We do not choose our parents. We do not choose whether their marriages last or when they end. And we do not choose whether or not our parents fall in love again. In short, being a child totally sucks and nothing is in our control. I am well aware that Ian and Sophie did not choose me, and neither did Ralph and Baby. They are all in the same boat when it comes to having a well-meaning but sometimes hapless woman at the helm of the family. These kids have seen love die, and seen love grow, and I want them all to know that love is a choice that we make and a job that we do. We choose each other every day. Even when things are hard, even when we are hurt.
Loving these kids means loving their mother, and being grateful for her existence, even when we are not on speaking terms. It means recognizing and remembering that I picked this life, and this love, the same way I picked Aaron and the same way I picked Matthew. I’ve stepped into this life, as a mom, as a stepmom. I’m still walking, stepping lightly, often tripping, sometimes falling.
Is it as easy as it looks on Instagram? Yes. And no. But it’s so damn worth it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sad and Lucky
People always imply that being with me must be hard for Matthew. They start out with a weird compliment like “he’s a saint . . . he’s such a good guy” and segue quickly into the casual “so . . . how does he deal with it?” It being my dead husband.
I imagine they’re thinking he is jealous of the love I had before, that he’s uncomfortable with my grief, bitter over his second-place finish in the competition of Who Nora Loves Most. He’s not. He’s not in second place, though people assume that he’s a runner-up, and he’s not uncomfortable with my grief. Trust me, I ask him all the time and I know when he’s lying because he does this weird thing when he is even thinking about being less than truthful.
“I feel really guilty sometimes,” I admitted to Matthew one night.
Periodically, I respond to a loving gesture from my husband by reminding Matthew that I am still in love with Aaron. I’m not just reminding him, I’m reminding myself: it’s a reflex, an automatic defense of Aaron, and of my life with him.
That particular night, Matthew had put a record on my record player. “Aaron gave that to me,” I said, “the whole box set. For no reason. He just knew I liked Bright Eyes and he got me every single record.” I said this in a way that was more accusatory than informative. Matthew responded with more kindness than I would have, but I could tell I hadn’t improved the mood in the house. When the record stopped playing, he didn’t turn it over.
My admission of guilt felt like I was confessing to a crime I’d been carrying around for decades, not just a year or so.
“Same,” said Matthew.
Matthew feels sad that Aaron is dead and sad that Ralph lost his father and sad that I lost my husband and Mae Mae lost her son and Nikki lost her brother. He feels lucky he found me, lucky to be in Ralph’s life, lucky to have four kids who are healthy and happy (knock on wood).
We are both trying to find our footing in this new life we built, and we both know that we built this life with the wreckage of our old ones. Matthew’s old life lives just a half mile from us. We see her at soccer games and our relationship could be categorized anywhere between “complicated” and “next question, please.” Nobody tells me that I’m a saint for being with Matthew, or for raising his children with him. Whatever the fairy tales told us about being rescued by a man was false. Women have always been our own heroes. Beast needed Belle in order to turn back into a human man (which was also a mistake because I am not the only person who thinks that cartoon beast is hot, and I know it). Prince Eric would have drowned at sea if it weren’t for Ariel. We rescue broken guys like they’re stray dogs. We love them for the fact that they’re missing an eyeball or only have three legs. I realize that I might be taking the rescue dog/rescue man analogy too far, but let’s just go with it.
Matthew, by the way, is a saint and is a good guy, but not because he dared to enter a relationship with me. He’s a good guy because he’s principled in everything he does. He loves me, and he loves Aaron. He has to love Aaron. Aaron is why he has me. Not just because Aaron died, although not having a living husband did make it easier to date Matthew. But because Aaron’s love and Aaron’s death created the Nora I am right now.
On my Best Life days, I feel so grateful for a beating heart and a functional body that nothing else could possibly matter. But anyone who lives a hundred percent in their Best Life mode is either Oprah or . . . end of list.
Many days, I’m not so sure about this Nora. The other Nora was awesome. She could throw a baby shower while nursing a baby and a sick husband. She could host brunch every Sunday and manage a chemo schedule. She made her own granola bars because she didn’t want her husband to get more cancer from some unknown cancer-causing additive in some mass-market granola bar. She took things a little too far in that respect. She showed up dressed and made up for everything from a brain surgery to a baptism. The version of me that Matthew got is slower and messier. She barely grocery shops, let alone cooks. She showers only when absolutely necessary. She’s fine, I guess.
I’ve worried, since I met Matthew, that there’s just nothing in this relationship for him. What does he get out of being with this second-rate version of me?
Ernest Hemingway wrote “the world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are stronger in the broken places.”
The world does break everyone—that is a damn guarantee. The world breaks everyone, and everything. Families are snapped apart by death, money, drugs, divorce, the wrong thing said at the wrong time to the wrong sibling who will never let it go. Many of us are stronger at the broken places, but many of us are just . . . broken. Not that you’d ever know it. We humans are experts at hiding our broken parts. We love to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. We absolutely insist that whatever didn’t kill us made us stronger, even if it’s all we can do to get ourselves out of bed in the morning. The broken places are scary, so we do our best to cover them up with big smiles and expensive handbags and well-lit Instagram posts.
