Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption by McGrady Vanessa

Author:McGrady, Vanessa [McGrady, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

MOMMIES ARE PEOPLE, PEOPLE WITH CHILDREN

Ten

YOU WING IT IN LIVE TIME, EVERY DAY

W e said goodbye to Bill and Bridgett as they got out of the car. The last time Bridgett had left her apartment, she’d had a baby inside her. She was coming home without her baby. Our baby. Ours and theirs.

The first night home, all I could do was marvel at the tiny creature who was suddenly my family, whose blood and breath and skin would become as close as you can be to another human’s without actually morphing together. I wrapped her in a new, soft cotton onesie, slipped pink baby mittens on her tiny fingers, and placed a polka-dot cotton hat on her head. One of my favorite pictures from that night is of her sleeping, absorbing her new life, on Peter’s bare chest. They are bathed in a golden light from the bedside lamp. He is looking down at her, and they are together in an oasis of peace.

A few days later, she met our close friends and family. Peter’s daughters came over and sat on the couch, beaming at their new sister as they held her dearly. We finally had something—or someone, actually—whom we could all rally around, whom we could love in common. The iciness had thawed, at least a little.

I remember the first months of being a mother more like an impressionist painting than a series of crisp snapshots. When I’d previously envisioned myself as a mother, somehow the shit tons of laundry didn’t ever make it into the picture. Some days the height of my productivity, in addition to keeping the baby alive, was unloading the dishwasher. I certainly didn’t get a book proposal done. (In my prebaby delusion, I’d chirpily announced to my therapist that during maternity leave I’d have time to write it while the baby was napping . Which was about forty minutes a stretch. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Fool.) I’d take Grace on long, long walks in the California heat to the park a little more than a mile away, or to the shopping district, or just to nowhere in particular. Grace would fall fast asleep in her sling, wrapped around my middle, and every few minutes I’d poke her just to make sure she was still breathing.

On those walks, we’d sometimes take refuge from the daunting heat in the cool air of the clearance room at Anthropologie, and I’d carefully consider buying soft, basic T-shirts on sale, marked down to thirty-nine dollars from fifty-eight, which seemed, to my sleep-deprived mind, like a screaming deal. (I bought three.)

Peter would come home and ask what we’d done. Most days, honestly, I couldn’t remember anything to tell him. But I would point to the empty dishwasher.

The day loomed when I had to go back to work, and suddenly I was one of those women who were supposed to “have it all”—a home and husband and career and child. I don’t know if that’s even possible.

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