Eat Another Egg: 20 Years, Part II

Here’s the thing: it’s impossible for me to have any one single feeling about this 20th anniversary. In some surprising way, it also feels like a celebration. I can’t think about my mother--my beautiful, amazing mother--without also thinking about my daughter. And Quinn is all possibility, all new beginning, she is oxygen. And breathing the world in with her is like having part of my heart resuscitated after all these years.

There are so many different kinds of love in this life. When my mother was dying I couldn’t see into the darkness ahead of me; I couldn’t imagine a future without her. I didn’t know what anything would look like or whom I would be. I had spent my whole life looking to her for guidance. Inevitably, of course, I did go on, advancing into that darkness one day at a time, and as I did, my eyes adjusted.

I slept for most of the first year. My dearest friends still called, they made me come out and spend time with them. I remember being at a Thanksgiving gathering in Maine at Chelsey’s house with all of them--our annual crew team turkey dinner. I felt hollow and had little to say, but they let me just be there with them. Moments like that kept my heart beating, though just barely, for months--they kept me in stable condition. And then, a year after my mother’s death, I finally woke up from my long nap. I took a trip with strangers on the ocean, came back and began to live again...began to start imagining myself in the future.

One adventure led to another. I went to graduate school, lived on a boat for a week, moved into my first solo apartment. I met wonderful people, I read great books, I shared a plot in a community garden. I went out and danced. I laughed. Eventually I got a job; I felt useful. And from there, I got another job and I gave away most of my belongings, put the rest in storage, and began my 2.5 year adventure, traveling, living out of my backpack and my truck, seeing what some of the world looked like. And in that time I met Sam, and I came home to Vermont, and we built a house, got married and got pregnant. I did a lot of living, all with a clear sense that that is the only possible thing to do--to not waste it, not waste this too-short life.

In the early months of my pregnancy, I thought I wanted to have a boy. I told people I did--I’m mostly tomboy, I would say, not very girly. As a teacher I had often had simpler, easier connections with male students. Girls were more complicated for me. The night before our 20 week ultrasound, when we would find out the sex of our future baby, Sam and I got in an argument about something. I found myself hiding in the bathroom with the family photo album my sister assembled for me for Christmas one year. I looked at pages and pages of photos of my mom and me. I sobbed. I didn’t know how to have a baby without her. And I realized, all of sudden, that I desperately wanted a daughter. I had turned my back on the ocean and never saw the wave coming--it knocked me off my feet.

Girls are complicated for me because I want so badly for them to have good lives. I expect a lot of them. I expect them to respect themselves, and to demand that the people in their lives treat them well, all the time. I expect them to earn the respect of others by being smart, and working hard. I expect them not to be coy or give themselves away. I expect them to participate, to be independent, to have a clear sense of right and wrong. To use their voices. That’s a lot, I know. And it’s understandable why some of my relationships with girls over the years (especially my poor sister) have been challenging--who wouldn’t find me overbearing? But those things are ingrained in me--they are my mother’s lessons for me, and they’ve helped me have an incredible life.

And so, the night before my ultrasound, I found myself facing the fact that even though having a daughter would probably be really hard, it was a challenge I desperately wanted. I knew if I had a daughter, and she was anything like me, she would have opinions of her own, and she would not like to be told what to do or how to do it, and I knew she would likely fight me in my quest to make her the invincible woman I would want her to be. And she might even hate me for it. But still, I wanted the chance to try.

I know there will be rocky times ahead, but I also know that loving Quinn is a lot like loving my mom...in a strange way I can’t quite explain. I imagine my mom standing on the edge of a flat plane, her back to the abyss, she is smiling. The world is flat. It’s the same way I feel about Quinn--I can’t see a life beyond her, or without her in it. I know that makes me sound vulnerable, or crazy, but love so big, so primal and biological is, well...it is the most raw feeling of being alive I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve jumped out of a plane, I’ve inched my way up the face of a 1200 foot cliff, I’ve gone over waterfalls in a boat. I’ve done the adrenaline drug and it’s just not as good as this primal kind of love. Nothing is.

Somedays I think I would give just about anything to have my mom back; I have 20 years of stories to tell her and lots of places and things I’d like to show her. But other days, I have this strange sense that she’s not gone, just out of reach. And I suppose that’s what Quinn has done for me--filled that void, revived that most sacred and personal part of my heart. Nothing could replace my love for my mother, but being a mother comes very very close...in some ways it's even better.

Quinn is having a lot of fun learning names right now. For a long time if I would say, “you’re beautiful,” she’d say, “I’m not beautiful...I’m Quinn!” Periodically, when she’s feeling sassy, she’ll call out for something: “Say-um! Sam! Where’s my bear?” And she calls me Ker sometimes, or Ker-Mom, or Love--the name Sam uses for me. The other day, driving to school, we got talking about names and she asked, “What’s my name?” I told her, “You are Quinn Claire.” While she obviously knew the first part of the answer, it seemed to be the first time her middle name registered for her. She spent the rest of the drive trying it out: “Quinn Claire...Quinn, Claire...I’m Quinn Clay-ur” She emphasized each new syllable, trying them on for size. I was speechless, listening to my still-tiny daughter taking possession of my mother’s name for herself. Clay-ur. Claire.

More than at any other time, in these twenty years, I have a clear sense of connection to my mom. I hear myself speaking her words to my daughter. I can imagine her love for me when Quinn is in my arms. I receive Quinn’s laughter and kisses and questions and I am having the conversations with my mother that I never got to have. I hear answers to questions I never had the chance to ask. I feel like the vector between them. I feel like some of my mother’s energy, dormant in my cells for so many years, finally made it back into the tangible world. She goes on. I breathe her like oxygen..big love fills my lungs.