Through a Glass Darkly

The other day at bedtime, T asked his nightly "good night" question, "Mommy, can you tell me a story of when I was little or you were little?"

The conundrum is I know very little about "when he was little." How many times can I tell him that he was afraid of the pit toilet and so would use the woods and his uncle would yell at him? Or that he and his brothers would play hide and seek by hiding in the trees, but he was too little to climb the trees so he was always the seeker? Or that one time there was a pot of food heating over the fire and no adults around and he tried to see what was cooking and tipped the pot over and the hot food spilled onto the ground and his foot, and the entire top of his foot blistered and it hurt and he cried and no one hugged him or kissed it all better? He has a heck of a scar, so I know it was bad.

But that's all I know.

It's like this child stepped through a portal at the age of four and everything before then is just blank.

I don't know what he was like when he was a baby. I don't know any stories of cute things he said or did. I don't know when he learned to walk or what his first word was or when he started talking. I don't even know what day he was born, or at what time.

Even though I wasn't around yet, I can tell you that my older sister learned how to walk at seven months and was such an escape artist that my mother had to put bells on her shoes to know when she was on the move.

I remember being woken in the middle of the night to be taken to Grandma's house when my brother was on his way. And the next morning my grandmother getting a phone call and relaying the news to my sister and me that "It's a boy!" and we howled in disappointment. And then the next bit of information, "And he has red hair!" And we howled again. This red-headed brother of mine has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in car and home repairs over the years. He is rock solid there when we need him. I'm sorry I howled. If I had it to do over again I would dance with joy.


I can tell you that my little sister had a yellow polka-dot bikini when she was three, which she called a "bitini" and that she ate Ruffles "chip-o-chips." And she arrived four weeks early and when they finally let her come home, she was crying her lungs out and my then three-year-old brother looked at her in shock and exclaimed, "Her has no teeth!"


I can tell you that I waited anxiously for 20 hours for the news that my oldest niece had finally arrived and that my sister pushed for two hours before the doctor finally figured out that the baby's head was jammed up against a bone and was never going to come out without medical intervention. I remember going to the hospital and seeing her for the first time. I remember holding a conversation with her at 18 months and thinking, "She's 18 months old and I'm carrying on a conversation with her!' (Yes, she went on to graduate from an Ivy League college.) I remember with clarity the day my sister brought her in the door, put her down on her feet on the floor, and she walked clear across the living room. She had learned how to walk that day and never crawled again. I remember her toddling through the mall with us and I was terrified she would fall and hit her head on the concrete, as she walked that wobbly toddler walk.

I was there when my nephew was born and I remember the surprise of him being a boy and the grayness of him until he sucked in a long breath of air before exhaling in a long wail. And then he was pink.

I remember my middle niece never wanting to cuddle with me, but one day when she was two-and-a-half, she walked through the door with a brand new book, The Pout-Pout Fish, handed it to me, and curled up in the rocker with me while I read it to her. We have photos to document the occasion.

I remember my youngest niece being born six weeks too early -- had to outdo her mother apparently -- and how worried we were for her as she breathed with the help of a CPAP machine in the NICU. And how strong she is now at three -- skiing faster than me even. We have a video of her skiing straight down from the lift at Sunapee and her mother yelling, "TURN!" and she finally does and then she giggles, knowing that she was bad, but man, it was fun to ski that fast.

I even remember the day YSD was born. I remember the email from her father, now Hubs, with the announcement of her arrival in the wee hours of that morning and how tired he was and that he would be out for a few days. I first saw her at the track when she was a year old and my first thought was, "Ooh, she got her father's nose, the poor thing." She's grown into it and she's quite pretty. Think a blonde Sarah Bareillis. And all the women were oohing and ah-ing over her and vying to hold her and I was thinking, "That's my baby," for reasons I don't know -- but I do have this weird somehow knowing the future thing, and she did end up being my stepbaby four years later. But I finally got to hold her when Hubs's section of the mile went off and I was afraid she would cry seeing her father run away, so I kept turning to show her "There's Daddy! Look, here he comes again!" Eight times around on a 200-meter track for a mile. At a year old, separation anxiety should be in full swing, but she was completely content to be in my arms while Daddy ran circles around us.

And of course there are hours and hours of video of her and OSD from their earliest days home through toddler-hood and beyond.

But of the pre-four-year-old years of this child, my own, I know nothing. He beamed aboard this family's starship at three feet tall and weighing 32 pounds, leaving his entire past a mystery. A hole where there should be stories and memories and photos.

So on this day when we celebrate Hubs seeing his youngest daughter arrive in this world, and has a song about all the funny things she did as a toddler -- "the way you say 'hi Daddy' when I come home," I weep.

I know I'm supposed to see the glass as half full. I know that his birth mother only got the first three and  three-quarter years of his life and I get the rest of it. I know that I should be happy for what I have.

But I feel sad.

When he asked me to tell me a story that night, I decided to use it as an opportunity to tell an attachment-building "claiming"story. To tell him what I would have done if he were my baby. "If you were my baby, I would have rocked you and fed you when you were hungry and tickled your belly and laughed when you laughed and held onto your fingers while you practiced walking and then one day you would have walked all on our own and I would have held out my hands and you would have walked right into my arms."

And he said to me, "Why didn't you come get me when I was a baby?"

Oh my baby. I wish I had known you when you were a baby.