Your nearly-five-year-old heart knows that Matty Daddy isn’t a replacement for Papa Aaron. They exist in the same family. Both have a huge impact on who you are. It’s nature and nurture, working together. As much as I see Aaron in you, I see Matthew, too. You’ve picked up on his mannerisms, and his catchphrases, especially “Guys! Come on, I’m going to be late to work!”
Right now, your father is a mystery to you, an abstraction. That will change with the years, I know. You will have days when you miss him so much it hurts, days when his absence is palpable to you, and days when it all seems like something that must have happened to someone else.
Tonight you are sleeping next to me in my bed, with your Matty Daddy and Baby and our dumb dog. The Bigs are snoozing in their rooms down the hallway. I am watching your chest rise and fall, and your small hand resting on top of my arm.
You were right, today. Whether it’s the way to God, to happiness, to love . . . you are here to show me the way.
xoxo,
Mom
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dear Baby
TO: Baby, Age 1-ish
FROM: Your Mom (whose name you refuse to say)
RE: Sorry for not wanting you, but it was complicated
Dear Baby,
Man, when you grow up and read this book you’re gonna have a lot of questions. One of them is probably going to be, “Okay, wait . . . you didn’t want me?”
It’s not like I didn’t want you. I didn’t want any baby. That doesn’t sound much better. I wanted you a lot. But I was afraid to want you. Your uncle Dave once told me that wanting is risking. To love something, or want something, is to risk disappointment. To risk our own pain.
And I’d had a lot of pain. I’d lost my dad, I’d lost Ralph’s dad, I’d lost another baby, Ralph’s little sibling, right before my dad and husband died. And I thought if I wanted you, I’d jinx it. You’d die, and it wouldn’t just hurt me, it would hurt Ian and Sophie and Ralph and your dad.
I could handle my own pain, but I couldn’t handle theirs.
They weren’t scared at all, by the way. They were ready for you. They loved you right away, so much that actually, it sometimes annoyed you, and you’d push away their faces and say “no kiss!”
One time, an intuitive healer at a craft fair told me that you were a healing force, a light for our family. And I kind of believed her. I kind of thought that sounded like a lot of pressure to put on a small person. But Baby, you are.
It didn’t matter that Sophie wanted a sister; the moment she walked into the room, she loved you. She and Ian both held you and cried happy tears and even though you’d had a really long day, being born and all, you looked at them with big, wide eyes.
Ralph was mostly interested in the big TV in the hospital room, but he warmed up to you later. When you cry in your car seat, Ralph will pretend to punch himself in the face, just because it brings you joy. I hope this doesn’t mean you’re a serial killer.
We all came from different places, but this is the only family you’ll ever know. This is your normal—three different families all whipped into one. But this is the family you were born into, and you made it feel so simple.
I wish I could say that I realized it the moment you were born, and I instantly fell in love with you and realized that you were the light for our family. But you will eventually be able to read or download a podcast and you’ll be able to read this book and know the truth. It was hard to love you, because it was hard for me to be happy. You were born in a month where I lost a lot, and that sadness settled in and got comfortable.
The presence of your beautiful new life, in this beautiful new family, seemed in such contrast to the depth of what I had lost, and what I still missed. I felt bad. And I felt bad for feeling bad. I felt bad for not giving you the joyful welcome you deserved, and because of all the versions of Nora that had ever existed, that this is what you and Ian and Sophie and Dad and Ralphie got. I sometimes felt like you guys got majorly ripped off.
In America, they send you home twenty-four hours after you expel a human from your body, and you just kinda fend for yourself. I didn’t just have my blanket of sadness, I had you, and a busted-up body, and a bunch of hormones racing through my bloodstream. Your dad and I don’t really argue, but two days after I’d given birth, I was sitting in an adult diaper filled with my own blood, and I was sad and mad. Madame and Shar Bear hadn’t come by the house yet, and I was upset. Didn’t they care about you? About me? Shouldn’t they each be playing the role of Elated Grandmother, holding and rocking you so I could just get some damn sleep? Somehow, this was Dad’s fault, of course, and when I suggested this he looked at me like I was made out of centipedes, which made me madder. And then he left the room and I put a pillow over my face and cried.
And then Mae Mae showed up. She was excited to meet you, but also a little sad. You didn’t mean to be, but you’re a symbol of how life continues after death takes the people we love. Ralph’s dad was her baby, and you are my baby with Matthew. And over the past two years, she and I had struggled with how to fit ourselves together without our main puzzle piece. But you were what bridged that gulf between us. You snuggled into her and slept while she and I said everything we hadn’t said for the past two years, while we cried all the tears we’d been saving up. She’d been afraid that she wouldn’t fit into our new family, but of course she did. She’s your grandma. And Ralph and Sophie and Ian’s grandma, too. She’s my mother-in-law, just like Matthew’s mother is. She is a part of our family, forever. A part of my heart, forever. Your very existence has bonded all of us—all of these different families—together forever. And all you had to do was show up.
