FOR THE FIRST year after Bethany’s death, Iris rose at six every morning and headed to the bench in a nearby park. It was where Bethany used to meet her friends before walking to middle school. There Iris would wait, sipping coffee from a thermos, until light filled the sky and the first few sleepy-headed students, those on the swim team or going in early for makeup tests, would straggle by, trudging under their backpacks. After she finished the coffee, she’d wander past the corner where the elementary kids waited with their moms and dads at the bus stop, the same corner where she had once chatted with her fellow parents. Then she’d return home and go back to bed, crying herself to sleep over the world that had been taken from her.
When Bethany died, Iris lost not only her beloved girl but also her social place. Motherhood, the only career she had ever really wanted, and that she had achieved at great cost, was torn away. She’d built close friendships with some of her neighbors who had children Bethany’s age—friendships based in part on shared experiences of parenting. The awkwardness that pervaded those relationships now reminded me, and worse, I know, reminded Iris, of the painful span when she’d been unable to conceive. Jimmy and Iris had tried for years before finally getting pregnant with Bethany, through IVF. Her miracle baby. I remembered the brave face Iris put on while all her friends had baby showers and bought strollers, and how some of them were disturbed by how urgently she wanted to be included in those conversations—just as they found her desire to join in on conversations about parenthood awkward now. Her longing marked her as out of step, uncomfortable.
The painful reminders extended to our whole family. Before the accident, Danny and Adam were often at Iris’s. Bethany babysat for her young cousins, and the two families had game nights and dinners together. Given the unlikelihood that she’d be able to have another child, Iris was thrilled that Bethany loved playing with her nephews. She told me once how much she hoped Bethany would stay close with Danny and Adam, and how glad she was that after she and Jimmy were gone, Bethany would still have family.
But that all changed after the accident. Charlie and Pam kept inviting Iris and Jimmy over for games, or to the boys’ soccer matches or recitals. And they would go, and Iris would put on a brave face and try to be present and happy. But often as not, she’d melt away from the room, seeking the shelter of the bathroom to cry in peace. Danny and Adam were young enough where they didn’t quite understand what had happened or why Auntie Iris never had them over anymore. To their credit, Pam and Charlie continued to try, but I once overheard Pam explaining to Danny: “Well, you know it is very sad what happened to Bethany. Auntie Iris is still feeling really bad. I don’t think we’ll be going over there as much.” Under her breath I heard her say, “She needs to pull herself together.” There was a touch of exasperation in her voice.
When she turned into the hallway and saw me, her face fell. I saw in her eyes that she realized how unkind she sounded. I gave her a little shake of my head, but I couldn’t really blame her. Pam’s own sister lived a couple hours away and also had two boys, nearly the same age as Danny and Adam. They’d started spending more and more time with her family. How could I find fault with that? Even though I knew Iris longed for closeness, she was too deeply mired in grief.
“The days are long, but the years are short.” Someone said that to me about parenthood when I first had kids, and it stayed with me. Long after they were grown, after long exhausting days and eyelash-whisper, blink-short years, I understood the truth of it.
And I grasped it again, differently and more deeply, when I saw Iris struggling with her loss. For her the equation has flipped, and she is aching through long years without Bethany, and remembering the too-short days she had with her, all too well.
Iris wasn’t the only one who’d had difficulty getting pregnant. During her fertility struggles I knew exactly what she was going through, because I had experienced it myself. But Iris never gave up. Unlike me.
In my case, after years of tracking my ovulation and having sex on schedule and praying every month, and feeling with rising exhilaration the swelling of my breasts and nausea, only to wake up with blood in my underwear, I had accepted the bitter fact that becoming a mom might not be in my future. But I wasn’t as honest as Iris. I pretended it didn’t bother me. I insisted I was focused on my career. But the truth was, I longed to be pregnant.
I was still working the ER then. One day a sixteen-year-old came in, pregnant and terrified. It was one of those cases you hear about: a kid who didn’t know what to do and so simply did nothing. No, her parents didn’t know. No, she hadn’t seen a doctor. No, she hadn’t made any plans. Maybe she should just marry her boyfriend? (As if that was somehow an answer.) No, she hadn’t talked about it with him. She was six months along and had hardly been eating, starving herself in the hopes of hiding her growing midsection. Almost passing out at school had finally scared her into getting some medical attention.
