The Baby in Our Family is Seven

On losses, and wonderful days, and the passing of time

The baby of our family turned seven over the weekend. Her name is PoppyLynne—“Poppy” for the poppy fields in England, where we lived for four years, a long, long time ago, and “Lynne” for my Aunt Linda who died of lung cancer a few weeks before Poppy was born.

The older I get, the more time feels like some kind of an illusion, or a murky pool, or a cloudy mirror. There just is no real way of grasping time or its passing.

---

Twenty-two years ago this fall, Maile and I moved to England, barely two years married and still only kids ourselves—I was 24, and Maile was 23. We arrived jet-lagged, weighed down by our 12 bins of things that had come with us on the plane, ready for a long sleep, and excited at what this new adventure might bring us.

The cottage we moved into was 150 years old and falling apart and beautiful, placed as it was on a 100-acre estate, the big house up at the top of the hill named Rocketer, the groundskeeper’s bungalow at the end of the lane. There are a hundred stories I could tell you about those four years: how hard they were, and exhilarating, and exhausting, and adventurous. The people we met. The friends we made.

Left hand picture: Rocketer cottages (we lived in the right side) Right hand picture: the groundskeeper’s bungalow

The big house at the top of the hill: Rocketer

But this is in my mind today: the warm summer sun that brought us life the following summer, in June of 2002, and taking a drive on one of our rare days off. By then we were trying to get pregnant, and nothing was happening. A month can be an eternity, when you are waiting to see if you are pregnant. Six months can seem like a lifetime, when all you want is a child.

We were zipping in our Mini over hobbit hills and on one-lane back roads, always a new sight around the next bend, another estate, another tiny thatched-roof cottage hidden behind high hedgerows.

And then, as if some magic had been spread out in front of us, an entire field of poppies, their petals lilting, some kind of red that had surely come from another universe, a glowing, neon kind of red. Had blood been spilled here, from some long ago battle? Had God painted this open field?

We parked the car. We stared at the field of poppies.

---

This is part of a poem I wrote about my aunt after she died:

When the first flowers finally
dry into brittle reminders, and the nurses
know the names of the family members who spend
every night sleeping on the tile floor, you know
the vigil being kept has entered its second
week. Somehow she convinced us
she would live forever. The realization struck us
like a firework going off: she was just like us. She was
mortal.

She would soon die.

In shaky script she wrote to me three days before
she died. Breathlessly she asked for a pen,
a paper, and we scrambled to fulfill her command
like priests in the temple appeasing a god. I stood
beside her bed and watched her do it. She wrote
that she wanted me to
come back next week to work with her
on her obituary.

I said I would.

She put her hands on Maile’s stomach and smiled. We asked
if she thought it was a boy
or a girl? “Another boy,” she whispered, shaking her head
in mock sadness. I leaned in before I left
and whispered, “You were always my favorite.”
I cried when I said those words. But
she laughed through her short breath, as if
even then, she was only planning to stay
in the hospital for a short time. “What?” everyone asked. “What did
you tell her?”

I refused to say.

---

A good friend of the family died yesterday, on Poppy’s birthday. His family found out three weeks ago that he had cancer, and then, in the snap of a finger, he was gone.

I remember, nearly 30 years ago, calling him to ask permission to take his daughter out on a date. I had no idea this would be required, until I asked her if I could take her out, and she laughed and laughed and I asked what was so funny and she said, “I’d love that. But you’ll have to ask my dad for his permission.”

When the phone rang the first time, I thought I might pass out. When it rang a second time, I was melting into the floor. But the time he answered, I wondered where my breath had gone.

He was kind and calm. He asked me what our plans were. I had met him before but we had never spoken under such trying circumstances. I told him we were planning on seeing a movie and then going to Jenny’s Diner afterwards. He gave us his blessing.

His daughter, the one I took out on that date, the one I became friends with and stayed in touch with, died tragically in a car accident two years later. We were no longer dating, and I was off at college, but it was a tremendous loss.

Yesterday, when we heard the news of his passing, I told Maile how strange it is that this is our new normal. We are both in our late 40s. It seems that friends and acquaintances die with regularity now, that the losses are piling up one after the other. More and more often now, when speaking of people, I am speaking of people who have passed. Dean. Linda. Jup. Leslie. And now Norm.

I haven’t yet deciphered how to live in this kind of a world, where so many people are missing. And still, time moves on, whether I figure it out or not.

---

In the heat of an August day, Poppy runs through the summer sun, her friends squealing and laughing and running behind her. They jump through the sprinkler and chase each other with water balloons, the grass under their feet lollipop green and wet, the hazy sky overhead hinting at afternoon thunderstorms.

I wonder if Poppy will remember this day, how she painted a glass jar at the dining room table and made an ankle bracelet, if she’ll remember the sounds of her friends laughter and the innocence of being seven.

One of the little girls climbs the tree in the front yard and looks down on the chaos, and I wonder what she sees from her perch in the leaves, what comfort she finds in that distance, what perspective.

This newsletter is made possible by paying subscribers, who also receive bonus posts from time to time. A huge thanks to those of you who already support my writing in this way! If you’d like to become a subscriber, click the “Subscribe” button below.