All of this letter is about how you make other people feel, and what you do for other people. That’s partially because you’re only a year old, so we’re still getting to know you. I can’t write a whole chapter about how you won’t eat vegetables (but seriously, you won’t, and I worry you’re gonna get scurvy or some other old-timey disease).
They call babies like you Rainbow Babies, the beauty after the storm of infant or pregnancy loss. Your nickname is Baby, because STORMTROOPERLUCKYCHARM is . . . lengthy? We tried to call you Stormy, but then a Kardashian copied us. It’s fine, though, because even as a nickname, it doesn’t suit you at all. That intuitive healer was right about you. You’re not just a rainbow; you’re a light. You can’t help but shine.
Love you,
Nora (AKA Mom. It’s just as easy as saying Dad so I don’t know what you’re getting at pretending you can’t say it.*)
Chapter Thirty
Dear Sophie
TO: Sophie, Age 11
FROM: Your Nora
RE: Which kid do I love most?
December 24, 2017
Dear Sophie,
Tonight we held hands while we walked into church together. Me, a Catholic who has turned to the bland side (Lutheranism). You, a child who grew up without religion, who chooses to tag along with me from time to time. Probably for the free cookies.
You turned to me in the parking lot and said, “You know what I was thinking about yesterday?” and I shook my head. “I was thinking,” you continued, “about how you must love Ralph more than me. And how you always will. Because he’s yours.”
That was . . . NOT what I would have guessed. Yesterday was Christmas Eve eve. I thought for sure you’d have been thinking about whether or not we’d bought you the $95 leggings you asked for (we did not). I squeezed your hand and thanked you for telling me that, and we walked into the warmth of the church, together.
We had an hour together, just the two of us. An hour of music and stories about a God who did the impossible: who got a girl pregnant, convinced her fiancé not to have her stoned to death, and then became the baby inside of her. The reason for the season, ya know? At the end, we held hands with the rest of the congregation. We lit candles and held them up in the darkness of the church, hundreds of tiny flames illuminating this vast space.
&nbs
p; I don’t know if you remember any of our conversation, but I will remember it forever.
For a long time, love felt like something that I had to earn, that could be taken from me at any time for bad behavior. It felt like just above my head there was a gauge that only I could sense. The gauge measured how much love I received from the people around me. If I was good, more love poured in, and the gauge moved up. If I was bad, the love poured out, the gauge went down. Love was subject to change, based on my behavior. The better I was, the more I got: from God, my parents, my siblings, my friends. It felt like any love I didn’t get went to someone else, someone who deserved it more. Someone who didn’t yell at their little brother or forget to return library books for months or lose her goggles at the pool.
Notice I said that it felt that way. Like you, I am a middle child. A deep feeler, a keen observer, prone to letting anger simmer inside me before unleashing it on the unsuspecting.
Everything growing up is a zero-sum game: there is a winner, and there is a loser. You learn this in school and in sports, and it’s not always wrong. There is not enough of everything to go around, so when someone gets more, it means someone else is getting less. I’d say “it’s simple math,” but I’ve seen your math homework and I don’t think that phrase applies anymore. This idea of love—that it could only go so far, that there was only so much of it—was simple, and easy to understand, and made love hard and scary for me. If love could be earned, it could also be taken away. The God who loved me and saw the good in me also saw the bad in me, the sin in me. The parents who loved me unconditionally could also get angry with me, withdraw from me. If I fell in love, and the other person didn’t, then what? If I loved someone, and the person died, what then? The love would be gone, I guess. The gauge would go down.
Neither of us expected to be here, Sophie. A few years ago, you lived in a little blue house with your mom and your dad and your big brother. You didn’t know what was happening, but you knew something was happening, that the fabric that held your life together was sprouting holes and falling apart. And when it did, your dad did his best to patch things up and make a new life for the three of you, and your mom did her best as well. Tomorrow, you’ll wake up in a house with your father and me, your big brother, your little brother, and your little-little brother. You went from the youngest to the middle, from one of two to one of four. From two parents to three parents.
A few years ago, I lived in a little green house with my husband Aaron and our baby, Ralph. Aaron was so sick, and I knew he would die soon. I was afraid for me, afraid for Ralph. Aaron’s love was my first taste of real life magic. His love was easy and pure. I didn’t have to do anything or be anything special besides my flawed self, and he loved me anyway. Without Aaron, what would I be? Who would love me?
The last few weeks of his life were hard. I saw how easy it was for people to conflate love and possession: how desperately they confused their needs with his. It felt like the last two weeks of his life were spent watching the people who loved him try to claim their piece of him before it was too late. It made me sad and tired and desperate, like I needed to do the same. Nobody, I thought, loved him as much as I did. If you lined all our loves up, sorted them by height or weight or general good looks, mine would win. My love was the best love. Does that sound silly? It should.
