sang him back to sleep.
Sometimes I’ll be on a tirade (the children will have left their room a mess, or failed, again, to pick up the dirty clothes, or spilled orange juice over the kitchen floor), and the two of them band together like sailors on a storm-tossed boat. And in a way I’ve never really minded. Let me be the villain, sometimes, if it solidifies their alliance.
Naturally, they get fed up with each other sometimes. Charlie breaks the leg off Audrey’s doll. Audrey remarks bitterly that she wishes she had a sister. They stalk off to one room or another. Slam the door. Cry. And then someone must always apologize, look the other in the eye, give a hug. If they can’t do that, it’s back to the room again. Sometimes, then, I might ask the child who’s having trouble: How many sisters do you have? How many brothers? (Even two is not so many that a person can afford to let one get away.)
Charlie knows his sister’s name is Audrey, but that’s not what he calls her. He calls her Sis, or Sissy. I never tire of hearing him speak of her that way, or of hearing her speak proudly of “my brother.” The words have a power unto themselves, I sometimes think. Just as words of hatred or resentment can reinforce the feelings they name, words that speak of attachment and connection can strengthen family ties. “I want to die the same day you do,” Charlie (who’s going through a slightly morbid stage) told Audrey the other day. He simply can’t imagine a life without her.
Sometimes I can hardly bear to look at pictures of Steve and me taken back when our marriage, as well as parenthood, was new. One portrait we had taken at a discount store shows the two of us, holding a five-day-old Audrey, standing in front of a Technicolor backdrop. (We had a choice: ocean, desert, or mountains. We chose mountains.) In the picture both of us look a little stunned, still reeling from Audrey’s birth and the realization that we, and no one else, were the ones responsible for her. Steve and I had about twenty-five dollars to our names the day we had that picture taken, and still I spent four of them on a pair of pink baby shoes that wouldn’t fit for months. We had come to this discount store specifically because they’d advertised portraits for eighty-eight cents. And when I learned that meant eighty-eight cents for each person in the portrait (and Audrey counted) I was actually upset.
No baby shakes its parents to the core the way the first one does. But if our daughter was all thrilling and overwhelming to us, our son was much the same to our daughter. When she came downstairs that first morning to find his head sticking out from under the covers in our bed, where he’d been born a few hours earlier, she said “My dream came true,” and she hasn’t altered her position much since then. The two of them are firmly a pair, and because they are, Charlie (who has never known life without a sibling) will never need Audrey the way she needed him.
What was new to us about our second child was not only his being a boy but, just as much, the fact that this time around we were settled and in control of things. There was a leisurely four-year space between children, a washer and dryer installed, money in the bank for Lacoste sleeper suits. The sound of my baby crying no longer brought tears to my eyes. From the first, I loved Charlie with a measure of ease and detachment I had never known and cannot manage even now for my firstborn, whose pain I still suffer as my own. It was two years after Audrey’s birth before I retrieved the capacity to think about, talk about, something other than her, to walk out the door and leave her with someone else without feeling a stab. After Charlie, life seemed good and manageable. I lost the extra weight I’d gained easily, found a babysitter I liked, and didn’t mind it that she didn’t sing and play with him all morning. I joined the Y, started running, went away for a weekend alone with
Sometimes I’ll be on a tirade (the children will have left their room a mess, or failed, again, to pick up the dirty clothes, or spilled orange juice over the kitchen floor), and the two of them band together like sailors on a storm-tossed boat. And in a way I’ve never really minded. Let me be the villain, sometimes, if it solidifies their alliance.
Naturally, they get fed up with each other sometimes. Charlie breaks the leg off Audrey’s doll. Audrey remarks bitterly that she wishes she had a sister. They stalk off to one room or another. Slam the door. Cry. And then someone must always apologize, look the other in the eye, give a hug. If they can’t do that, it’s back to the room again. Sometimes, then, I might ask the child who’s having trouble: How many sisters do you have? How many brothers? (Even two is not so many that a person can afford to let one get away.)
Charlie knows his sister’s name is Audrey, but that’s not what he calls her. He calls her Sis, or Sissy. I never tire of hearing him speak of her that way, or of hearing her speak proudly of “my brother.” The words have a power unto themselves, I sometimes think. Just as words of hatred or resentment can reinforce the feelings they name, words that speak of attachment and connection can strengthen family ties. “I want to die the same day you do,” Charlie (who’s going through a slightly morbid stage) told Audrey the other day. He simply can’t imagine a life without her.
Sometimes I can hardly bear to look at pictures of Steve and me taken back when our marriage, as well as parenthood, was new. One portrait we had taken at a discount store shows the two of us, holding a five-day-old Audrey, standing in front of a Technicolor backdrop. (We had a choice: ocean, desert, or mountains. We chose mountains.) In the picture both of us look a little stunned, still reeling from Audrey’s birth and the realization that we, and no one else, were the ones responsible for her. Steve and I had about twenty-five dollars to our names the day we had that picture taken, and still I spent four of them on a pair of pink baby shoes that wouldn’t fit for months. We had come to this discount store specifically because they’d advertised portraits for eighty-eight cents. And when I learned that meant eighty-eight cents for each person in the portrait (and Audrey counted) I was actually upset.
No baby shakes its parents to the core the way the first one does. But if our daughter was all thrilling and overwhelming to us, our son was much the same to our daughter. When she came downstairs that first morning to find his head sticking out from under the covers in our bed, where he’d been born a few hours earlier, she said “My dream came true,” and she hasn’t altered her position much since then. The two of them are firmly a pair, and because they are, Charlie (who has never known life without a sibling) will never need Audrey the way she needed him.
What was new to us about our second child was not only his being a boy but, just as much, the fact that this time around we were settled and in control of things. There was a leisurely four-year space between children, a washer and dryer installed, money in the bank for Lacoste sleeper suits. The sound of my baby crying no longer brought tears to my eyes. From the first, I loved Charlie with a measure of ease and detachment I had never known and cannot manage even now for my firstborn, whose pain I still suffer as my own. It was two years after Audrey’s birth before I retrieved the capacity to think about, talk about, something other than her, to walk out the door and leave her with someone else without feeling a stab. After Charlie, life seemed good and manageable. I lost the extra weight I’d gained easily, found a babysitter I liked, and didn’t mind it that she didn’t sing and play with him all morning. I joined the Y, started running, went away for a weekend alone with
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