Signs of Life (15 page)

On a side note, today Amy Grant and Vince Gill were on
Oprah
. In the middle of their interview, Oprah pulled out Amy Grant’s book
Mosaic
. As Oprah explained,
Mosiac
is general
musings about Amy Grant’s own life authored by Amy Grant. It’s about her life as an artist, a mom, a wife, raising her children and Vince’s children and their children together. The excerpt that Oprah read out loud was about when Amy was telling Vince something and she said his response really showed her that he “understood.” Then he said to her that he may not always understand her, but he “welcomes her and everything she brings to the table.” As you can imagine, this only spurred a deep-seated hate for Amy Grant that I never knew I had. Instantly I became furious. I was furious that she had published a book about her life, her life with twenty Grammys and her huge house and how she “struggled” and blah, blah, blah. I was pissed that Amy Grant was wildly successful and made it look so effortless. And that scene that Oprah read, how lame. I was so mad at Vince Gill and Amy Grant because they looked like they really did love each other, and their perfect kids from their perfect two-parent home, and everything seems to fit so well together.

I have to stop getting angry at celebrities I’ve never met. It’s not healthy.

My Fairy Mom Godmother lies next to me on my bed. I say all of this to her. She has her back to me as I relay the details of this
Oprah
episode, but once I finish she turns so she stares at the ceiling with me. She is in her pajamas, which consist of an extra-large T-shirt that says
RACHEL’S NIGHT UNDER THE STARS, NOV. 3, 1988,
from one of her kid’s friend’s bat mitzvahs, and a large pair of sweatpants. She yawns widely and says, “If you find yourself yelling at random famous people on television, that’s okay. They don’t care that you suddenly hate them. And you only hate them because they have something you want. In fact, everyone has something you want. So go ahead, yell at the television. It’s only because you don’t have anyone else to yell at.” She rolls back over. She isn’t the type that is interested in long,
drawn-out, touchy-feely conversations. I stare at the ceiling, considering her advice.

“And besides,” she says, looking up from her pillow, “other than that Christmas album, what is that woman really good for anyway?”

I look at the clock and turn out the light.

•  •  •

Recently I have been leaving the house more and more during the day. Sometimes I take Kai with me, and sometimes Maggie will come over and watch Kai and I’ll go solo. My outings have included Kroger, Target, and the mall. As a postpartum mom, I am not quite back into my prepregnancy jeans (“not quite back” is a gross understatement of the truth), and I don’t wear fitted shirts because my stomach still has a little bulge to it. So I leave the house in the same thing that I wear around the house—black stretch pants, running shoes or slip-ons, a sweatshirt or some sort of baggy pullover top. Everywhere I go during the day I see women wearing almost the exact same outfit as me. The black stretch pants, the running shoes, the messy hair tied back. All of us look as if we have just come from the gym, but none of us has actually come from the gym because none of us has had time to go to the gym. We all look like this because we are all aware that there is only a small window of time to go to the grocery store, the post office, the bank, and so on, before our children completely flip out. There is no time to brush hair, put together an outfit, put on makeup, or any of these other commodities that we used to take for granted. The other day I saw a woman walking her two Labradors with a baby in her Baby-Björn strapped to the front of her in forty-degree weather. I said
something about how she looked like she had a lot to handle. She shrugged and said, “You do what you need to do to make it work.”

The more contact I make with other mothers, the more I realize I’m not the only one who is trying to balance something unbalanceable. The challenges of my days seem monstrous. Getting a baby and two dogs loaded into the car, remembering the leashes, the food, the collars, the stroller, the extra outfits, the diaper bag, my purse, cell phone, and car keys all while the dogs bark and Kai screams and I try to carry three other bags out the door—all this just for one night at my parents’ house. Or in the middle of the night, nursing Kai, then rocking him to sleep, then an hour later he finally nods off and then poops, which goes through his diaper, pajamas, blanket, bassinet mattress cover, all the way through to the plastic bassinet mattress. I only sleep in three-hour increments max, and usually when he sleeps during the day I have to do things like empty the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry, shower, urinate, put on deodorant, get dressed, or clean up the kitchen. All of this, however, is strikingly similar to the lives of women everywhere—only many of those women do what I do with two, three, four, or five children. “One kid and two dogs,” I can hear a stressed-out housewife say. “Gimme a break. I could do that in my sleep.” And it’s true.

