The First And The Last

Posted on June 29, 2016 by CNF • Posted in Blog, Brain, Child, Featured Blog Posts, Slider Content • Tagged Alice Jones Webb, firsts, lasts, milestones, mother-daughter • Leave a comment

By Alice Jones Webb

My first child has a thick baby book. I started keeping it as soon as I discovered I was pregnant. My odd food cravings, the first stirrings of movement, and the onset of labor are all recorded in neat printed letters on pastel pages. I was so enamored by my first child, even before I had met him, that I wanted to record every detail of his existence. I didn’t want to chance forgetting anything.

After his birth, I continued to write down every one of his “firsts.” I was meticulous in recording each event. Dates, day of the week, even the time of day are all printed cleanly and evenly in the pages of his baby book. I was so afraid of the details of him slipping away as he grew. Perhaps I was afraid that he was too good to be true, that if I didn’t get every single part of him down, he would slip through my fingers.

The first time he said, “Mama” is one of my favorites. I cried fat tears. I remember exactly what he was wearing when he took his first tottering steps. The first time he laughed, the first time he used a spoon to feed himself (and the patiently waiting family dog), used the potty, rode a bicycle, drove a car, they are all chiseled in deep grooves across my memory.

He was my first child and so many of his firsts were firsts for me, too. As he was experiencing newness in his world, I was experiencing it in mine.

I shouldn’t have worried about forgetting. I haven’t needed the pastel pages of that baby book at all. It sits on a shelf collecting a layer of fine dust. Even though my first child has slipped away from me, leaving home and pursuing his own adult dreams, my memories are still incredibly clear and vivid. Each of his “firsts” are burned into my memory, because each of his defining moments also defined me as a mother. They are part of me. They are who I am.

My youngest child has had a very different experience. There is no baby book, no pastel pages, no dates or times, no meticulous list of “firsts.” Caught up in the busyness and chaos of raising her and her siblings, I was more concerned with keeping the house standing and the children alive than printing her accomplishments in neat even script. Most days I didn’t even have a moment to brush my hair, let alone write anything down. Unlike her brother’s “firsts” which I recall with stunning accuracy, hers have slipped away from me, lost in the pit of oblivion that was folding laundry, tending house, and feeding babies.

I cannot remember them. Not a single one. Not her first smile, nor her first words, nor her first steps. No matter how many times or how hard I try to conjure up the images of her “firsts” from the caverns of my memory, I come up empty every single time.

It’s not her fault. It is mine. I had already been through the tiny little miracles of a child’s “firsts” three times over. She is the youngest of four, her “firsts” didn’t dazzle me the way her older brother’s had. Instead, they seemed more normal, more expected. I didn’t pause to savor them. At the time, it seemed like so big an effort to step over the unfolded laundry, to walk across the room, sidestepping the toys as I went, to record her accomplishments. My hands were too full of her and her siblings to even consider holding a pen, let alone print anything cleanly and evenly. I will admit that I am rather ashamed of my negligence.

So the memories of her “firsts” have been lost in the swirl of time that streams behind me. I’ll never be able to grasp them again. I can’t remember them and there is no dusty baby book to remind me, either. But there are other details of her that I remember with painful clarity. I remember her “lasts.”

For the same reasons I remember her brother’s “firsts” so intensely, I have her “lasts” cut with the same deep grooves through my memory. His firsts and her lasts, the whole of my experience of motherhood is sandwiched between them. They are the bookends. He was my first and so many of his firsts were my firsts. She is my last child. Her lasts will be my lasts, strung out like a long farewell.

I remember the last time she nursed at my breast. The last time she slept in my bed. The last time she sat on my lap. The last time she called for me in the middle of the night.

Even now, every time she runs to me, hairbrush in hand after a failed attempt at a self-implemented ponytail, I wonder “Will this be the last time I brush her hair?” And it crushes my heart to think that it might. So I take my time, my fingers lingering on the soft strands of her hair. It might be the last time. I want to remember it. Every last bit.

Alice Jones Webb lives with her husband and four children in small town North Carolina. Her work can be found on her blog, Different Than Average (differentthanaverage.com) where she writes about parenting outside of mainstream culture, as well as sites such as Scary Mommy, The Mind Unleashed, and Elephant Journal among others.

