Leaving for Work
I must have written this in 1983, overwhelmed with emotion.
My daughter is six and she does cartwheels on the lawn when she’s happy. Mention a hot fudge sundae and her eyes light up and she licks her lips. She asked me how to spell “great” the other day and when I told her, she said, “What a co-in-ci-dence — ‘great’ and ‘girl’ both start with ‘g’.” She is missing her two front teeth, but that doesn’t stop her from smiling — her dimple instantly getting deeper on her cheek and her whole body glowing with a splash of happiness.
Kathy was particularly sad one morning as I said good-bye and walked out the door for work. (Her grandma takes care of her.) Tears were streaming down her face. My eyes were watering too.
She couldn’t face me anymore so she stuck her teddy bear through the drapes and all I could see was a smiling stuffed bear waving its hand good-bye. It wasn’t a vigorous wave, nor a tentative one, but a sure and steady, back and forth wave. My face was frozen and expressionless, my heart crusted with iron and my robot’s feet led me clumsily to my car. It was while driving that my defenses collapsed and I kept seeing a teddy bear waving good-bye.
I arrived at work red-eyed and red-nosed, a bundle without a form. I will always have misgivings about that day because it was the day I turned my back on my tearful little girl and traded in a sunlit world of spontaneous and joyful laughter, dimpled smiles, and cartwheels on the lawn for a darker, grownup world of artificial lights, cues, and directions. It was the day I didn’t need a script to play the part of a mother with a broken heart.