out of depression, like the hiccups, like my extreme winter camping trip did for me.
But, you know? Sliding down three flights of stairs like a monkey had the requisite touch of danger. It was good enough. I’m acclimating to the sufficiency of imperfection, settling for being adequate, which is not so bad, in the scheme of things. My mother taught me that. She’s still teaching me that.
ELIANA IS NO longer in physical pain. Her spirits are rising. She has planned a Valentine’s Day party. I make the cookie dough, while she writes the schedule and posts it on the wall:
Eliana’s Valentine’s Party!!!
Run around and scream—2 minutes
Make Valentine’s cookies
Make Valentine’s cards (while cookies are baking)
Pin the arrow on the heart
Eat cookies and cupcakes
Charades
If time, make up love stories
FIVE
I miss Julia. We all do. Spring break is next week and I can’t wait. She’s so busy with rowing practice that we rarely see her.
“Hi, Mom.” It’s the first time Julia has called home in a month.
“Hi, Honey. We’re so excited to see you.”
“Actually, I’m calling to tell you that Zoe invited me to meet her. She asked me to visit with her and her family in Florida for four days. I wanted to give you a head’s up that I’ll only be home for the last two days of break.”
“Wow.”
I’m thrilled for Julia and Zoe. And terribly disappointed for us. I feel usurped and insecure and excited and curious and confused and filled with love. I’m all these things at once.
“Not only will I meet my birth mother, I’ll get to meet my two half-sisters. I’m so excited!”
What if Julia likes her biological family more than ours? They probably don’t brood. Maybe Julia won’t need us anymore. I feel obsolete and lonely, as if Julia has already chosen Zoe over me.
I picture Zoe at twenty, the age she was when we met her at the adoption agency, nineteen years ago. She was seven months pregnant. Brad and I had waited two years for a baby and had almost given up hope, when Zoe asked to meet us. We just needed her approval.
“I was adopted, when I was a baby,” Zoe told us, at that first meeting. “I want the adoptive parents to be at the birth, so they can bond with this baby right away. Alice and Brad, I want both of you to be there.” Zoe grinned at us and giggled. “I approve!”
I’M ON MY way out the door when Julia gets home. After five days in the Florida sun, her skin is golden, and her hair is streaked with blond. She’s wearing flip-flops, tank top and shorts, which show off her newly athletic body. From all the rowing, she’s become powerfully muscular. She looks glorious.
I give her an enormous hug. “I’m racing to pick up Eliana.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Great! She’ll be thrilled.”
We walk the six blocks, passing street vendors, nannies with strollers, a violinist playing Tchaikovsky, business men and women, a woman collecting bottles from garbage cans, a postal worker, New Yorkers of all stripes racing, biking, scootering, wheelchairing, window-shopping, sauntering, and jogging up and down Broadway.
“I had an amazing time,” says Julia, as we walk.
“What was it like when you first saw each other?” I ask. “What is Zoe like? I want to hear everything. Was it wonderful, confusing, overwhelming, intense, joyful, all of the above? Did you have feelings you never had before?”
“Not until right now,” she says, her eyes welling up. “When I was there, it was so familiar and easy. Zoe is a lot like me, temperamentally. I felt comfortable with her instantly. Actually, Zoe had to have a minor operation last week. I think it’s called an “umbilical hernia.” They had to put some stitches in, because her bellybutton keeps opening up—something like that. She kept apologizing because she was laid low, and I ended up taking care of the little girls a lot of the time, but they’re adorable, and it made it more comfortable for me, because I knew what my role was.”
“I thought about you all week, but I didn’t want to intrude.”
“I appreciate that a lot, Mom.”
“Do you think Zoe would want me to call her?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely. She told me she hoped you’d call.”
“I REMEMBER THE first time we met, when I said, ‘I approve,’ and you guys looked so happy,” Zoe said to me on the phone the next morning. “I love the photo and the letter you sent me when Julia was six months. I took them out every year on August twenty-third, and wished Julia a happy birthday.”
“I’ve often wondered, Zoe, did you ever have regrets about the adoption?”
“Nope.”
A moment of silent disbelief. “Never?”
“Never. I knew you’d be good parents.”
This is oddly disturbing to me. I’d always assumed that Zoe had gone through a maelstrom of doubt—the kind of Sturm und Drang I would have felt in her situation. No qualms about giving her baby up for adoption? That’s crazy! It’s such a foreign concept to me. I have regrets about everything! I bought a small coffee this morning, and now I regret not getting a large. How could Zoe not have had second thoughts about giving up her newborn baby? I guess it’s because she’s not the Sturm und Drang type, but still.
“I remember the moment I knew you’d be a good mother. When I was in labor, and I barfed on you,” Zoe giggled. “Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“And it didn’t bother you at all. You just cleaned me up and took care of me, in this very maternal way.”
“That’s how you knew I’d be a good mother?
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you never doubted your decision?”
“Yes, I just knew.”
“Did you change your mind about us when you heard that Brad and I divorced?”
“Not at all. I felt bad for you guys, but I knew you’d both continue to take care of Julia. Look how beautifully she’s grown up. You did a great job as parents.”
“Thanks. Yeah, we did okay. Zoe, did you ever find your own birth mother?”
“Nope. I’ve never been interested in meeting her.”
“Never?”
“Nope. Not interested.”
“Really? I would have thought . . .”
My sentence trails off. I guess it’s
a blessing to have no ambivalence. But I can’t help assigning symbolic value to Zoe’s umbilical hernia. She was separated from her biological mother at birth. Twenty years later, she gave her first-born baby to us. At age thirty-nine, Zoe’s bellybutton—where the umbilical cord once connected her to her birth mother—has not fully closed. That first wound won’t heal.
“Zoe, I hope it’s okay with you that I called today.”
“Are you kidding? I was hoping you’d call. I’m thrilled to hear from you.” She paused, then said, “I thought you might not approve.”
“Approve of what?”
“Of Julia coming to see me.”
Do I approve? I had always expected Julia to meet Zoe. I’d anticipated that it would be a rite of passage for Julia. I didn’t expect it to be such a challenging rite of passage for me. It requires letting go—not my strong suit. Is this the garden-variety heartbreak every mother feels when her child leaves home? Or am I losing something more, as Julia, on the cusp of adulthood, begins this new relationship, rationing her limited free time between Mom on the East Coast, Dad on the West Coast, and Birth Mother in Florida? Or am I brooding simply BECAUSE I HAVE AN INNATE NEED TO BROOD?
“MOM, HOW LONG have I had the fixator?” Eliana has recently graduated from a walker to crutches.
“Five months.”
“When does it come off?”
“May. Next month.”
IT’S MAY. THE fixator and the six bolts have finally been removed from her leg! Eliana now wears a hot-pink full-leg plaster cast. The femur will be compromised and fragile for another few months while new bone fills in the holes. She’s in the cast for ten days. After that, she’ll have to relearn how to walk.
THOUSANDS OF MIGRATING birds are passing through Central Park, communing in this avian oasis, singing like crazy. Through the trees are flashes of bright yellow, orange, red, blue feathers. The park ranger tells me that the eccentric wild turkey has finally flown away—probably in search of a mate. Hooray turkey!
SIX
“I’m treating you to lunch, Mom.”
The Year My Mother Came Back Page 14