Now I am a part of this club of motherhood. I know what it feels like to wear the same outfit for three days straight. I know what it feels like to not run a brush through my hair for an entire week. A few days ago around five o’clock in the afternoon, I realized I hadn’t brushed my teeth all day and I couldn’t remember if I had brushed them the night before. But as my tongue grazed across my bumpy front teeth, I realized I really didn’t care. I
was completely indifferent to my own personal hygiene. But this is not a unique feeling. I am not different from the average mother because I do not have a husband.

You do what you have to do to make it work. That’s the anthem. The weeks before Kai was born I panicked about having the dogs and a newborn. How would I make all of this work? How would I be able to handle the dogs and all of their demands and take care of a baby who couldn’t possibly come in second? But now that we’re all here, somehow we make it happen. My friends and family come over all the time to hold Kai while I walk Louise and Bug, and although we’re still not perfect, we still try as often as we can. It’s not always pretty, but we try to make it work.

“You’re going to surprise yourself,” my Fairy Mom Godmother says from across the room. She is slouched in the rocking chair with one foot on the ottoman and one foot on the floor. “You’ll figure out ways to do things that you never thought possible.” I can only hope she is right.

•  •  •

Everyone comes to town for Thanksgiving. My parents, Hales, Deedee, Ashley, Chris, Ads and Ellie, Moo and Dubs. We call David “Dubs” because when Moo was in college, before she started dating him, she had a crush on him and referred to him as “D.W.” (his initials) to her friends. After they had been dating a while, she confessed that she had a code name for him and she sort of resurrected D.W. We (my brother mostly) shortened it to D-Dubs and then just Dubs. The nickname fits him perfectly. He’s a tall guy with broad shoulders and red hair. He’s from Canada and he’s Jewish, so as a red-headed Jewish Canadian, he’s pretty unique. “David” just doesn’t suit him. Also,
Dubs is kind of an oaf. He can be clumsy and sometimes he says the wrong things without thinking. The best part about Dubs is that he thinks he is hilarious. He is always telling us about the latest “bit” he’s been working on. Recently he told us aboot (about, Canadian style) his theory that only when people are flying on airplanes do they enjoy tomato juice and Sudoku, but never when they’re on the ground. “I mean, right, nobody ever orders tomato juice in a restaurant or a bar. But on planes it’s so popular!” Dubs is a good person to have around during potentially painful holidays. He either makes us laugh because he tries to lighten the mood, or he tries to be serious and say something sentimental, which usually comes out wrong, which makes us laugh harder.

This is my first major holiday without Josh. I am relieved my family is all here, but surprisingly the day itself hasn’t seemed to stress me out. Something else, however, has been sitting like a rock in my stomach. I’ve been consumed in thinking about one teeny-tiny moment that may rip me to pieces: saying grace.

Every Thanksgiving since the history of our family, my dad has said grace. We are not a grace or prayer-at-dinnertime family throughout the year, but we always say it at Thanksgiving. My dad always says it. I don’t know how it started that he was the grace-sayer, but in previous years, it has always been him. He usually says something short but very touching. Something like “Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful table of food, but thank you more for the people surrounding it. Bless those who are not here to join us. Amen.” While he says it we all bow our heads, and although I don’t know this for a fact, I bet everyone in my family closes their eyes. We have never been a very religious family. Our church experience mostly consisted of playing tic-tac-toe and hangman on the Steeple Notes during the service. Traditional prayers have never really been our thing. But
when my dad bows his head at Thanksgiving dinner, we stop and listen. That’s the kind of grace it is; even if you don’t believe in anything, you close your eyes during my dad’s grace. Most times my dad gets choked up after saying grace. Although we never press him on it, we all know why. He cries because he really is thankful for the people at the table. As a dad, there is nothing, literally
nothing
, in the world as wonderful as having all four of his adult children in the same place.

But this year I can’t imagine hearing my dad say grace. I’ve worried about it for weeks. I know he won’t be able to get through it. I can’t imagine what he would say. What kind of thanking can you do when your daughter has been turned widow and mother in a few short months? There is a newborn baby and lost husband. How can you articulate a Thanksgiving prayer around that?

