Maybe the missing in me sent off a scent or a signal. Our friends, and Bill’s siblings and mine, were generous with their kids. They always made it happen if I suggested a visit or an outing. Or maybe they were grateful for any small break from the constant demand of being a parent.
By the early nineties, with the birth of Cris’s second girl, Devin, Bill and I had thirteen nieces and nephews between us. Even though I’d turned away from Amy and her boy, I got plenty of baby holding and child playing. Most of our friends had kids. Bill and I were full-force fun with them, giving them the special treatment that two people with no children of their own can give.
“The kids love you guys,” the parents said. “You’re naturals. You should have your own.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We love kids.” I laughed off their words, negated the mothering way in me. What we did for a few hours or a weekend, these parents did for their whole lives. It seemed false to claim that I could be good at something I didn’t know.
Leanne was especially generous in sharing Annilee and Shannon with me. She called whenever an event would bring her and the girls near Portland. She invited me to spend time with her family in Condon and always said yes when, every four or five months, I asked to have the girls for a weekend.
On those weekends I met them in Hood River, midway between Condon and Portland. In the McDonald’s parking lot, Leanne hugged her girls goodbye while I put their bags in the trunk. “Have fun,” she said. “Be good.”
We got in the car. Leanne stood in the parking lot and watched us drive away. “Roll down your windows,” I said to the girls. “Wave goodbye to your mom.” We waved at Leanne. She was there, waving back.
For all the time I’d spent planning and picking dates and talking with Bill about my excitement, I hadn’t thought about what it meant for a mother to send her children off to the city with me. On that first weekend, the girls were just five and seven years old. When I lost sight of Leanne in the rearview mirror, it hit me. She was trusting me with them.
At the stop sign, I looked both ways, once, twice, three times, before proceeding onto the road.
On the freeway, I asked the girls questions about what they wanted to do, told them the plans Bill and I had for the weekend. Spaghetti tonight and Fuddruckers tomorrow, games and putt-putt golf and whatever else they wanted.
With every mile I talked faster, my palms dampened against the steering wheel, and my breath went high up in my chest. We were in this tin can of a car, trucks speeding by, the deep Columbia next to us, and we were going to the city where there were strangers.
I drove slower than normal. Looked in the rearview mirror, side view, ahead, rearview, side view, ahead.
Their lives were in my hands.
Throughout the weekend, I stayed close with my arms out if they ran too fast or climbed too high, wanting them to have the fun of running fast and climbing high but ready for any slip or tumble. I looked both ways crossing streets, once, twice, three times, and held hands tight. At night, I woke, once, twice, three times. I went to the guest room, smoothed their covers, and watched them breathe.
I made a promise to myself. I would protect them always. These girls and all the children in my life. I wouldn’t let anything go wrong, whether they were with me or not. If I wouldn’t have children of my own, I would do whatever I could to keep the children of my family and of my friends safe.
When the girls were with us, we became a temporary family. At a grocery store, the cashier asked the girls if their mother (me!) would let them have a treat. I held the joy of his mistake for a moment. But before they could answer, I said, “Oh, these are my nieces.” Because the girls might think it strange if I pretended they were mine.
“Well, they look like you,” the cashier said.
Dark hair, dark hair, dark hair.
Their blue eyes.
My dark eyes.
These girls were not mine.
Even so, when we sat on the couch and Annilee leaned up against me, when Shannon held my hand, I wanted it to be true.
On one of these weekends, the girls ate their spaghetti at the glass-topped table with straight backs and careful hands.
“Why are you so quiet?” My voice held the tease of the playing and running and laughing we’d been doing all afternoon.
“Mom told us to make sure we were good,” they said. “Especially to make sure we don’t spill on your white carpet.”
It surprised me that my sister saw me this way, or saw my house as one that required special behavior. Was this a story about a childless woman?
I wouldn’t have cared. I might have had precious things, but I would have spilled sauce on top of whatever they spilled, to show them I didn’t care. Rubbed it in, danced on it, made a game of it.
I thought I’d be a good mother. Kind and fun, loving and patient.
But still. No mother could always be this.
Even though these weekends were full of fun and excitement, there were times when I felt the every-watchful-moment exhaustion. The need to keep them safe and contented, entertained and fed, hair-brushed and tooth-brushed and hydrated. Sometimes I felt tired of these needing children. How did other women do this with no end? How had Mom done it with five kids?
When I was a girl, the chaos filled our big house: TV up loud, toys and papers and dust, Cris crying, us kids whining that we were bored or bickering over a card game or space on the sofa or for no reason at all.
Sometimes Mom yelled at us to stop, stop, stop. Be quiet. She said it again and again, and we kept going. Poking and giggling, picking and pushing, screaming and crying. And Mom grew fierce. She screamed. She beat the counter with the rubber spatula, reminding us of its sting on our bare butts. We scattered like quail caught out on the road.
At other times, in the middle of our mess and demand and childish meanness, she went silent. She walked to the living room window like we weren’t even there, put her folded arms on the windowpane and rested her head on the angle of her forearms, and looked off toward town or the sky, or somewhere beyond us. It was like she was looking toward another possible life, a life she missed, dreams that didn’t include us.
Now, with these needy child-guests in my house, my temporary family, I questioned my own capacity. Maybe I was where I wanted to be: a woman with other people’s children. Maybe I was living the kind of life Mom sometimes imagined in her silent moments at that window.
At the end of those weekends, I brought the children back safe. Their arms and legs, their fine skin, bright hearts. I gave them back to their mother, put their bags back in her car, gave hugs goodbye, and got in my own car.
I felt a mixture of sadness and relief. I had to let them go and I would miss them. But I was on my own again. I breathed a breath of relief as I shut my door and pulled out of the parking lot. I rolled down my window and waved at them, waved until they were out of sight. Then I drove home with the wind coming in, the stereo on loud.