WE AGREED ON A CAFE in the middle of the Fitzroy Gardens. It was spring or summer, I don’t remember, but the day was perfect. I was late—the plane, the bus, a long walk.
We were texting one another like two friends.
Sorry, longer walk than I thought.
The reply: Don’t fret, see you soon.
So normal.
So normal. But in the approaching days, my body had set out on its own journey. I had passed through menopause in the intervening years, but now I had all the signs of ovulation: an ache on that right side, the coveted egg white, and then that heaviness in my pelvis, as if preparing for new life.
My body remembers. It remembers everything.
Finally, I got through the gardens, the leaves on those lovely elms, the green grass. I saw her standing at the cafe doors and knew her, although I didn’t have a recent photograph and hadn’t asked for one. When we embraced, when we crossed that enormous space, I felt her slight shoulders and they were shaking. I realised she was nervous.
Oh God, she was nervous. I had done wrong to her, my child, and she was nervous. The cost. But more than that, I realised, here was a person, with a sense of humour and a preference for honesty and a winning smile, her own. I realised here was a person and it was enough.
I had read so many stories of mothers reconnecting with their children. I expected it would be of the nature of epiphany. It was not. There was a long rough road ahead, given where we’d started, and no guarantee of anything at all. It was not of the nature of epiphany. But it was of the nature of something good and right in the world. And it was enough for the rest of life.