A Letter to My Seven-Year-Old Son

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Kristina Cerise • Posted in Blog • Tagged children and childhood, emotions, Kristina Cerise, milestones, mothers, parenting, sons • 3 Comments

Dear Son,

I remember when you first entered my life. I spent hours holding you close, smelling your head, and gazing into your eyes. I lived for your smiles; even the gas-induced ones brought me joy.

Seven years later, not much has changed.

I still love the way your head fits perfectly between my chin and collarbone, though the sight of your legs extending beyond the couch sometimes makes me sad. I still love to breathe in the scent of your hair. Not necessarily after a soccer game, but when you are fresh from the bath. Your smiles—even the fart-joke induced ones—still bring me joy.

I don’t spend as much time gazing in your eyes as I used to. Your eyes have always been expressive. I see the world in them. Lately, I see the weight of the world in them. The apprehension in your seven-year-old eyes makes it hard to look at them for long. Your eyes are full of questions. What if you fail? How much is enough? When is the right time? I see you looking to me for answers, but I don’t have answers to give. The answers used to be easy. When you were younger, it was a multiple choice test every time you cried: milk, sleep, or clean diaper. Now the questions and answers are more complicated.

I remember your milestones. Learning to sit. Learning to stand. Learning to walk and talk. I checked the boxes on those easy-to-define achievements. I even charted your pre-milestone progress. I used to sit you upright and count how many seconds it took for you to tip over. Of course, that was proof not of your progress toward independent sitting but of the existence of gravity in our living room. Nevertheless, I soaked it all in and my new mom heart swelled with pride and relief as the evidence mounted that you were gaining the skills you needed to survive in this world.

The milestones from here are less defined. There are no checklists.

It’s no longer about knowing how to sit or stand, but when to sit or stand. Courtesy—easing another’s burden, putting some else’s comfort ahead of your own, offering a small kindness, showing that you see others and deem them to be of value—is a gift the world needs. You need to know when to offer your seat to another. But the rules for doing so are not based on a simple algorithm of gender and age. They are complicated. You need to know when offering your seat would wound fragile pride. You need to watch for situations where a person’s need to be perceived as capable exceeds the need for comfort. It’s tricky.

It’s no longer about knowing how to walk, but where to walk. Someday, you will sit in class and your teacher will introduce you to Robert Frost’s poem about two roads diverging in a yellow wood. Your teacher will tell you that what Frost wrote is true. Our choices matter. You will think you understand. It will be my job to tell you that Frost was writing about the best case scenario. Life’s intersections are rarely simple forks in the road with two defined choices. Life’s intersections are crowded and the road less travelled is overgrown and easy to miss. Choices don’t announce themselves. Defining moments camouflage themselves in our daily routine. Seemingly small choices are turns: to smile or not, to speak or stay silent, to stay within or stray from your comfort zone, today or tomorrow.

It’s no longer about knowing how to talk, but which words to use. Words have power and must be used wisely. They have the power to hurt and the power to heal, although those powers are not equal. The hurt caused by words is rarely able to be healed by words. Even sincere apologies can’t fully erase the damage. The best an apology can do is ice the swelling. Apologizing for hurtful words is like painting over graffiti. The new paint never quite matches the original color; the shadow of the vandalism remains.

There are so many milestones to come: wisdom, courage, discernment and more. None of these have clear metrics to let you know when you’ve arrived. But, you will make progress if you practice. Like a baby taking ten seconds to tip over instead of four, you will slowly learn. You will learn which battles are worth fighting and which are best served by pacifism. You will learn which risks are likely to yield rewards and which are simply an excuse for an adrenaline rush.

You will learn so much in the years to come. Trial and error will be your greatest teacher. You will be bruised. You will be scraped. You will get bumps that swell to an alarming size. That’s part of the growing. Skinned knees mean you’re doing it right.

Along the way, you will look to me for answers. I might not have them.

But, I still want to hear the questions.

Love,

Mom

Photo by Benton J. Melbourne

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Our Children’s Milestones, And The “Firsts” We Miss

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Lauren Apfel • Posted in Blog • Tagged children and childhood, learning to ride a bike, milestones, motherhood, parenting, passage of time • 4 Comments

I am sitting in the kitchen late one afternoon, my head is buried in the computer. The double doors from the garden burst open and, with the cold, rushes in my oldest son, Oliver, flushed and looking pleased. A helmet sits slightly askew on his head. “Mom!” he starts, but my eyes have already flicked back to the screen. “Mom!” he tries again, “I can ride a bike!” Now he has my attention.

