DIED 2016
I HAD MY LAST baby at forty-two, having just moved to a big house in the middle of nowhere. While everyone in the family got a life, I remained depressed and friendless through my pregnancy. Sure, the birth of my daughter was a brief pick-me-up; then I was desperate for a sitter. The headline BEAUTIFUL BLOND BABY on my sign on the grocery store bulletin board drew the attention of a mother with just such an infant in her cart. She was a tall drink of water, a chatty Texas blonde.
And so the beautiful blond babies became a pair, cared for by the tall drink of water, who was full of pep and enthusiasm for talking toys and cut-up apples and playground slides, even after she got pregnant with her second child. She read them Christian storybooks featuring a cast of vegetables and took them down the street to a playgroup at the church. Her daughter, already tall and skinny at three, began to show a gift for mischief. Unmaking all the beds to build a fort. Sprinkling talcum powder over a second-floor railing to make it snow. Doing gymnastics on the shower curtain rod of a newly renovated bathroom.
By the time the girls were eleven, both of us had moved away and my relationship with this mom was down to mass messages and holiday portraits. Then we received an email sent from a hospital waiting room. She is wearing a bandanna now most of the time, even at home. When she takes it off she looks like a little bird. It is like she is reverting back to being a baby, when no one could see her hairs except me and John. If she will allow it, I will get her a haircut after her CT at the hospital salon. But she may just want to go home.
Five years of treatment followed, with just a few short interludes of hope. Though she never really got to be a teenager, she died at sixteen. After a few dark, empty months, her mother returned to babysitting, making up energetic outdoor games and doing puzzles with the preschoolers of her neighborhood. She doesn’t send out so many mailings anymore, but on last year’s Christmas card, her son, now fourteen, holds up a photo of his sister, who looks like a little bird. My own beautiful baby, no longer so blond, brought it in from the mailbox, eyes shining.