My Daughter's Birthday

1969. The same date as today...

At Melrose Wakefield Hospital, the nurse placed my infant daughter in my arms. Overwhelming sadness swept through me. It wasn't postpartum depression. It was fear. I had no idea how I could be a good mother to this helpless creature.

Spoiler Alert 1: She survived me.

My husband decided he needed his freedom leaving me a single mom. Compared to what many single mom's go through, I had it easy.

Early descriptions of my daughter included that she looked like an inverted gourd. People wanting to be kind mentioned her lovely ears. 

Spoiler Alert 2: She turned out to be an adorable child.

My daughter must have known at some level, she needed to be an ideal child, sleeping though the night at three weeks and seldom crying during the day. 

I only half joke that she wanted to be independent so she walked out of the womb. Once she could do something on her own, she no longer wanted help. Fortunately, she never gave up hugs even to this day.

She experienced medical problems. It took three years to diagnose why when she vomited she couldn't stop. She was in the hospital so often, once when it was longer between attacks than usual, a nurse called to see if we were okay. When we found the medicine that worked, her health problems were the normal colds and such.

Nightly reading. I knew Green Eggs and Ham by heart. Green vegetable dye on the eggs led to grey eggs and no desire on her part to have an egg morsel pass her lips.

We share our love of reading. I also joked, I could have saved a fortune in day care. I just had to leave her in bookstore in the morning with a sandwich and pick her up at the end of the day.

I still feel guilty that work obligations made it impossible for me to continue her gymnastic lessons, something she has absolved me off over and over.

At nine she started her lifelong hobby of needlework, with each work more beautiful than the last. My walls have benefited from her talent.  

I lived with a man and woman for years, forming a family of sorts. We bought a house in Boston to renovate, not a handyman's dream, but a handyman's nightmare. Although we did the work ourselves, we still built in fun.

Friday nights were "family" nights. With a roll of quarters for street musicians we'd eat dinner, listen to the music and load up on books for the week all while catching up on news about our busy weeks of classes, work, construction.

There were some gourmet weekends where each of us would prepare a gourmet meal. My daughter was responsible for Sunday afternoon tea and cookies.

We had a Victory Garden  and went apple picking in the fall. We took trips to Europe together. Summers her skin turned golden from time spent in Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

We often celebrated things with a Carvel cake. Two I remember is when both my daughter and housemate finished reading Old Man in the Sea for their respective classes. Of course, we needed a cake. The other was when the cake read "Congratulations Albert." Our dog's testicles had finally descended. We discouraged my daughter's wanting "Albert has Balls" to be written on the cake.

We breathed a sigh of relief when she was accepted at Boston Latin School (founded 1635 and school producing, musicians, artists, scientists, American presidents, writers, Nobel Prize winners). I knew she would become a well-educated adult without my spending a fortune for private school.

She spent her gap year going to a gymnasium in Munich. She also studied at the University of Mannheim. I cried with happiness when she walked across the stage to get her Masters in Edinburgh.

Sometimes We lived together in Switzerland as adults. I so enjoyed her company, sympathized as she job hunted, happy she ran with the Hash Harriers. Loads of gin rummy games with the loser paying ten centimes per loss would make hot chocolate at Auer's  a must.

Back in the States and separated by the Atlantic, she and I always stayed in close touch. We visited each other whenever possible. I spent a month with her in D.C. where we binged watched Murder She Wrote and celebrated Christmas. She threatened if I, as a mystery writer, ever came across a real murder, she'd put me in nursing home because it was usually Angela Lansbury's relative arrested and she was my closest relative. 

Now we chat at least weekly if not more often. When she comes to France, she stays in my Nest, the studio that she will inherit and around the corner where I live with her stepfather. Coffee and/or wine at l'Hostalet or Mille et une, is almost a rule. We share books, memories, meals, the French atmosphere.

We do not always agree but respect the differences. My daughter does much differently than I would. She is right for her. I am right for me. She can turn the word mother into a multi-syllable word.  

When I think to that little bundle in my arms in 1969 I know it turned out okay. She survived my incompetence. I have often stolen folk singer Bob Franke's line about his daughter "She wasn't the thing I did best, but she was the best thing I did."