We had bought him a shiny new one for his fifth birthday, two years earlier. The bike was the next size up, because Oliver is tall for his age. Room to grow, that’s what the man at the shop had said, which made sense at the time. It was also a mistake. Oliver is tall, but he is cautious, and when we took to the streets with the thing lurching precariously, the training wheels cold comfort as we rounded the corners, he wasn’t happy. And there I was behind him, gripping the back of the seat in a mounting effort to keep boy and bike upright, despite the pull of gravity. Despite a fundamental lack of balance on the part of the rider.

A few more outings and we both lost interest. The rainy autumn gave way to a rainier winter and the bike was left for time and rust to run their course. As they did, Oliver became a big brother again, twice over. When spring rolled around, life looked different. In the months after the twins were born, I didn’t have the wherewithal to dress myself most days let alone teach someone else how to ride a bike. Oliver found other things to do outside, things that didn’t include me.

There is always a process of letting go as your children get older. Sometimes it happens slowly, naturally, the inexorable result of birthdays being ticked off on the calendar. Sometimes it is expedited by circumstance. Two new babies in the house is just the kind of circumstance that can put a little distance between a mother and her five and a half year old. Where once I knew the details of his every day, now there were nights when I would tuck him and hear the splinters of a story from last week. In my hands, they felt rough and unfamiliar. I wasn’t holding onto him the way I used to. And, loose from my grip, he was changing too.

Oliver made new friends that summer, which doesn’t come easily to him. Our house is part of a development that backs onto a parking lot. If you leave from the garden gate, there is a path that will take you directly to the back gates of the neighboring houses, several of which contain boys his age. They started calling for him to come and play and at first we were reluctant. Oliver was nearing six by then, was that old enough? To walk the 100 meters by himself to the next backyard? To run up and down the side allies unsupervised, building dens and staffing secret agent laboratories? The other parents seemed to think so. Ultimately, we agreed with them.

This gathering of kids became a regular feature. Oliver would come home from school and, with his brother, seek them out at every opportunity. If the weather was poor, they would congregate inside. But if it was fine, they would be racing up and down the stretch of unbroken sidewalk outside, taking it in turns on each other’s bikes. Between them, there was a commune: bikes of all shapes and sizes, different makes and different models. Some had training wheels, some didn’t. And some were “balance” bikes, which have no pedals at all. The point of these is that the child learns to ride by balancing himself. Unlike training wheels, there is no artificial sense of being stabilized by something—or someone—else.

It’s the perfect metaphor for parenting, isn’t it? In one version, we let them learn how to steady themselves on the path to adulthood, even as they tip from side to side. In the other, we prop them up as they go, which feels safer at the time but serves only to prolong—or possibly thwart -the ability to find their own center. The distinction reminds me of how I used to “encourage” Oliver to walk when he was 13 months old and showing no real signs of readiness. I would drag him around the room, taking the weight of his body for him as he buckled to his knees in protest. These marches were for my benefit not his, but I didn’t know that. Back then, I was always rushing his milestones. He was my first child: they felt like a test I was impatient for him to pass.

He took his first steps eventually, of course, and I was by his side when he did. And when he used the potty for the first time and buttoned his first button and read his first word. I was by his side and it was great to see the pride he felt at being seen. But there was a different kind of pride in his eyes when he burst through the garden doors not so long ago, beckoning me to witness, now, what he had managed to accomplish on his own. What I had allowed him to accomplish on his own, even if inadvertently.

What I lost that day in discovering I wasn’t the one who taught Oliver how to ride a bike was softened by the sheer pleasure he took in showing me that he had taught himself. In his own time, on his own terms. For a parent, this is what growing up is about, after all: the realization that while the milestones they hit when we are holding their hands are sweet, the ones that come when we aren’t can be sweeter still.

The Boy Luck Club

Posted on March 7, 2013 by CNF • Posted in Articles Page, From The Archives • Tagged daughter, disappointment, gender, growing up, Lauren Tom, milestones, mother • Leave a comment

By Lauren Tom

I’m forty-three years old and pregnant with my second child. I waited a long time to have kids so that I could become the Not-So-Famous-Asian-American-Actress I am today, and to have more time to work on my “issues” so that I wouldn’t pass them on to my children.

I’m hopelessly in love with my two-year-old son, Oliver—to have another boy doesn’t feel threatening to me. But what if it’s a girl? I would never want my daughter to hate me the way I have at times hated my mother.