I was with Aaron when he died. He was with me, and then he was not, and for a brief moment, everything in the world made perfect sense to me: I saw the universe, and myself, and my place in the cosmos. And then, that little peephole slammed shut and I was back on Earth. Back in our little green house. I was sad, and I was scared and I was angry. I was thirty-one years old, and my Big Love was dead. My heart was dead. That was that. I took the love I had and I wrapped it around Ralph and me like a thick layer of bubble wrap that could protect us from ever being hurt again. It felt safe and also lonely.
And then your dad happened. I thought I was just going to Moe’s to burn some stuff in a bonfire. I didn’t think I was going to meet another Big Love. I didn’t think that I would love someone again. I didn’t think I would love a whole bunch of someones again. And a part of me didn’t even want to. I felt defensive of Aaron, and of me and Ralph. How could I love your dad, and you kids, if I also loved Aaron and Ralph? How could I love my old life and a new life? I didn’t have enough love to spread it that far, so why even try?
Here is what nobody told me as a kid. Not in church, not at home. We have enough love to go around. We don’t always have enough clean towels, or Coca-Cola in those cute little bottles, or milk, but we have enough love. We have enough for everyone, and from everyone.
Don’t confuse love with time, or attention, or anything else that can be quantified. Trying to measure it will never make you happier, will never give you a satisfying answer.
For millions of years, people have been trying to define love, and every definition is inadequate and unsatisfying, but I know what love is not: it is not something that runs out, it is not something we hold over one another, or against one another. The only secret about love that you really need to know is that even when you feel like you’ve worn it out or used it all up, it’s always, always in your power to make more. Love is the truest magic we do for one another. There is no potion or spell for it, there is just the dazzling act of choosing to be there for one another, over and over again. On days when you step on one of Ralph’s LEGOs. On days when Ian pretends not to hear you when you ask for a refill of your drink. On days when the baby is sick, Ian has soccer, Ralph hasn’t taken a nap, and the dog has chewed up your favorite pen.
I don’t love Ralphie more than you, Soph. I love him differently, because the two of you are different people, and I am different people to you. I am not your biological mother and you did not come out of my body, but I am yours and you are mine and we are all each other’s. Because our two broken worlds collided and made this one: a bizarro little planet where we all have different last names but remarkably similar noses for people with limited shared DNA.
Love is not Coca-Cola in the cute glass bottles. It isn’t the middle seat in the van or the last Chipotle chip. Love is different.
There is no more or most, except in this context: the more people you love, the more love you have. And love, even the annoying, messy kind from your brothers, is the most important thing we have.
Love,
Nora
Chapter Thirty-One
Dear Ian
TO: Ian, Age 16
FROM: Your Nora
RE: The Sex Talk
Dear Ian,
Just kidding! This is not a sex talk. Your dad and I will save that for our college visits, when you are a captive audience in a rental car.
Yesterday, you asked me why I believe in God.
You were struggling through a particularly grueling theology assignment at your new Catholic high school, after being raised for sixteen years without any religion. You’d just found out days before that Jesus was the son of GOD, and you looked at me with concern, as if I’d just told you that my birth mother was a Volvo station wagon.
Hearing it through your ears, it did sound a little . . . preposterous, I guess? But I reminded you that you aren’t at that school to learn what to believe, you were there to learn how to learn, and to be open to what other people hold dear to them.
Youth is wasted on the young, and often, so is education. Your assignments, I know, are often a mere distraction from your life’s calling to play soccer and watch Snapchat messages. I know that I had similar feelings about school, though I now look longingly at your textbooks and think, “If only my biggest concern was a five-paragraph paper about the Industrial Revolution.” Then I think, “When was the Industrial Revolution again?” And I’m glad to have my own concerns.
Having a high schooler in my house has offered me proof that I have indeed gotten progressively stupider with every passing day since I earned my diploma. It has also offered me a front-row seat to the promise and capabilities of y
our generation. It gives me hope. No pressure.
Back to your question and your theology homework. Certainly, I should be able to help you with a theology assignment. Except not. Your paper was about the Catechism, and while you weren’t looking, I Googled it on my phone because I had absolutely no idea what that word meant. I’ll save you the time: Catechism is a collection of questions and answers meant to teach people about Christianity—specifically, about Catholicism. You repeated the assignment aloud to me for the second time. You were to choose a part of the Catechism and write a response to it. Your options:
God invites us into a personal relationship with him.
There is proof of God’s love for us.
We all yearn for connection with God.
Your issue was that you didn’t believe in any of these statements and that they all sounded insane.
I could offer you no help with the Catechism, which was slightly embarrassing because I went to the very same Catholic high school you are now attending. In fact, after attending eight years of Catholic elementary school, and then attending four years of Catholic college, how did I not know what Catechism meant?
Because it all sounded insane to me, too. The only thing I remember about my formal religious education is it sliding directly off me. In high school, I learned to take notes, to find the essential points of any text and write to them. I did not learn to believe in God, or to love God. I did not learn how to spot Grace, or God’s mercy. I heard a lot of antiquated words, like Catechism. But I did not think that God loved me, or anyone else for that matter. I thought of God as a mostly disinterested force. An absentee Father who may show up for a volleyball game or two.
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