I Love You

It was late, and we were tired.

We assumed there would be other nights…

I said, I want to tell you something.

She said, You can tell me tomorrow.

I had never told her how much I loved her…

It was always unnecessary…

There would be other nights.

I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.

Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you…

It’s always necessary.

I love you…
(314)

It is not new that Quinn can be a firestorm of emotion. Not new that she can be reactive, easily offended, and then quickly angered. It is not new that she doesn’t like to hear, “no,” and that it takes her time to shift gears and, eventually, reset. Sometimes it takes her a long time. Occasionally it takes her a good night’s sleep.

In this way, Quinn is like her father. Sam’s long-standing need to hold on to his anger, when it arises or is solicited, for a period that is often overnight, or for a stretch of linked together days, is, after all these eighteen years, unchanged. And unchanged too is my deep belief that life is too short for this. Too short to waste a day or a night on anger. Too short to risk a missed I love you. Mine is the perspective of someone who has experienced unchangeable loss. Theirs is enviably inexperienced.

And so how do I help Quinn understand what I understand without scaring her, or alienating her? How do I convince someone whose weeks are still months, and months are still years, that time is briefer than any of us can truly imagine. How do you insist on the fresh start, the I’m sorry, the I love you, without forcing her to confront the moment when those will no longer be possible. For Quinn, everything is still possible and she will get to it all in time. Meanwhile, I watch the clock.

A couple of weeks ago Quinn and I were driving to school. She asked me to give her some math problems; she likes solving for X. She got a number of them right, and then, she got one wrong. I started to explain it, but she cut me off, accusing me of “saying it wrong.” It was my fault she got it wrong, she insisted, I hadn’t asked the question the right way. I waited for her first wave of anger to pass before interjecting. There were so many things for me to say, and all of them were meant to help her stay the course, to rebound, to put things in perspective. But she wasn’t ready for any of that because she was embarrassed, or felt she had been wronged, or both, and in her deep angry voice she snarled at me, “Why don’t you just drive.”

We were silent for a brief while, while my own sense of right and wrong crystallized. In my life as her mom, I told her, I do my best to be patient and compassionate while she works to figure things out. But, in my regular life, I would never tolerate someone speaking to me in that way. 

In the two and a half years that Quinn has been going to Thatcher Brook, there had been only one day that she walked in to school on her own. I had to get to my own school early, and she and I were running late. I asked her if she could walk herself in, to save me a little time. She agreed, asked for a hug, and then hopped out of the car balancing her nervousness with her pride, as I worked to do the same. On this day, this “why don’t you just drive” day, having endured one too many of her meltdowns, I suggested that it didn’t make sense for me to walk her to her classroom after she’d just been so “mean” to me. I told her I would drop her off instead. She started to cry, mostly angry tears. 

When we got to the parking lot, I put the car in park and turned to her. “It’s not too late for a fresh start,” I offered. “Let’s not start the day off mad.” She looked me in the eye, opened the door and stepped out. She slammed the door on me and never looked back as she weaved her way through the morning parking lot traffic, hidden from each driver's view as they backed their cars up. I watched, stunned, until she made it safely to the stairs. I resisted the urge to jump out and go after her. I felt a little impressed by her fortitude, if I'm being honest, but also really sad that her feeling of being wronged was more powerful or important than love. For me, nothing is more important than loving Quinn, but for her, life continues as a series of important events that happen without interruption. And from her vantage point, there is no car that backs over her in the school parking lot. There is no truck that crosses the center line while her mother drives to school. For Quinn, as it is with Sam, “I’m sorry” can wait. “I love you” can wait.

“Why didn’t I treat everything like it was the last time? 

My greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.” (281)

Sam’s daily outlook is that nothing will ever go wrong. He constantly underestimates how long things take and is therefore always late. Just now he is gearing up to go for a ski. I have a meeting this afternoon at 4pm, the time when Quinn’s bus will arrive at the bottom of our hill to drop her off. Sam knows he must be there to pick her up. He also knows that it took him four hours the other day to do the ski he is about to do. It is now 11:33 am. The other day, he skied with Moses. Today he will ski with a friend. The other day the snow was heavy and wet. Today it is cold and light as air. The other day, he worried about the dog and only did two laps on the untracked wooded hill dropping down from the ridge. Today will be untracked again, with yesterday’s new snow. It will be a fresh start. The other day, the dog did not argue about turning toward home. The dog didn’t feel the pull to do “just one more” lap, and Sam didn’t either because he was worried about the dog. But today the dog is not going, only the friend is going—the younger, fitter friend who does not have a daughter arriving on a bus at 4pm. There is no time to spare, in Sam’s plan, between his return to the house and the arrival of the bus 15 minutes away. There is no time for the extra lap in snow as light as air. No time for the broken binding. Certainly no time for anything human to break, for anything else to go wrong. But that’s okay, he assures me, because “nothing will go wrong.”

If Sam is far left on the spectrum of worry, my sister is far right. In Amy’s purview, everything is always about to go wrong. Disaster lurks around every corner. Chaos is always a moment away. I see myself standing between them. I look left and then right, and then left, and then right. I can’t un-know what I know about life, which is death, and yet I can’t, in my awareness of death, entirely give up life. My compromise, ultimately, has to be this: I can do my best believing in the good that is still to come, as long as I don’t assume the future. 

“You can’t protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” (180)

In my family, when we were growing up, we were not allowed to go to bed without saying I love you. It forced reconciliation when I wanted to hold on to my righteousness and anger. It made each new day a new day. 

The day that Quinn walked away from me in the parking lot, away from needing me in her morning routine, Sam was having his advisees up to the house for dinner. I was going to be driving them there after school, arriving with them, to our small house, without yet having seen Quinn. I called home before leaving school, as I often do, to see if Sam needed anything at the store, but really to test how it was going to go with Quinn. I felt confident, but not certain, that she was going to be ready to reconcile. I imagined that the walk from my car to her classroom was one of the longer walks of her life, but I couldn’t be sure. “Hello?” She answered the phone with a hint of the morning still in her voice. “Hello Quinn,” I responded in kind. I asked to speak with Sam, and then asked him to put her back on the line. As soon as she had the receiver back, she greeted me with an “I’m sorry Mom,” her voice softer and more vulnerable than before. I asked her if she had dinner plans and whether she would like to have dinner in the cabin with me, away from the house full of boys. 

She was excited and grateful, as was I, and while I built a fire in our little cabin stove, Quinn asked me if she could read me the letter she’d written me that day, sometime after she walked away from me without saying goodbye. “Dear Mom,” she read, “I’m sorry I was so rude. It was all my fault…I love you…”

“It takes a life to learn how to live.” (184)

Nothing went wrong that day that she walked away from me without saying goodbye. We still had time for I love you. We had the best dinner together, picnicking and talking by lantern light in our Owl House. We talked about perseverance, and the importance of taking chances, and what happens to girls’ self-esteem when they are good at math but afraid to make mistakes. I told her about books I have on the subject, and she told me she’s seen them in my office, and that she likes to read the titles of the books on my shelves at work.

When she’s old enough, I’m going to give her a copy of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer—maybe I’ll even give her my copy, with all of my notes. It is an excruciating book in so many ways, but in ways I believe she will appreciate—this daughter of mine who, at age 5, thanked me for buying Charlotte’s Web for her, even as she told me it made her sad. When she reads Safran Foer’s novel, she will read through all the bewildering but interconnected plot lines. She will see the parallel narratives of Oskar Schell, and his father Thomas Schell, and his grandfather who is also Thomas Schell, as well as his grandmother, and his neighbor, and his mother, and a long list of strangers, and even Shakespeare's Hamlet. She will see that the one thing all people have in common is loss. And she will also see that it is always necessary to say I love you.

I love you Quinn. More than life itself.

PS: It is worth note that Sam sent me a message at 3:09 pm today, to let me know he was home and "all set to pick up Quinn" at her bus. :)