My due date is September 13th, my mother’s birthday.

“Why is Ollie so slow when it comes to potty training?” my mother asks. We’re standing in the kitchen of my home in the Hollywood Hills. She takes a swig of Diet Coke and runs her fingers through my son’s hair.

“What do you mean?” I say, wanting to scoop up my son like a football and run with him to safety into the next room. My stomach tightens.

“Well, I mean, he’s two years old. He seems to be doing fine with language, but why he is still in diapers at two? Is he slow?”

“Ollie, you’re fine,” I say, looking right at my son. “You’re right on schedule.” My face feels hot. I breathe deeply, take Ollie’s hand, and lead him into the next room. “Here, honey,” I say as I hand him a toy airplane.

I know that dropping the subject would be wise, but I walk back into the kitchen and say, “The doctor told me to wait until he turned two to start potty training him, Mom. He said that most boys don’t really get it until they’re almost three.”

“That’s ridiculous—you and your brother were both potty trained by the age of two. In fact, your brother learned faster than you did.”

“Whatever,” I say as I pick up the sponge and start to clean the kitchen counter. I scrub it hard.

It’s my mother’s birthday, 1966, and I’m seven years old, just home from school, breathless. I’m standing in the kitchen, holding my mother’s gift behind my back.

“Reach out your hands and close your eyes, Mom.” She unfolds her long thin arms and cups her large hands. Her fingernails are so long they curl in, taking up most of the space in the palm of her hand. I wedge the gift in. She looks like a praying mantis as she accepts it. She opens her eyes. I’m so excited I can hardly stay on the ground. “Do you like it?” I can feel my heart beating.

My mother smiles, her straight white teeth framed in frosty orange lipstick. She is wearing orange plastic earrings and a sleeveless orange dress with big white buttons running down the front. Her hair is puffy on top and flips up at the bottom like Laura Petrie’s in The Dick Van Dyke Show. But she’s not as cheerful and silly as Laura Petrie. She’s cooler, sleeker, more like Emma Peel in The Avengers.

I desperately want to show my mom that even though I may be short and chubby, I can make her beautiful things. I’ve been working on this piece of pottery for two weeks at school. I think maybe it’s a “masterpiece” because my second grade art teacher, Mrs. Benassi, used that word.

I shift my weight from side to side as my mother holds my creation up to the light.

“This is beautiful,” she beams.

“You really like it?” My face feels like it’s about to explode.

“Of course, honey. It’s nice.” She cocks her head to one side. She smiles harder. “What is it?”

I guess I would call it a ceramic blob with bumps—sort of like a soap dish but more like a jellyfish. It’s painted my mom’s favorite color—orange. Even our front door is painted orange.

“I don’t know, Mom. I guess it’s a soap dish. I’m just really glad you like it! Happy birthday!” I watch her carefully place it on the oval dining room table. I wrap my arms around her waist and give her a hug. I can feel one of her ribs jab my cheek. “I’m going upstairs to my room. Okay, Mom?” I want to get out of there before anything can ruin the moment.

“Okay, sweetie,” she says.

I race up the staircase, which is covered with white shag carpeting. A plastic strip runs up the center of it. I am careful to never step outside that strip.

“Come down for dinner when your father gets home,” she calls after me.

My mother has made our home a “real showcase,” as my father puts it. Our living room has white shag carpeting, a light green silk couch, and wallpaper with hand-painted Japanese flowers. Against the wall looms a locked cabinet with old ivory Japanese tchotchkes. My older brother Chip and I are not allowed in this room. Ever. In fact, I’ve never seen my mom and dad in there either.

An hour later I come down to see Chip and my father sitting at the kitchen table. The table looks beautiful. It is set, as it always is, with orange dishes and brown glass tumblers. I look for the soap dish/jellyfish but I don’t see it. We’re having Lop Chung, rice, and peas for dinner. Lop Chung is Chinese sausage that has large polka dots of fat in it. Chip and I like to dig the fat out with our fingernails and line the sides of our plates with it. My mom always shakes her head when we do this.

My father asks my brother to talk about current events taken from today’s newspaper. All I can think is, When is my mother going to tell my father about the gift I made her?

“What do you remember most from what you read today, Chip?” my father asks, pouring a can of Tab into his glass.

