My mom and I were sitting in her eye doctor’s office, waiting for her appointment. She said there was something she needed to apologize for.
She went on to explain it happened when she was 18. She and my dad were living in my grandparents’ attic in Detroit with baby me. It was a space I would become very familiar with as a child. Even though my parents moved out after about a year to an apartment a few miles away, I spent a ton of time at my grandparents’ house growing up — especially playing in the attic. It had filigreed heat registers that you could see through to the first floor — you could hear what was being said even if the people down there didn’t remember you could. The ever-present music wafted up from the piano room where my grandmother taught lessons every day after school.
Anyway, my mom said there was this one time that I was in my crib, crying inconsolably. She was asleep in the bed nearby. She opened one of her eyes and looked at me, but couldn’t rouse herself to get out of bed and rolled over. My grandma came up — everything was audible through those registers — and rescued me. My mother said she’s always been sorry about that.
We had never discussed this before. The thing is, I have one vivid memory from being a baby and it is this one or another just like it. I don’t recall the part where my mother woke up and looked at me and went back to sleep. What I remember is crying and crying and crying and my grandmother finally arriving, leaning down and filling the space over me and swooping me up. My mother went on to have four more kids in the next five years. You’d think this small moment in time would have been long buried under piles of diapers and ER visits and the rest that come with so many children.
I don’t think it scarred me, though I’ve never been one to let a baby cry for very long. I don’t know how the many young parents who sleep train their infants almost from Day One can get through the endless crying jags it takes to make it work. I know it does, but it seems awful to me.
And motherhood is fraught with guilt. There are a few things I still feel deeply and sorrowfully guilty about — the top one being getting rid of the dog. I didn’t want a dog because I knew I would be the primary one responsible for taking care of it and didn’t want or need any more responsibility. Our cats were sufficient.
But I finally gave in and it turned out I was the primary one taking care of him, when it came down to it. After a year, I began trying to find him a home that had people who were around and able to walk him, but couldn’t make myself follow through. By Year Two, I did. He went to live with a retired couple who walked him all the time. Sadly, he died just a few years later of a fatal illness.
The whole thing felt awful. As you can see, it still does.
Meanwhile, my nephew and his wife got a dog last year and returned it after one week. They live in Europe, have a 10-year-old, both work, travel a lot and knew immediately it wasn’t a good fit. They felt sheepish about giving it back so soon, but I told them it was so much better than what I did.
Our family rarely talks about the dog. It really was sad all around. On the up side, if my kids cried when they were babies, I was always there, mommy on the spot, to pick them up.