The other element is, it is so hard to watch my dad struggle. All my life, my dad has been the strongest, toughest, smartest guy in the world. He has two artificial hips and plays hockey three times a week. At fifty, he took up the hobby of windsurfing on Lake Michigan. He always knows the answer to every question. All of the children in our family know this. If your car doesn’t start, you call dad. If your check bounces, you call dad. If you’re stuck in traffic on I-75 and you don’t have a map of the back roads (even though Dad told you to put one in your car), you can call him and he’ll safely guide you home.

He has spent thirty years doing everything in his power to protect his children from the torturous forces of the world. He has done everything to give us a happy and healthy life. He has done things I’ll never even know. But tonight, he can’t say grace because it will remind him that he, my father, is not enough to protect his children. Now he has to look at me and admit he has no answers. He can’t make a phone call, he can’t pay a bill, and
he can’t wrestle anyone to the ground. So no, he can’t say grace. Because for the first time in his life he doesn’t know what to say to one of his children.

We all sit down at the table. As everyone sits down, it starts to get quiet. Minutes before, there had been three different conversations going on, but when we pull our seats out from the table the air in the room seems to deaden the chatter. Suddenly we have nothing to say, we’re all just waiting to get through the moment. In the awkward silence I have a flash that I should’ve just talked to my dad about it earlier, but I knew a conversation about it would be worse than enduring it. So I don’t say anything. My dad doesn’t make a move. My mom says something like “Everything looks great, guys,” but no one picks up their fork. I can feel my throat tighten. I can sense everyone else’s throat tighten too.

Finally, someone says through a mumble, “Should we say a prayer?” and at the same time someone wants to refill her glass with water and the pitcher is sitting by Dubs, so she says, “Can someone pass the water? Dubs, hey Dubs …” Dubs, however, hears these two lines at the same time and thinks he is being asked to say the prayer, in response to which he puts his head down and turns bright red. After figuring out that he is not being asked to say the prayer, we all burst into laughter at the thought of Dubs, the Canadian Jew, saying a prayer at Thanksgiving. And then Dubs of course grabs the awkward moment and turns it into comedy. He launches into an amalgamation of all of the prayers that he would have said. “Oh, baby Jesus,” he begins. “Thank you, God, for the food, the baby Jesus.” We eat.

Later that night some time after eleven o’clock, I have another strange experience. I have just put Kai down after his last feeding. I am the only one awake and the whole house is dark. I go into the bathroom (which I only do twice a day), and on my
way out, I go to turn the light out. I pull the switch down, but only one light goes out and the second light stays on. I turn it on and off again. Same thing. One light stays on. Immediately, an odd person zips into my brain.

When Josh’s grandma Margaret was at home with hospice in February, there was a nurse named Nancy who was there most of the time. Nancy the nurse never really did anything medical—there was another nurse who was in charge of that stuff. Nancy would just float around the house and talk to people and tell her stories. I found Nancy to be incredibly irritating. I know it sounds horrible that I would find a hospice nurse irritating, but the woman drove me nuts. She basically made herself a self-proclaimed member of Margaret’s family. Once she found out I was pregnant, she told everyone about it. I remember Josh calling me from Margaret’s house and telling me that Nancy the nurse told Mrs. Mansfield—the neighborhood mom who is basically the walking version of
Us Weekly
for southeastern Michigan—that I was pregnant. When Margaret passed, I remember we all stood around her in a circle and held hands while her minister said a prayer. It was me, Ashley, Deedee, Mary (Deedee’s sister), Mary’s sons David and Scott, Chris, the minister, and Nancy the nurse. Nancy was sobbing.

In the aftermath of Margaret’s death, I knew that I could always make Josh laugh by bringing up my annoyance with Nancy the nurse. He thought it was hilarious that I became so fed up with her. “The burial plot looks really nice, Josh,” I said to him on the ride home from the cemetery. A few of us had stayed to watch Margaret’s casket placed. It was a gray February day. “Yeah,” he said quietly, staring at the road. I could tell he was having a rough time. “I just wish Nancy the nurse could have been there,” I said. I saw a smile creep across his face.