I don’t even hear what my brother says because I’m too worried about the soap dish. I wait all through dinner for her to mention it. But she doesn’t. Maybe she put it someplace special so it wouldn’t get knocked down. I’ll bet it’s in the locked cabinet in the living room with all the other tchotchkes. I’ll go look after dinner. I can see everything in the cabinet if I stand at the edge of the carpet. I gouge out the last pocket of fat and eat my sausage.

After dinner, I clear the plates and take them over to the sink. I open the cabinet beneath the sink to scrape the food into the garbage can.

And that’s when I see it.

My masterpiece is sitting right on top of a pile of garbage. I feel my heart drop to my stomach. I want to throw up. My mother doesn’t notice me looking at her; she’s sitting at the table talking to my father. I feel a tightness in my throat. I scrape my leftovers into the garbage, turning away my face so I won’t have to look at the food hitting the soap dish.

Either Mrs. Benassi is a liar, or my mom is a liar. I scrape the next plate. The food completely covers the soap dish now. I start to cry. Maybe my mom liked it at first but then changed her mind. Why would she throw it away? Who throws away a perfectly good soap dish? Or maybe it’s not so perfect or even good. Mrs. Benassi must be the liar.

My mom calls out over her shoulder, “Honey, get the Jell-O out of the fridge and bring it into the den. Bewitched will be on in five minutes.”

“Okay,” I say, keeping my head down so she won’t notice I’m crying. We sit and watch the show, just like we do every Thursday night.

Twenty years later, it’s the late eighties, and people across the country are in therapy, dredging up their pasts, blaming their parents for every imaginable woe. When I finally confront my mom, I feel the support of an entire nation.

We’re sitting at the dining room table in my rented apartment in West Hollywood. My mom still looks like a knock-out.

“What are you talking about, Lauren? I never did that.” Her eyes dart away.

“Yes, you did, Mom. I saw it sitting right on top of the garbage.”

“I really don’t remember, but you’re making such a big deal out of it. Really.”

Here it comes.

“You’re too sensitive. You make everything into a big problem.”

“Well, maybe that’s because you dismiss me and what I’m feeling as if it has no validity whatsoever.”

My mother leans forward. “But it usually doesn’t, Lauren—that’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t understand you. You don’t have any problems, not really. You don’t know what a real problem is.” She starts to pick dog hair off her black leggings.

“What do you mean by that?” I’m staring at her. Hard.

“That in the large scheme of things, a girl your age has no problems.”

“A girl my age? I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m a woman.”

She knits her brow and turns away her head. “You should see what I’ve had to deal with in my life.”

She’s right; she had a rough childhood. But we’re not talking about her. I was talking about me.

She lets out an exasperated sigh. “Is all this ‘therapy’ helping, Lauren? You know, your brother and I never seem to have these kinds of arguments. He gets me. He never says things like this to me. But you? I have had problems with you since the day you were born.”

I dig my front teeth into my lower lip and say, “Fuck you, Mom.” I have never said that to her before. I am shocked that that came out of my mouth.

She looks at me, her face expressionless. She takes a swig of Diet Coke. “You can talk all you want, Lauren. Go ahead and talk. Say whatever you want. Your words do not affect me. I’m not going to change.”

Three years of near-silence followed.

Then, on the heels of my featured role in The Joy Luck Club, a film about mothers and daughters—Chinese mothers and daughters—I telephone. I invite my mom and her mother, Helen, to the film’s premiere. My grandmother is so excited she calls all her Mahjong pals and tells them she’s going to see her “big-shot granddaughter in that movie, The Pot Luck Club.“

I’m wearing a black, ankle-length, so-tight-it-looks-sprayed-on Spandex dress, my hair slicked back with greasy styling gel (big mistake) and enough make-up to last the rest of the year. I can hear my father calling out from the grave, “You look like a hooker.”

My mother is wearing a deconstructionist, see-through silk dress by designer Xandra Rhodes. My grandmother Helen, four foot ten, eighty-one years-old—the woman I call “Who-Who” (Chinese baby talk for Grandma)—is wearing a traditional red Chinese silk brocade jacket, black pants, gold sequined tennis shoes with a matching visor, and diamond rings on each finger.

As we’re walking into the theater, the ushers hand out little packets of Kleenex. Who-Who takes one and taps me on the shoulder. “Hey, Little Midget”—I’m five feet tall, Who-Who is four foot ten, and that’s her nickname for me—”why they give me this? They think I’m going to be some kind of crybaby?”

