Fragile

This is a story that is hard for me to tell.

It is a story of my father standing in a mine field of broken glass after everyone has gone to bed. The story of his trying to help: of hanging the cleaned glasses up in the rack, the last gesture of many before going to bed himself. It’s the story of his not having them securely in place and them crashing down onto the stone counter below, exploding all around him in the darkened house.

By the time I jumped out of bed, pulled on some clothes and made it downstairs, by the time I stepped barefooted into my clogs and rounded the corner to the kitchen to find my stunned father looking around at the glittering shrapnel trying to imagine where to begin, I already knew what he was thinking about: his granddaughter’s pudgy bare feet, her fleshy little hands. He had already imagined her bleeding and it was more than he could bear.

It was simple enough for Sam and me to shift into gear, picking up the big pieces first, getting the dust pan and brush, the vacuum. It was an easy task, just a couple of irrelevant glasses. My dad wanted to clean it up--to make it right--but it was easier for me to do; I wasn’t shaken, I wasn’t worried about baby feet, I was just worried about him, shattered and looking on, trying to block the thought of his granddaughter’s bleeding feet out of his mind, feeling upset about a simple accident and two irrelevant glasses.

When it was all cleaned up I went downstairs to tell him again it didn’t matter, to smile at him, hug him, tell him I love him, thank him for all of his help. I found him standing still in the middle of the basement, his arms by his side, still feeling stunned and guilty and trying to decide what to do.

After I went to bed I thought of the solution, but by then I couldn’t bring myself to go down and stir it all up again. I should have told him: if I broke one of your glasses, I would feel terrible, but you wouldn’t care at all...you would insist on cleaning it up and insist it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all. I laid there in tears thinking about my dad, suffering from his embarrassment and worry through the night.

There is no physical thing in my entire house that matters as much as he does. I can barely express how much I love him and how grateful I am for the growing love my daughter has for him and for Louise. 

Louise: my dad’s wife, my daughter’s Nonna. A woman I have never been able to call stepmother only because it feels like a betrayal of the mother I’ve lost, in spite of how important she has become to me, and to all of us. A woman whom my mother would have loved, whom my mother was already making room for before she died--a kind of magnanimity I’m not sure I’ll ever be capable of. 

The second thing my mother told me, when I walked into her hospital room after she was diagnosed with cancer, was that I needed to allow for someone else in my father’s life, this mandate coming long before I ever allowed for the possibility that she might someday die, never imagining it would happen in four short months. 

My mother didn’t want my dad to be alone. And she wouldn’t want her granddaughter to be grandmotherless. And even though I’ve justified not referring to Louise as my stepmother, by saying I don’t need another mother, it’s becoming more and more clear to me how much I do need her. And Quinn needs her too--she needs all the grandparents she can get, for as long as she can possibly have them.

For Quinn, my dad and Louise are like one person. She says Nonnapoppa as one word, and she has begun to develop her own relationship with them, separate from any relationship I might have originally thought had anything to do with me. They communicate in their own way with her. And negotiate in their own way. And they can get her to do things we cannot--like eat half a chicken breast, multiple slices of cheese and an entire banana for lunch. She has never been willing to try a bite of chicken in her life.

When they were getting into their car this morning to leave, after three days of taking care of her while we worked and her daycare was closed, Quinn stood in the driveway getting increasingly upset. “I wanna go in Poppa’s car! I wanna go in Poppa’s car!” she said over and over. And just before Louise closed her car door, Quinn thrust her arms out: “I wanna hug Nonna!” And then, inevitably, “I wanna hug Poppa!” They each climbed back out for a last hug. I stood there and cried, not wanting them to go. Not wanting that sweet thing to end: my daughter, loving my father and her Nonna as her own.  When they started to drive away, Quinn insisted we catch them. So we all piled into the front seat of my car and we followed them down the hill to wave goodbye once more. 

And when we got back to the house I cried again, thinking about my dad’s anguish over the broken glass and feeling his embarrassment and wishing I could make it so he never felt those things at all. Ever, or for any reason. To sense your own parent’s vulnerability is to sense the fragility of life itself. 

My dad, my hero growing up, is someone I now deal with anxiously, trying to balance my desire to do things for him--to spare him over-exertion or potential harm--with my desire to let him still be the invincible man he was, before I came to know that that’s not how life really works. I am conscious, through every visit, of his mortality, always worried about how much time we might have left. Rationally I know it could be me first, tomorrow or even today, you never know. But emotionally I feel myself worrying about losing my second parent, about Quinn losing him too. Ten years? Twenty? Twenty-five? I know no amount of time will really be enough, when I watch Quinn laughing at his silly faces, increasingly able to express her own feelings for him. “Poppa’s cwazy!” she will say, laughing, “Get outa hea, Poppa!”

I hope I will always be able to call up the image, from our last visit, of my dad squatting down across the room from Quinn, with his arms spread wide, thinking that would trigger her to run to him for a hug. And Quinn, in her gray camouflage long-johns studying him for a moment before squatting down herself and spreading her arms wide too--like two sumo wrestlers, squared off and laughing. I want to always remember that and the high-pitched sound of her voice this morning, when they called to say they’d made it home, as Quinn squealed excitedly into the phone. 

“I lub you Nonnapoppa! Bye-bye!”