My hands trembled as I put my stethoscope on her belly. Shelly, the other nurse I was working with, shot me a peculiar glance. Later, she approached me in the break room as I poured myself a coffee.
“Are you all right?’ she said.
“Yes, of course.” My voice was sharp. “Why do you ask?”
Another nurse in the room spoke up. “Well, you have to admit, that was ridiculous. Silly girl. As if ignoring it would make everything all okay!” She paused, “Especially when so many would welcome a baby.” Her tone invited me to share, to acknowledge what apparently had been obvious.
Instead, I glared at her. “Are you assuming I want a child?”
She blushed. “Oh. Um …” she stammered. “It’s just that you seem upset.”
“Well, of course. Foolish girl.” I lifted my voice. “But I’m going to medical school. A baby isn’t in the picture.” A thought that had been half formed in the back of my brain had chosen that moment to burst forth.
Both of them cried out, “Medical school! Really? How exciting!”
Well, why not? If I was going to be denied pregnancy, something an idiotic sixteen-year-old girl could achieve, I was going to account for myself in a different way.
The word spread among the nursing staff, and suddenly, instead of asking when Cal and I were having kids, I was asked about my application. My colleagues—all women—saw me as striking a blow for our collective ability. Any talk of kids was forgotten as they helped me with my organic chemistry flashcards in the break room. The day after I got accepted, they all chipped in on a decorated cake. It was what we usually did when one of us had a baby, but instead of a baby name in icing, surrounded by pink and blue rattles, it featured a caduceus on either side of my name, the snakes climbing up white icing to the wings of Hermes. In a box somewhere I have a photo of that cake. In the same box is my acceptance letter and a beautiful congratulations card from Cal, also addressed to “Dr. Greene.”
Medical school didn’t feel like a defeat or a fallback plan. It felt like the place I was meant to be. When I got my grades at the end of the first semester, I cooked Cal a special dinner: steak and mushrooms, mashed potatoes. Chocolate cake. I even splurged on some expensive wine.
“It smells great in here,” he called as he walked in the door, and his eyes lit up when he spied me wearing my best red dress and makeup beside the candlelit table. He poured us each some merlot and lifted his glass. “To my wife, the doctor-to-be.” We clinked. I sipped.
Suddenly my stomach lurched like I was rounding the apex of a roller coaster. I bolted for the bathroom, spilling wine all over myself. Cal ran after me. He held my hair back as I retched, kneeling over the toilet.
I sat back, wiping my mouth. “So much for my fancy dinner.” I blinked at Cal.
He kissed my forehead. “You better get out of that dress before the stain sets.”
He helped me up, and I lifted my hair for him to assist with the zipper. I had to suck in my stomach for him to slide it below my ribs. “Seems like this dress has gotten tighter.” His voice was funny.
“I know. I had to struggle to zip it up.” I sighed. “But don’t worry, I won’t let a med school diet make me fat.” He managed to get the zipper open. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and gently turned me toward him.
His eyes were shining. He put one hand on my belly. “Frannie?”
It had never occurred to me that the exhaustion was anything other than study-induced sleep deprivation. Or that the occasional nausea was from anything other than too many cafeteria sandwiches. But all it took was one dinner, and Cal figured out what his nurse and aspiring-doctor wife had missed. I was pregnant. We did the math. I was probably six weeks along.
That night Cal fell asleep hugging me. I lay in the dark, eyes open. Overwhelmed. How could something I had wanted so badly finally happen when I had stopped hoping? I had a different ambition now, one I was in love with.
The next day Cal brought in the mail. He held up a notice from the medical school. “I guess you won’t be getting these anymore,” he said exuberantly. “You’ll have to call so they won’t bill us for next semester.”
I swallowed. “We’ll … have to see, I guess.”
His eyes flickered with a momentary recognition that maybe I was saying what I was, indeed, actually saying. “But you’re pregnant!” He hugged me, the doubt pushed down, replaced by a stubborn insistence on us both being deliriously happy.
I inhaled. “I’m not sure I want to give up med school.”