“No, Grandma,” I say, taking her hand. “No one thinks that—it’s just in case you need one.” She scrunches up her face as if she’s just tasted something sour. “It’s free,” I say. “Just put it in your purse.”

“Oh. Okay,” she says.

We settle into our seats as the lights go down. The curtains slowly open. A smile spreads across my face. My mom is sure to be proud of me now. Millions of people have read Amy Tan’s book; it’s already a success.

Twenty minutes have passed. We’re watching the scene in which one of the mothers is crying because she’s been beaten, when suddenly my grandmother starts yelling at the screen as if she’s hailing a cab, “Hey! Buck up!”

I whisper, “Shh! Grandma! We don’t talk in the theater.”

She turns and looks at me—as do several people sitting close to me. She turns back to the screen and yells, “What you think life gonna be? A gravy train?”

“Ma! Shh! Not now,” my mom chimes in.

She turns to my mom, “You shh, Moose!” (It’s her nickname for my mother because she thinks she has big bones.) They bicker in Chinese for a moment. I sink so low into my chair I’m almost lying down, my knees pressed against the seat in front of me.

Who-Who sneers and reaches for her purse. She pulls out a bag of mui, Chinese dried salted plums that have large pits inside them. She unwraps one, and the crackling sound and pungent odor produce more hairy eyeball stares from the people around us. She pops it in her mouth, reaches into her purse, and pulls out an empty plastic grocery bag. The sound is like deafening static over a microphone as she shakes it out and creates a makeshift garbage can on her lap. She rolls the pit back and forth in her mouth, trying to scrape it clean with her teeth. Click-clack, clack. Click-clack, clack. Patooey. She spits the pit into the bag. I settle in for what turns out to be the longest screening in the history of mankind.

The lights come up. The room bursts into applause. I look at my mother.

“What did you think?” I ask, feeling, once again, seven years old.

“Well, I have to say, I agree with Who-Who. I don’t know what the big deal is—all these women crying and whining about all their problems. I’ve seen a lot worse.”

I start to make my way down the row of seats to the aisle.

Okay, okay, I know that you and Who-Who have had to endure the long-held Chinese belief that women are valueless—heck, you’ve just witnessed a baby girl being drowned on the screen. Can’t you find some compassion for that girl, for yourselves, for me? If you can’t be supportive of me in this one moment . . . then just lie. I may have said that last part out loud. I’m not sure.

My mother, following me, calls out, “Why did you have the least screen time of all the women?”

“What?” I say, although I heard her. I stop, turn around, and look at her.

“Was your part cut or was it always that small?”

I keep walking. I try to slow my breathing. I open the double doors leading outside to a sea of photographers lined up along the edge of a long red carpet. “Uh . . . they may have trimmed a scene or two,” I say.

“Yeah, it definitely seemed like you had the smallest part,” she says.

A photographer yells, “Hey, Lauren, can we get a shot of you, your mom, and—is that your grandmother?”

“Sure,” I say, plastering a frozen smile across my face. Do not cry, do not cry. This is the biggest night of your life; don’t let anything ruin it. I stand between my mom and Who-Who, an arm slung around each of them. I can feel a large lump caught in my throat. I hope it’s not detectable in the photo.

Click.

Over the next ten years, my mom didn’t change much, but I’d started to realize that I wasn’t going to change her.

It’s two years after the opening, Ollie is a newborn, and my mom and I are talking on the phone. I’m picking dog hair off my silk-upholstered chair, thinking, Oh God, this is exactly what my mother does. We’re talking about how Ollie and my brother have the same shaped head and I look down at my son. He’s lying in a Moses basket, swaddled in a soft orange blanket. His large blue eyes, like pools of deep water, look up and to the left. He pulls one arm free, waves his hand and coos as if he is conversing with other beings, angels perhaps. I look at him and I’m so in love, my heart pounds faster and harder than it ever has, and suddenly my mom says,

“And don’t forget, Lauren, I love you as much as you love Ollie.”

When I’m twenty-four weeks into my second pregnancy I discover a new space within me—a space that can hold the idea of having and raising a baby girl. A girl, who will descend from a long line of strong, funny, independent women who love gaudy jewelry. Is my mom a warm and fuzzy sort of person? No. But it’s not warm and fuzzy that defines love.

I am stepping into my womanhood, and I couldn’t have found my way here without my grandmother and my mother. I know that now. And it’s my turn. I am a launching pad for a new soul.

