To Jane on her second birthday:
In a stubby board book I bought for you about the seasons, summer is described as the time when trees bear fruit. You point out apples on this page. These really come in the fall, which I plan to show you some October day, but the point still stands: There is a rhythm to life, and we are a part of it.
In fact,
people spend a lot of time trying to harmonize with that rhythm, measuring their lives in milestones: marriage by this age, a house by that, twice your salary (or more) saved by age 35, and so on and so forth, with different numbers appointed as goals for certain achievements or upward limits on particular necessities. It suggests there is a paint-by-numbers logic to life, and if you follow along, the completed picture adds up to happiness. I am theorizing here, because I sort of got it out
of order.
I was 24 when I found out I was pregnant with you. This came as a surprise to me and your dad, who had been married for just a year and, at the time, were living in a one-bedroom, yellow-walled English basement. We were saving for various things, and nudging other beads on the abacus along just so. And then: you.
We were as wondrously struck by the news as one would be by anything that could theoretically happen — a meteorite landing in your front yard,
or a nearby supernova briefly giving the impression of twin suns in the sky. I must have taken a dozen tests. We Googled “how to get an OB-GYN.” I was still on my mom’s insurance, which didn’t cover maternity care for dependents. We sorted it out — and thus began the unceremonious cutting of last cords, the growing-up-in-a-hurry, the scuttling of plans...
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