Unmasked

James Baldwin in Letters From a Region of the Mind makes the observation that “Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,” which, on the surface, strikes one as sentiment bordering on the sentimental, as something pat and easily contained on a bumper sticker. Yet, as sentiment, the statement is emotionally accurate. James Baldwin knew the human heart.

Consider this: How much safer were you before love? And then: How much did you wish to cast off the hockey mask and enter the frays of romance, or of childbearing, or, even, of loving a pet that you knew would die before you? We walk around, before love, safe behind the armors of loneliness, and we ask those we deem worthy to strip it all away so that we stand there, a throbbing heart, exposed, the cages of our safety masks and curved ribs as good as gone.

Thus here I stand before you— world, fates, family— all of my masks gone, stripped down to the skin, and I ask, meekly, that you let me be in my nakedness or that you wrap me in the blankets of goodwill. Spare me the excoriation. My husband, late forties, the man I hand-picked and pursued, has just competed in a triathlon, and he is vital, a force, more alive than anyone I know. I see him pushing past all probabilities in terms of mortality, so when he rides his motorcycle home from the hospital at four in the morning after a long night of work, steer the drunk drivers the other way. 

And my son, my one and only child, the one who has already scared me, scarred me, with health concerns and mortal danger, let him outlive me, let him mourn and miss his long-dead mother. He is everyday getting farther away from that proverbial well that wishes to suck him down into darkness. Abnormal MRI, seizures, autism: He’s shrugging them off like a coat he has outgrown. In Mexico, when he fell into the deep-end of the pool, his father watched him plunge below the surface only to paddle up to where he was able to hoist himself over the side of the pool, away from tragedy and back into the waning sunlight. World, fates, family: Be safe and let me be safe.

And my two dogs? The smaller brown one has many years ahead of her. My old, white dog turned twelve last month, and I can see her eyes going milky. Her back legs slip out from underneath her, and I have to hoist her up. All ninety pounds of her. She has gotten more nervous with old age, and she can no longer hold her bowels very well. She doesn’t mean to shit on the floor, and I can feel her shame. She knows something is wrong. I clean it up with no admonishment. I just stroke her until I see her tail wag. In truth, I think she has another two years in her. When I picked her out from the homeless man’s litter twelve years ago, she could fit in a cat carrier. I was not projecting this far into the future; I did not think of her death. I just wanted to let a little love in.

The Other Polarizing Disorder

Sometimes, late at night, well into my second glass of wine, my husband at work and my son sleeping, I mourn the loss of other people’s children. It’s usually during that hour when I’m immobilized by weariness yet unwilling to drag off to the bathroom to brush and wash, so I sit in front of the computer, study the photos of little boys, and have an unhealthy cry for Ronan, the one who died of tay-sachs; for the Staten Island mom whose sons were yanked from her arms by Hurricane Sandy; and for another mother whose entire family was washed away by the Southeast-Asian tsunami. My grief is discriminate; I mirror the bereavement of mothers who had and then who did not have anymore. I pluck stories from around the world about the entire annihilation of motherhood.

Let me tell you something about the way parenthood can change you: It is like an anti-anti-depressant or like a polarizing disorder that doesn’t just swing to and fro but that swings wildly. This is not to say that the opposite of anti-depressed is depressed or that it’s all bad; I’m talking about the loss of casual numbness about anything. Joy, for example, is amplified into something wildly exuberant. Love for a child can make you as giddy as a teenager, with all the angst-y hysteria, plus some added depth. On the other hand, anger is a coiled whip that now sits closer to your hands, and sadness can grab your lungs and squeeze them until your heaving tears in front of your computer at midnight for people you have never met. This sickness of parenthood may just be mine. I don’t know…

Fear, too. And compassion. They become more palpable. At Disney’s California Adventure there is a Ferris wheel that features gondolas on tracks that roll and swing out wildly hundreds of feet in the air above the park. Yesterday my niece and I rode up and around, and what looked like fun on the ground became nauseous, instinctual discomfort. Far below I could see my son asleep in his stroller, his grandmother waiting for us on the bench. Across from us in the gondola a girl visiting from Arizona clutched her father’s jacket in abject terror, the tears gathering but not yet falling. All I could do was talk to her in a low murmur: “It’s okay honey. I know it’s scary. We’ll be on the ground soon. Don’t worry.” And so on. I couldn’t stand to see her like that. I didn’t even know her.

I think this is probably more personal that I can fully grasp. Last summer my son suffered a series of partial seizures, and for a week we knew from his MRI read that something was wrong with him, but we didn’t know whether it was a disorder that would work itself out over time or whether he was showing the beginning signs of a “demyelinating process” that would piece-by-piece disassemble the puzzle of what makes him him. We wouldn’t know until we saw the neurologist. In fact, we’re still not completely positive. I have seen two full-blown febrile seizures that turned a very busy three-year-old into a vegetable for a half-hour. The things I have seen. I’m all too aware of the possibility of losing the one, small person that marks me as someone’s mother, not just from my own experiences with my only child, but also vicariously from others less fortunate, which sounds too mild to describe the catastrophic ending of motherhood.

At amusement parks there is always that game where you’re supposed to climb across a ladder made of rope to win a prize. The rope is anchored in the middle on either end so that the climber must rely on speed and balance to make it across, or the ladder will spin on its one tether and knock the climber off. This is what it feels like to be the parent of an only child. I imagine that two children would be like two tethers at either end, and I could climb across with more confidence, but since I wanted two and only have one, sometimes I feel like I’m spinning around on this rope ladder, and my grip is really compromised. I’m really worried I’m going to slip. I don’t trust my ability to balance.

Poetic Interlude

Febrile

He seized on the interchange

as late sunlight glared off game-day traffic

and I just stopped, mid-lane,

and punched the hazards

as he bucked against the car seat.

But I wouldn't say I watched, couldn't say

I stared, won't say now I saw

when his mouth went slack

and his eyes rolled white

as if I could have recorded

those sights. And today his fever

lingers on his face the way

Vermeer's light loved milkmaids.

His brown eyes brimming like a heifer’s;

His beauty like a doomed

consumptive. He clings like August

clutches the Valley, and I sit

and let my own sweat rise.

How could I do otherwise?

In two days he’ll push away my arms,

so I hold this moment in my gaze

the way I spot heat mirages

wavering off the asphalt.