So when I go to Dr. Katz’s office, I’m ready to find out I’ll be having a girl.

“I can’t take it any more—just tell me,” I say as Dr. Katz squirts warm goo on my belly and presses down with an abdominal probe.

“Do you want me to write it down, put it in an envelope and seal it so you and your husband can open it later?”

“Why don’t you just tell me now, write it down, and I’ll pretend to be surprised later.”

“You got it,” he laughs. Dr. Katz points to the middle of the screen. “There you go.”

“Is that what I think it is?”

Dr. Katz smiles. “Yes, yes it is. You’re having a boy.”

And I smile because I realize he could’ve said “you’re having a kitten” and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Author’s Note: Landing a featured role in The Joy Luck Club was an honor, a privilege, and a thrill, but until I gave birth to my sons, I had no idea what joy and luck I was to have in my life. Writing “The Boy Luck Club ” helped me understand to what degree that is true.

Brain, Child (Fall 2004)

About the Author: Lauren Tom is an award-winning actress and writer. Besides The Joy Luck Club, she has starred in the films When A Man Loves A Woman, Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, Mr. Jones, Bad Santa, and Disney’s Mulan II. She had a recurring role as Julie, Ross’s girlfriend, on NBC ‘s Friends. You can read more about her at laurentom.com.

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Don’t Speak

Posted on January 10, 2013 by CNF • Posted in Articles Page • Tagged education, Liam Callanan, milestones, Newborn/Baby, sisters • Leave a comment

By Liam Callanan

My youngest daughter, almost two, won’t speak.

It’s a problem, but not much of one, the pediatrician tells us—or rather, that’s what her mouth tells us. Her eyes betray a little more—I’m not worried now, but will be the next time we meet.

I don’t have to wait. I’m worried now. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for one’s child not to be a fluent communicator by eighteen months, but in our house it’s not. She has two older sisters who said more sooner, and worse yet, my baby girl’s father—me—is a fiction writer. If she makes it age two or twenty or beyond unable to catch a fly ball, fine. But she has to speak.

Right now, though, only the doctor’s speaking, and she says: Be patient.

***

Patience is a precious commodity in our house—Jane is the fourth of four girls. It may be that she’s not spoken yet because she’s not been able to get a word in edgewise.

And if the math is tripping you up at this point (1 baby + 2 older sisters = 4?), don’t worry—arithmetic is another problem area for us. Jane is our fourth child, but only the third we brought home from the hospital. She was born in 2007, her sister Honor in 2002, and Mary in 2000. Lucy was born February 19, 1998, and by the time I got to hold her in the hospital, she was already still and quiet. You have no idea how beautiful she was—or how quiet that room was. Up and down the hall, babies cried, mothers shouted, doctors and nurses called to each other. Anyone entering our room quickly fell quiet as soon as they saw the yellow rose a cautious nurse had taped to our door: hospital code for what had happened within.

We couldn’t be so oblique with our daughters. Instead, we followed the advice of experts and told them about Lucy directly. Just the minimum, we were told: Don’t overwhelm them. So we didn’t. But our girls occasionally overwhelm us. Every February, Mary, our oldest, reminds us that it’s time to buy the crib we purchase and donate each year on Lucy’s birthday. Honor, who inspires her teachers to ever-more elaborate euphemisms—”spirited,” “lively,” and, my favorite, “capable of extreme leadership”—will sometimes tell strangers in line at the grocery store about her “stone sister” (as in gravestone?) “who doesn’t speak.”

On the other hand, Honor will sometimes try to egg Jane into speaking in various public situations—which Jane never does. She smiles shyly, giggles or points, but she doesn’t otherwise greet the cashier or, say, the person behind her at church, or the other child on the playground.

***

At home, Jane’s a bit more loquacious. We’ve assured the doctor that we do hear “Mommy” and “Daddy,” and for a while, we were quite certain that her first official word would be “cheese,” which was fine with me. A word’s a word, and Jane was our first child to be born in Wisconsin. It would make a good story. But then cheese retreated, and Daddy melted into “Diddy” and then I started noticing that both I and Dora the Explorer went by “Diddy.” Then Dora’s friend Boots the Monkey, too. That’s not a good sign, I thought, but couldn’t think of a way to share that with the pediatrician: My daughter confuses me for a small lavender monkey.

