mommy is Missing a Capital “M”

September 1, 2009

Of course I knew there would be a baby. The baby was in the middle of everything, tiny and oblivious. And then afterward, I knew that she was perfectly healthy and had dark hair, that she was barely older than my baby, and that her name was Lila Jen.

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But the first time I heard, my own morning sickness started to feel like stomach flu. "Aren't you crazy?” I asked. “You're nuts!”

“Yeah, it's crazy. I didn't think we could even _get_ pregnant. The high-risk OB says I'm the highest-risk case he's seen.”

Jen's chances of miscarrying were huge. It was likely that she'd get pre-eclamptic--that her blood pressure would skyrocket, and the baby would be born severely prematurely, and possibly die. But the doctors had always issued dire warnings to Jen. Her kidney condition never lived up to their fears, so why should it start now?

And everything was going great, thank you very much. Now she was 28 weeks pregnant, and mama and baby were fine. Soon, she'd reached 32 weeks and the high-risk OB said that since the pregnancy was going so well, Jen might not need to see him anymore. Then she was 34 weeks along. We talked on the phone while I made dinner. “You wouldn't recognize me, I'm so huge!” she said. “Neal says I've reached another dimension. I've never even been _able_ to gain weight before!"

I asked her to send me a picture.

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My baby was growing too. I was distracted by kicks in the ribs, all the things we had to do, the beautiful summer weather. The call from Deb, Jen's older sister, came out of the blue, on a breezy Sunday in June. “Jen had a beautiful little girl on Thursday. Jen didn't make it.”

Jeff stayed with me as I sat and sobbed. “When will Mama feel better?” Ben asked.

I didn't tell Ben, but it might never go away, this horrible feeling in my belly that sat uncomfortably close to the new life wriggling alongside it. I sobbed at the craziness of Neal with his new little Lila, who didn't have a mama. Lila was so perfectly healthy that she didn't even need oxygen after her emergency C-section at 36 weeks. And Jen was...dead. My awake-nightmares at one a.m. kept me up for hours.

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It's been two years now--long enough to feel the way terrible pain can flare up and flicker, but still keep burning in between. Sometimes it's like being kicked in the gut, and sometimes it's just noticing.

So I didn't really know how it would be to see this baby for the first time. I didn't know how much I would love her at the very second we met, or how much my body would ache for her right when I saw her peeping out from between her daddy's legs, or how much I would cry.

Lila is going to grow up with her mother's crooked smile, and her father's tenderness and sense of humor, and she will charm everyone with her insane and personal cuteness. She won't totally get why all these older people in her life get so emotionally vulnerable and teary when they're around her. She's going to think that we all just wear our hearts on our sleeves.

Lila calls Neal, "Daddy Neal-io Papa-Dog," in the most adorable tiny voice. She sizes people up in about thirty seconds, and after that, when you pass muster, she graces you with her smile and everything else. The thing was, it didn't matter--even if she had scowled and pushed me away, I couldn't possibly not adore Jen's baby.

As it turned out, she reached for me when I asked her if I could pick her up. And my heart melted entirely. "I love you, Lila Jen," I said. She stared at my tears. She asked me where my necklace was attached. She called me "mommy" all week. (She calls all women that. And if there are two women in the room, the second arrival is, "the other mommy.") The complexity of this noun was like a huge, crazy echo every time that little voice addressed me.

"Pick me up, mommy!" she would say, and I could only stop instantly to pick her up. Even though I know she knows I'm not Mommy, just one of the mommies. Even though she probably won't remember me next time I see her. Especially because her Mommy is somebody she will never meet, but whom I knew so well.

The unfairness of that last is what sent me running into the field of goldenrod last night, hurting and sobbing. I ran until my heart was pounding, and it hurt so bad, because Jen is gone, and never held her baby girl, and I was breathless and crying and knew that nobody would ever understand.

And then quickly, when the sky was dimming and the path tipped up, I stopped running. It was so chilly I had to hug myself, and I had goosebumps. A bird called, and someone laughed far away. I could see everything, hear everything, smell the wet dewy grass, feel large amounts of blood coursing through my body, warm inside. It's crazy, the gift that Jen could give me, in the paradox of her death, and her dainty toddling daughter, and my confusion and fear of mortality. In this moment of rosy sunset, I was so incredibly ALIVE.

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This morning, Lila and Neal had to go, and it was naptime, and Lila was all rambunctious. At the last moment, she melted into my chest and said, "I want to stay with mommy!"

I kissed her dreadlocked curls and said, "I hope you visit again soon, Lila." Her papa buckled her in. My own baby climbed into my arms, and laid his head on my chest.

Lila's little face was there in the window, and then in a few seconds, they were gone.