The circle grows

My daughter and I sat watching the snow fall, curled up on my bed talking about life. About change and how it’s inevitable. She reminisces and remembers snippets of our life in the country before the divorce, before we moved back to the city. She states fervently that she wants to return to the country when she is old enough to live on her own. “Do you miss it?” she asks. I explain that I do miss our life in the country but I am grateful for the opportunity to be where we are now and remind her that New Yorkers are among the coolest of the cool. She smirks, “That’s true.”

When I became pregnant with her we still lived in New York City. Though we moved mid-way into my pregnancy, I still came in to Manhattan for my check-ups and her birth. I love that my children are native New Yorkers. “Check the birth certificate,” she often boasts proudly, “I’m a New Yorker!” Some days I wonder what that even means anymore and then I remember the continuity. I was born in New York City. My children were born in New York City. My brother was born in New York City and his children were born in New York City. “So it’s tradition?” She queries. “Well I don’t know if I’d say tradition but it is part of our family history.”

We talk about my father (Baba, as the children call him) and how he was also born in New York City. “It was a different time,” I explain. “He was born in between the two World Wars. His father came here to America, to New York City, when he was younger than you are now with nothing but the clothes on his back.” Her eyes get wide and I can see she is curious but concerned. “Was Baba’s father ok? Did he come to Ellis Island alone?” I explain how he came with his father and left his mother and siblings behind. How he got very sick on the journey to America and believed he died and came back to life. How his first apartment was on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village and how, decades later as a young adult just out of college, unaware of the living history I was about to embrace, my first apartment in New York City was on Bedford Street, too. I explain how my grandfather worked hard his whole life and managed to save enough to buy a house when my father was older. How when he was young, before my grandfather purchased the house, they didn’t have a freezer. I theorized that this is why to this day my father prefers room temperature foods. “Except for his peach yogurts and frozen marshmallow twists,” my daughter says with a sweet smile. I love that they know their grandparents well enough to appreciate and celebrate their idiosyncrasies.

I tell her about my grandfathers maroon Dodge Dart and how when my grandfather could no longer drive, the car stayed with us. I tell her about how my father would drive like a race car driver, and how we would we slide side-to-side in the connected back seat. “Once Baba was driving in a snowstorm and the car slid all over the road,” I began. “Baba was so calm. He just lifted his hands off of the steering wheel and didn’t fight the sideways momentum. He knew that the power of the moving car was greater than anything he could control so he let us coast. So there we were in this huge maroon clunker careening (safely) and ended up on top of a snowbank.” She took a minute. ”Was Baba a good driver?” she gently asked. I laughed and tucked her long hair behind her ear. “Not really, but he was that day.”

I wonder what stories my children and grandchildren will pass on to their families after I’m gone. I submit to the swirl of impossible knowing how we will be viewed and understood after we are gone. She asks me about death. “You want to be cremated and buried with a tree, right?” I explain that I always thought that would be a beautiful resting spot. How I don’t feel the need for a casket or to be buried in a cemetery. “I’m going to have an area someday where we can all be buried together. Like a patch of grass,” she imagines. She has always had a sense of ritual and was fascinated with funerals when she was younger. She used to carry out backyard ceremonies for lost hermit crabs, fish, even birds who had fallen victim to our cats afternoon play. “Herein lies Hermie,” one headstone read. I was fascinated by her fascination and oddly comforted by her desire to usher these creatures into the afterlife with love and kindness.

We discuss family burial plots and how as time goes by it gets harder and harder for entire families to stay physically all together, in life and in death. “Yeah, I get it,” she laments. The conversation drifts back to divorce and our shifting family dynamic. I use the term “modern family” and she shrugs a bit. “I think of it like less of a modern family and more like a strange changing dynamic with many unknowns,” she looks down with a slightly wistful look in her eyes. “The good news is we are all connected,” I offer. “No matter what. Nothing and no one can change that. And how lucky are we that we get to have so many cool chapters? So many cool experiences with so many cool people?” She is quiet but listening intently. I continue to remind her that some people may come and go but we, her family, are here for her, no matter what. How our love knows no bounds and has no expiration date. How we may not always understand everything all the time but together we will help make sense of it all. How in the end life is beautiful and we are blessed. How the circle grows and we, despite the apprehension and necessary adjustments, inevitably will grow with it, too.

She changes the subject and tells me about a recent sledding adventure she had when she was at her dads. “We made a trail in the driveway,” she explains. “It wasn’t super steep or anything but it was enough for us to get some air.” I tell her about a time my brother and I went sledding as little kids and he decided to go down the hill standing on the sled instead of sitting down. “Lala must have had a heart attack seeing her toddler going down a big hill like that!” I smile and tell her that while my mom (Lala) was worried about my brother she also knew he was an adventurer at heart and had faith that he would make it down safely.

A few minutes go by as we linger on the bed. She is leaning into me and I can feel her long hair braising my arm. She lifts her head. “Is being a mother hard?” she asks. “It can be very hard,” I respond. “But the hard parts are far outweighed by the wonderful parts.” She was quiet for a moment then looked up at me with her big, beautiful brown eyes and said, ”It can be hard being a daughter, too. But I have a wonderful mother, which helps.”