His whole body stiffened.
“What do you mean??”
“Just … I’d like to keep going. At least to try.”
He looked like I’d slapped him. “But we’ve been praying for this. You’ve wanted a baby for years. Now suddenly you don’t?” He blinked at me like I was crazy. “You’re having a child, for goodness sake. Our baby. Isn’t that better than anything?”
I buried my face in his chest. “But I’ve come so far. And what if something goes wrong?”
“What if the exhaustion makes something go wrong? Can you live with that?”
I turned away. He stood watching me, waiting for me to engage. Finally he lifted his shoulders and sighed in frustration. Then he went into the front room and closed the door.
I went back to school. As my pregnancy became obvious, I was more and more isolated. One young man accused me of “wasting” a spot in medical school since I was going to be a mom. But worst was the silence between Cal and me. We kept trying to talk, but every time I said how unfair it all seemed, all he heard was my willingness to risk our child. The tension between us deepened as my belly grew. Anger, confusion, and fear were growing within me as well.
One Friday as I was leaving class, I felt a tightening around my waist. Rectus abdominis, the Latin name for the muscle, immediately pinged in my brain. Then it twisted into stabbing pain, and I had to grip a chair. This was no twinge or baby kick. I swallowed my terror. Early labor. I was not quite six months along.
I made it to my car and drove in panic to the hospital. My former colleagues in the ER were happy to see me for the mere second before they realized I could barely stand.
The PA system crackled with the stat page for obstetrics as they whisked me into a room. I knew before the OB came running that I might lose the baby. At that moment, I felt like my life would end as well. Even if Cal could forgive me, I wasn’t sure I could forgive myself. A life of heartache unspooled in my imagination. I’d be too crushed to continue in school. Cal, bereft and angry and distant, would leave. I would lose my career, my family, and my marriage all at once. Desperate pleas rose, promises and bargains with God. I prayed with a fervor I didn’t know I had.
The way women respond when I tell this story is determined by their age. Women of my generation assume as a matter of course that I left med school, while women in their twenties and thirties are surprised that I was even forced to choose. Women in between, those around my daughter’s age, who at one time would have been outraged that I had to make a choice, fall reluctantly into a middle ground. As they have gotten older and had kids and come to know the limits of energy and time and attention and money, they seem mainly regretful for me. They understand that there are dilemmas for which there are no easy answers and that sometimes life imposes choices, either one sacrifice or another. But sacrifices, nonetheless.
In the ER that afternoon, Cal came running. The fear and love and terror on his face mirrored my own. I bawled like a child, snot streaming down my nose. He held me till the drugs kicked in. By some miracle, the contractions stopped. The baby that was Charlie quieted. The next thing I remember is opening my eyes to see Cal asleep, slumped in a chair next to the bed. He lifted his eyes when he felt my gaze, and took my hand.
I was on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy.
The years are short but the days are long.
The demands of parenthood felt endless. A daily tornado of stress, responsibility, conflict, argument, sarcasm, laughter, playfulness, mess. The struggles to get them out of bed and to school, worries about friends and then romances and then sex and jobs and driving—oh God, teenagers driving. Some days I arrived at work feeling simultaneously like I’d just run a marathon, cried my eyes out at a funeral, and had a shouting match with a hostile neighbor: physically and emotionally spent.
And then they left.
The day Charlie left for college was it for me. I stood in his empty bedroom, marooned among the discarded posters and old books, the flotsam of childhood, and bit my lip. Iris was in her room, getting ready to spend her last summer at music camp. Both of my children would be far away. Full of tears and love and nostalgia, I crossed the hall and opened her bedroom door to ask her if she wanted to go out for coffee or shopping.
“Mom!” she yelled as she pushed her boyfriend off her, mortified and embarrassed.
I think of that day often when I remember Bethany, and how Iris didn’t get to wrangle with her through the stop–start, herky-jerky dance of growing up. She never lived through the leave-taking and letting-go, seeing one’s child move into adulthood. Of knowing you’ve done your job and raised them, but also that they will be home at Thanksgiving. Of being able to see an empty bedroom through the golden filter of nostalgia.
Iris cannot indulge herself in a warm bath of memories. She is too easily drowned.