***

Be patient, the doctor says, and we are, even though these are the months of the “language explosion” when other children—especially, it seems, the children of parents who blog—are learning a hundred words a day, and in multiple languages. That our doctor isn’t concerned yet is frustrating, but also reassuring. One of the things I like about her is her slowness to panic. When she asked Honor at age five to draw a self-portrait on her clipboard (I confess I don’t remember this diagnostic test from when I was a kid), and Honor instead drew a thigh-high stiletto boot and went to the other side of the form and marked “yes” beside all the “Abnormal Mental Health Symptoms” before we could get the pen away from her, our doctor did not commit Honor—or her parents—to an asylum. She smiled and said Honor was precocious and that she’d see her next year. She did, and Honor brought her a beautiful, full-length self-portrait—ponytail, crown, stiletto boots and all.

***

But the girls have always been good with doctors. Once, when the pediatrician finally did hit the panic button and send us to the Children’s Hospital emergency room—it was midnight, and Mary, seven, had been throwing up for twenty-four hours straight—we found ourselves in an exam room with a nurse practitioner who was going through her triage sheet. Midnight, and my daughter hadn’t kept anything down for more than a day, and had never been up this late in her life: “Would you say she’s acting … playful?” the NPT said. Mary’s head lolled against my chest. I didn’t answer. Two hours later, when the IV saline solution drip had miraculously restored her, the NPT returned to check on us. She whispered to me over the tubes and beeping: “How’s she feeling?” Before I could answer, Mary opened her eyes from her two a.m. nap and said just one word: “playful.”

***

In short, Mary and Honor are not shy—nor ever at a loss for words. When I told them I was reading at a local bookstore, they both asked what their role would be—they couldn’t imagine not having one. Since I’m still learning what it is to be a writer, and parent, and writer-parent, I said they could do whatever they wanted. Honor spun like a ballerina, fell, rose, and then curtsied to broad applause. Mary read a story that consisted of two lines: “I like chocolate. If you like chocolate, raise your hand.” When the entire audience did, she smiled and both girls gave me a look that very clearly said, Top that, Dad.

Of course, I’ve learned there is no topping them. What do you say when your six-year-old wakes you just before dawn, whispering at your bedside in the cold dark, Dad, I need a stapler? Or, when you’re invited to your daughter’s third-grade class to talk about “what writers do,” and after answering polite questions like Do you have a limousine? and Do you think of the words or pictures first?, Mary asks, “Dad, why are you so wild at home, and normal here?”
Speechless.

***

What could I say? That at home, I like plugging my iPod into the stereo and blasting whatever comes out so my girls and I can dance like popcorn in a kettle, because I spend all day very, very quietly sitting at a desk and talking to no one? That I’m wild with them—talking, tickling, tackling—because they’re so funny and so fun? That I will, and have, taken them to New York or Chicago or a random city some Saturday because life is short, and I’ve never been patient enough to wait for the adventures to come to me?

Or that I love talking a wild blue streak with them, dancing until we drop, because there was a day—a lonely cold one in February—that I thought I would never know a noisy life, that I thought my first daughter, so pretty, so silent, would also be my last.

Jane is our last.

Every milestone of hers that passes—smiling, sitting up, crawling, walking—is bittersweet. I already dread the day I dismantle the crib—the one we bought for Lucy, the one we’ve used for each girl since—and take it to Goodwill instead of storage.

And maybe Jane senses this in me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she understands everything we say. Maybe Jane knows that that first word will also be a last hallmark. Maybe she’s waiting.

Her sisters aren’t, of course. Honor has decided we’re aiming too low—she sits Jane down with chapter books, tries to get her to repeat words like “conversation” and “tiara.” Mary, meanwhile, recently completed a worksheet that asked her to predict the future. She came up with a list that included “boys will like Barbies,” “people will drive plastic cars,” and—”your first word will be fiction.”

Fiction?

Author’s Note: Jane loves fiction, loves cuddling with a book any time of day. And sometimes afterward, she will speak—low, steady, earnest, but absolutely unintelligible whispers that she sometimes punctuates by patting my cheek or nose. I want to ask Mary what she’s saying. Or, for that matter, Honor. I want to ask Jane. I want to ask Lucy. I want to ask all my girls if what I do all day as a writer is so different from what I do as a parent—imagine what might be, what could have been, and patiently, quietly, wait for the words to come.

Brain, Child (Winter 2010)

About the Author: Liam Callanan’s novels include All Saints and The Cloud Atlas. He coordinates the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He’s on the web at liamcallanan.com.