Finding real, lasting, big romantic love is a miracle. Think of all the people in the world. Right off the bat, most are dumb or annoying. The ones who aren’t dumb or annoying may not be in your age range, or live on your continent, may not speak your language, may not be single! The fact of finding a person you can love and be loved by is truly a remarkable event, and if you are in love right now, I want you to put this book down and turn to your beloved, or call them on the phone, or send them a text, or if it’s a hundred years in the future just hologram into their brains and tell them “I am so very glad I found you.”
Our holiday cards went out in late January this year. They feature gorgeous photographs of our beaming children, my current husband and me sitting in the grass after our backyard wedding. We chose a selection of photos not because it was hard to choose from the photographs our friend Nicole snapped on our wedding day, but because we didn’t get a photo of all of us together. Not one. The cards we sent out remind the recipient of our children’s names and ages and wish them a happy (non-denominational) holiday season. They do not tell you that this beautiful family of ours was built from the parts of other families, but that is how we got here, on this holiday card that I didn’t get around to mailing until well after any related holiday.
And even though I sometimes think Matthew got a pretty down-market version of me, he’s into this Nora. He thinks she’s so great he agreed to spend the rest of his life with her. Yes, he has low standards.
Of course we are lucky. Both of us. We are lucky to have come through with broken parts, to have survived. We are lucky to have found each other, even though all of that luck is tinged with a little bit of sadness. We both know it. And we both need reminding sometimes. Sometimes we need the other person to flip the record over, or to change it entirely.
If I squint hard enough, I can start to see what Matthew sees in me.* Which is that I have been in love like this
before. I know what it means to promise ’til death do us part, and to follow through on that promise. Anyone can do that, though. But I’m willing to do it twice. This new family of ours is not a consolation prize for what I lost, but it consoles me nonetheless. Ralph, nearly five, draws a photo at school, each person a collection of circles and lines. His teacher carefully labels each amoeba-like outline: Mama, Dad, Dad, Brother, Brother, Sister. A stranger at the grocery store tells Sophie she looks just like me, and her face freezes somewhere between “that’s not my mom!” and “thanks?” Christmas comes, and no matter where The Bigs spend it, they are leaving their family to be with . . . their family.
These four kids of ours know that love has real power, but it is not all-powerful. Our family crest will be six broken hearts with a tattered banner beneath it reading:
Sad and lucky.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dear ____
In a little over a year, my family experienced exponential growth through both a significant merger and via organic growth. That’s my business way of saying “Oh my GOSH I have the four kids I always wanted!” Before I had kids, I had a lot of ideas of the kind of parent I would be, and I became the epitome of everything I once looked down on (Bob Stroller, Honda Odyssey, often running late, forgetting it was pajama day, visiting the McDonald’s drive-thru more than I care to admit).
I came from a family of four, and we were all obsessed with our parents’ scoreboard. It was, as far as I know, imaginary, but we were always striving to claw our way to the top. Parenting is glorious and glory-less. It is hard and humbling, and I really wouldn’t trade it for anything. I know now that for all the ways I resented my parents, they were just doing their best at a hard and thankless job. There are no perfect parents. Mostly, we’re all kinda failures, actually. Once you realize that even the best parents sometimes look at their kids and think “Why am I doing this?”, it takes a lot of the pressure off. Seriously, even the people who look like really good parents on Instagram have dropped a phone on their baby’s head while playing Candy Crush or missed their kid’s goal in soccer because they were checking their email or even plain-old forgotten to pick up their kid from daycare. These are all examples of things I have done and also things I tell myself that other people have done, okay? But most of us—even me—are trying our best.
Everyone in the world wants to feel special and known and seen. It’s very challenging to make someone feel special when you have fifteen minutes between soccer practices and you can’t find the baby’s shoe and the dog just peed on the floor and you still don’t know what you’re eating for dinner later.
For all their many shortcomings, to be documented in another book at some time, my parents were excellent letter-writers. I have beautiful missives from each of them, written not just for milestones but for no reason at all other than they were thinking about me, noticing me, and seeing me.
Each of the following letters was written for and given to our children long before this book was written. I asked each of them if I could publish them, and received their permission. Baby and Ralph were obviously not that into either the asking part or the permission part, but if they grow up and hate that these letters are in the world, it will make some therapist a very wealthy woman.
It may feel a little bit silly, or a little bit odd, or a little bit like who has time for this kinda stuff, but if you want someone in your life to feel just how loved and seen they are? Write them a letter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dear Ralphie
TO: Ralph, Age 4 and 3/4
FROM: Mom, AKA Nora
RE: Your dead dad and other stuff
November 25, 2017
Dear Ralph,
I still don’t know how to spend your dad’s deathaversary. We haven’t had that many of them, but I was hoping that some clear tradition would emerge. That the day would always be holy and sanctified and reserved for quiet reflection and prayer and crying. That a group of doves would materialize, just waiting to be released into a clear blue sky. But it’s just a day. For all the ways our lives were changed on November 25, it’s just one of 365 days in a year, a day that holds meaning for just a handful of people. I wake up today to texts from friends asking regular people questions like “What is the name of that podcast you told me to listen to?” and “Are we meeting on Thursday or nah?” Not super-special grief day questions like “How are you reflecting on the love of your dead husband today, sweet Nora?” Nobody texts you, because you are only 4 and ¾. That ¾ is very important to you.
