So Close

One minute she was there: playing by the open door of the dress shop. My mother and I were trying on clothes.We had instructed my then two year-old daughter, blonde hair gone curly from Floridian humidity, to "stay put." I was half-listening behind the louvered dressing room door.


A few seconds later, an instinctual warning tugged at my heart. I peeked out. She was gone.


"KATHERINE!" I shouted. I leaped to the door and searched up and down the sidewalk and out into the street with frenzied laser-beam eyes. I took in a cream-colored station wagon, sidling down the block, slowly, shark-like, as if cruising for prey. I saw my little daughter, trundling away, holding a strange woman's hand.


"STOP!" I bellowed. "THAT'S MY DAUGHTER!" I bounded up to the woman, heart hammering.


"Oh?" she said. "I was trying to help her find her mommy."


I knew and I didn't know how close we'd come. 


"I'm her mommy. I was in that shop," I pointed, trembling. "Right there."


I picked up my daughter and turned away. I knew. I didn't speak another word to the woman, not a single stuttered thank-you, not an accusation. I turned around once, saw the cream-colored station wagon cruise up to this stranger who had had my daughter's hand in hers. A door opened, the woman got in, the car drove off.


"What happened?" I asked Katherine. I shuddered with guilt.


"She gave me some taffy," Katherine answered. 


We had the talk about never EVER EVER going anywhere with anyone, about never EVER taking candy from strangers. But, the truth was, if my mother's watchful heart had skipped a single beat, she would have been gone.


How could a mother EVER live with that?


Hours later, a blurry slow motion image of the cream-colored station wagon driving slowly by re-played itself in my mind. A glint of sunshine obscured the driver's face. In the flood of feelings - terror and guilt and relief -  it hadn't occurred to me to call the police. I had been consumed with my daughter's safety. What about the other children? 


I'm haunted still.

Finding a Place in the Sun

Following a lengthy operation to repair our 6 month-old baby daughter's broken heart, her dad and I took her to my parents' new place in Florida - a dock's length away from the ocean. We needed to rest, to let half a year's anxiety and vigilance drain away. I had slept on the floor by her crib, dropped heart medicine into her mouth like a mother bird, my senses attuned to the slightest change in her breathing. We hadn't even dared to hope.

Within days of luxuriating in balmy sunshine Katherine's previously gaunt little face with its pale bluish tinge blossomed into bountiful cheeks flushed with healthy pink color - the sort of cheeks that elicited exclamations of delight from strangers in supermarkets.

I held my daughter against my heart as we basked like sea animals in the pool. Her blue eyes sparkled under the yellow sunflower of a sun hat. She grew chins. She sprouted a tooth.

"I don't think that baby's mother would want her to be in the pool," a dour observer remarked.

"I am the baby's mother, and she loves it!" I said, twirling my daughter like a baby seal.

Her dad and I lay on the beach while Katherine sat beneath a beach umbrella gumming rattles and grinning.

At 11th months old, she wobbled in her grandparents' living room from chair to coffee table to couch. She raced in circles on the springy spongy green turf a year later. We picked strawberries with my father. 

When my parents gave endless streams of cocktail parties, Katherine hid beneath the square stone coffee table in a little blue smocked dress and red sandals, reached a hand up to filch cooked shrimp.

"Hurry up! Scat! Go!" she ordered, when my mother lingered too long saying good-bye.

Once, when her brother Will was about 4, we drove down from Vermont. To distract her brother, Katherine read the entire "Goosebumps" series aloud. 

"Keep reading!" Will and I demanded, when she paused for breath.

Over 32 years we've seen dolphins, herons tall as toddlers, miles of fish flipping and dying in the sun from strange tides; we've searched for gold doubloons following a tropical depression that carved away sections of sand dunes; we've spied sea turtle eggs, gathered shells, made mermaids' purses from seaweed. We've jumped the waves holding hands and squealing. We've watched the Space Shuttle, felt the earth tremble, stopped our ears against its mighty roar. We've breakfasted with Mickey. We've balked at Space Mountain.

There was the time when delectable orange blossom perfume wafted in through the car windows as we approached Indian River County.

"Welcome to Florida," I told my daughter.

"This isn't Florida," she stated.

"Why, yes it is, Sweetie," her dad and I laughed. "See - palm trees, orange groves..."

She shook her head.

Only when we pulled up in front of her grandparents' place did she agree. She crossed her 7 or 8 year-old arms, leaned back, and announced, "Now, THIS is Florida." 

And not everybody's Florida, to be sure. Not most people's.

*

In about a month, this daughter and her husband will be having their first child, known fondly to us all as it swims in its mother's womb as "Baby C." My aspiration is for Katherine and her family to find their own place where new experiences and memories will blend and tumble and roll like surf.

Hello?

My son Will is a busy man. I imagine him happily ensconced in the warmth of a gigantic snow moving machine in Burlington, Vermont, music blasting when a small fluttery disturbance in his Carhart jeans alerts him to an incoming call. He slides his cell phone from his pocket, glances down expectantly, then frowns. Takes a slug of coffee. Calls from me - especially if it's the third or fourth call of the morning and it's only 6:45am - are not relished. I'm not a dazzling 20-something. I'm his Mom.

Chances are quite strong that they are, in fact, dismissed. A chirpy message from me might go something like this: Hi, Will, it's Mom. Again. So, ah, what's new? How are you? How's work? What are you doing for fun? (Giggle.) Are we supposed to get more snow? Well, that's about it. Call me when you get a chance! Okay, love you lots!


When he does return a call, usually after I take a stab at inducing a sticky blanket of guilt, he often cannot keep the beleaguered, annoyed and long-suffering tone from his voice.

Yeah, Ma, it's Will.

Hi! How are you? What's new? How's work? 
 
Deep sigh.

Nothing has changed since our last conversation. Everything is the same. It's cold. There's snow. I get up, I go to work, I come home, I go to bed, then I do it again.

So, nothing is new? Not one thing? 

Deep sigh.

If something were new, you'd be the first to know.

(I'll bet.)  

Is there anything else?

I guess not, it's just I wish you would tell me one tiny snippet about your life is all.

I don't have any snippets. I don't have time for snippets.

Deep sigh.

You are 24 years old! You must have time for a snippet or two. Giggle.    

Are we done talking about snippets, 'cause I gotta go.


Okay, bye, then.

Bye, love you.

Love you too.

When I learned how to text, I sent him a message: M txtng!  His retort was swift: Don't.

Yesterday, I noticed his name on my Facebook page, in the bottom right corner under Chat. I pounced. I had been thinking about my sisters, and wondered if he had any strong feelings about his two sisters. He is 13 years younger than one, and 8 years younger than the other.


Do you feel you are close to your siblings? I typed. They weren't mean to you growing up, were they? (The way I was to mine.)

I smiled to myself, picturing the aggravated scowl on his scruffily bearded, handsome face. I could even hear the prolonged sigh.

Where is this coming from?

Just thinking about sisters - mine, yours, and writing about it. They adored you, didn't they?


I don't wanna be in it. And yes, they adored me. Gotta go. Love you.

Wait! I typed hastily.

A small automatic message appeared in the message box: Will is offline.