Different/better/worse

Eight years later, as a mother

One of my friends from college sent around a selfie with her four-month-old on Wednesday night. His gummy grin lights up the frame. Behind him, she wears a contented smile, but her eyes are in mourning. “Wow,” she texted. “Having a baby makes the existential panic different/better/worse.”

I’m unusually speechless this week, which is bad timing, because this is my first week as a full-time writer. (Consider this a soft launch—more coming soon.) And so I borrow (steal?) my dear friend’s words, because as a full-time writer, write I must.

Different

Eight years ago on election night, I drank more whiskey than I have ever drunk in my life, and fell asleep watching John Q—an attempt at obliteration. I woke with a blistering hangover and stumbled down an eerily empty Shattuck Avenue to Berkeley Bowl, where I bought bacon and eggs for a consolation breakfast. It felt like the morning after a death, or a break-up, except the grief was public, not private. There were nods of solidarity with strangers. Some professors at the law school cancelled class; others just held space. It was a sunny day in the Bay Area. I felt like I wearing a leaded vest.

The early days of the interregnum: law school symposiums; a gathering of female law students at my house with curried lentil soup; reconsidering my plans to work at a corporate law firm in Los Angeles after graduation. I don’t remember writing. Though apparently I did, since in my efforts to recall those early days, I searched the Cloud and found a Word document dated November 11, 2016, titled “Where Did The Future Go?” The document is a series of tiny poems that reminded me how Trump’s election sunk me into a depression—how his election not only reshaped my vision of the future, but seemed to steal the future altogether. I had always wanted to have children, but suddenly, having children felt unthinkable:

Biological Clock

Call me melodramatic 
But I have lost my desire to 
Bring new life into this world.   

I need to save room in this womb 
For fire.  

Better

My daughter is a Biden baby, borne during a period of relative stability that followed those crazy years of Trump, pandemic, and insurrection. Love persists, despite the erosion of democratic norms. There was bonding over our shared outrage, surely, but there was also attraction and romance and the joy of falling in love. And then, Biden won, and were vaccinated, and we had a wedding, and we traveled and met each other’s far-flung friends. We lived in a different world, perhaps, than the one we had imagined. In this new world, society could be halted by pandemic and the Capitol could be invaded, but we also owned beautiful ceramic dinnerware, handcrafted in Asheville, and honeymooned in Sicily, and had enough to celebrate that we bought imported Cremant d’Alsace Brut from Kermit Lynch by the case. We were enormously privileged. We wanted to have a baby.

And this baby was the best thing to ever happen to me, other than my husband (and my dog, who I always say opened my heart to motherhood). Being a mother is more than a series of tasks; becoming a mother is to be gifted a new perspective on a life. Some days that new perspective reveals the myriad threats to my child’s health and safety. Every day, that new perspective reveals the world through my child’s eyes.

On Tuesday night, I put myself to bed early. I couldn’t watch. I plugged my phone in across the bedroom, a departure from my usual bad habit. At 5:30, I woke up and checked my phone. My husband stirred. “Don’t check your phone,” I said. “I already did,” he told me. I felt both shocked and not. I felt dread, but also numb. It was our daughter’s first day of daycare. We had to leave by 7:15 to make it to Evanston from my aunt’s house in the western suburbs, where we have been staying at my aunt’s house. I needed to finish packing her bag and make her breakfast for the car ride. I needed to stretch and shower and dress. I needed to be my daughter’s mother.

I couldn’t cry or scream or mourn on Wednesday. My daughter happily toddled into her new classroom and began playing with toys. She didn’t scream until she realized we were leaving, and then I heard her scream at an unprecedented volume. My husband and I walked down the hallway and hugged each other near the entrance. My heart could only bear my child’s anguish on Wednesday.

When we got back to my aunt’s house on Wednesday night, the house that has been her home for the last three weeks, she stumbled in, drunk with exhaustion. “Gah!” she yelled, pointing at the turtle. “Go!” she yelled, pointing at the dog. One by one, she pointed at each of the familiar objects, falling on her hands every few steps. Her booster seat. Her toddler tower. Her aunt. Her dog. Her aunt’s dog. There was relief, and there was glee. Her world was unchanged. She could leave and she could come back. Home would be there.

Worse

I don’t even know where to begin. I am scared of so much. I am scared for my child and for other mothers and for other children. I am scared for the deportations and the yet-to-be-separated families. I am scared for the defunded schools and the destruction of education, and the banning of books, and the demonizing of trans kids. What safety will I be able to buy my child? How much will her safety cost? How much will it cost to get her vaccinated in Mexico and reproductive healthcare in Canada? And the cost, oh the enormous cost, to be borne by women and children in this country. How the economic stratification of this imperfect nation will intensify.

How to bear “the weight of giving this world to these perfect children” asked another friend. “They deserve so much better.”

I woke up on Thursday morning questioning our decision to uproot our lives. I felt a longing for California, the illusion of California’s geographic isolation and distance from the heart of the crazy. So much of our move to Illinois was for our daughter, but would she be better off in California than in this little strip of lakefront blue? I questioned my decision to quit my job and write—it feels risky to embark on non-lucrative pursuits during a time of uncertainty. It feels selfish to embark on something that might not make the world a better place for my daughter, at least not in a direct way. But considering the Mary Oliver of it all¹, it also feels right to do what I want to do, and for my daughter to have a mother who is doing what she wants to do. While she can. The stakes are so high.

1. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” - Mary Oliver, from The Summer’s Day