The summer after your dad died, our family met up to execute his final wishes: becoming a part of the Rum River, the site for his idyllic childhood summers and for his debaucherous parties in high school, college, and adulthood until he got cancer. There were two locations for Aaron’s ashes to spend eternity: the hobby farm his grandfather bought in the seventies, and Auntie Robbin’s country house, both located on the Mighty Rum, which zigzags from Lake Mille Lacs until it joins up with the lesser-known Mississippi. Your dad loved the Rum River. His actual request was to have a Viking funeral on the Rum, but permits wouldn’t allow us to shoot a flaming arrow into a canoe holding his cadaver, so instead we turned him into magic dust and brought him to the place he loved.
The ashes of a person are not like the ashes you find in a fireplace. They are gritty, sandy, a little bit sparkly. Your dad was stylish, and was cremated in his favorite J. Crew outfit, with his favorite Nikes on. So the grains that rolled through our fingers are not just his flesh and bones, I know that. In the end, even with our Nikes on, we fit into two small plastic bags.
I don’t know what I expected ashes to do in water, but they didn’t float away, they clumped together, and bloomed into a cloud. They stayed there, right in front of us, swirling between the rocks we stood on when the water was low. I licked the rest of him from my fingers, to make him a part of me.
But he is always a part of me. A part of us. I see your dad in your eyes, and the way they change from hazel to bright green with your outfits and your moods. I see him in your skinny legs and the way you cross them when you’re concentrating. Your dad is everywhere. When you were tiny, you told me that he was the sky and the grass and the trees. Sometimes you’d stand on your little picnic table and wave at the sky. “Hey, Papa!” you’d call out to the clouds above.
You were not yet two when your dad died. Your memories of him are really just my memories of him, filtered through my brain and my eyes. I do my best to make your dad a part of our lives. Not just yours and mine, but our whole family’s. Aaron’s portrait hangs in our living room. Aaron’s art is on our walls. Aaron’s birthday and our wedding anniversary are on our calendar. When a song reminds me of Aaron, I turn it up and tell everyone why it’s important to me. When a funny memory pops into my head, I tell everyone the story. The Bigs know anecdotes about Aaron. They know how he lost his first job (falling through the roof at the movie theater), they know his dance moves (knee wiggle, shoulder shimmy), and they know what he made fun of me for (not knowing anything cool, picking my nose, leaving cabinet doors open, not putting the lids on things). They never met Aaron, but they know him. You know him. You know his favorite color (red). You know when I’m missing him. You never once saw your dad slide on his knees across the dance floor just to make me laugh, but the other day, standing in the kitchen, you shouted, “Hey, Mom!” And did just that.
Your father was a non-renewable resource, and there is a part of me that is miserly about his death. That wants to keep it packaged up just for the two of us, a symbol of our apartness from the rest of the world. We are all that is left of that family of three, the only two who went through the dark together. Your dad’s deathaversary feels like a day that is just for us, so today I packed you into the minivan, kissed Matthew and the rest of the kids good-bye, and headed up to the Rum River. On the way, we picked up Moe and Bronson. They never met Aaron, but they have a dead dad/husband, too, so they get a pass. We stopped at McDonald’s
for Happy Meals, and at the junk store where your dad would wander the aisles, trying to find the funniest purchase possible.
I don’t know what I expected us to do when we got to the river, but Auntie Robbin gave us her country house for the day, and the four of us settled in. We sat in the living room and watched two mama deer try to cross the river with their babies. We walked into the woods, crunching through the fallen leaves, howling like wolves and screaming, “I LOVE YOU, PAPA! I LOVE YOU, AARON!”
Most often, when you speak, it’s like a typical child. We hear a lot of butt jokes, a lot of poop talk. And sometimes, it is like you are a small oracle sent to guide me through this life. Today you were walking ahead of me, the cold November sun fading in the late afternoon. “Mom,” you called out to me, “follow me! I’m here to show you the way to God.”
It turns out you were showing me the way to a ravine you almost fell into while wearing Crocs. Almost-five-year-olds are subpar navigators.
There isn’t much to do at the river in November, so we packed up our stuff and headed back home just before the rush hour. You and Bronson fell asleep in the backseat of the van, and Moe and I listened to Aaron’s favorite songs.
I didn’t know enough to expect something this good for us, Ralph. A part of me thought that it would be the two of us, always. A little island, a little club that was not accepting new members. But you, like your father, have always been a person to sow love. When you were really little, and Papa was sick, we took you with us everywhere, even the oncology center. Papa spent two nights a month there, and we would go to visit him. You were just learning to walk, and you would go from room to room, quietly and sweetly, always gravitating toward the people who were suffering most, the ones with the fewest visitors. You have the ability to sense where love is needed, and to shine it in that direction.
No Happy Endings Page 16