The Beginning of Everything

also wanted to aspire. I found the curtains I wanted, found four packs of them for the living room windows. There was some closet at home, I was sure of it, that held fixtures for hanging, purchased long ago during one of my attempts to make curtains happen, before I’d given up. Around me, in the calculated beauty of simulated living rooms, anxious couples bickered about rugs and end tables, men sat defeated on couches, women rolled their eyes as they stalked off toward the dinnerware. By now, at home, the furniture he was taking with him to his new place must be loaded up into the truck. At some point I would have to come back here and pick out a table, all by myself, no partner to argue with about the virtues of chairs versus a long bench, midcentury modern versus rustic. But the curtains were the first step, for now. I took them to the counter, and the woman asked “Will that be all?” and I said, “That will be everything.”

Now the curtains hang in the living room, now there is a table with benches instead of chairs in the dining room, now the house is emptied of papers and boxes and tension. In some ways, the space of just the three of us reminds me of when the kids were very little and he was in medical school. Some weeks, it would just be the three of us for days at a time, and during the rare moments he was home, he was either asleep or studying, so he might as well have been gone, as the daily routine of toddler and preschooler life continued, immune to his presence or absence. In those days, like now, I was alone with them most of the time, and there were no vacation days, no sick days, no days off. I was on a permanent, 24/7 call schedule, and if I had limitations due to my own work that needed to be done (somehow, in the brief moments when they were asleep) or due to illness, I had to get creative.

One particular winter, when I was incapacitated by the flu and a nagging back injury, exacerbated by picking up a squirming toddler, I came up with a number of what Emi and Nate called “lying down games” to help fill the long hours of solo parenting. One of these games, which we called “Covers,” was played as follows: 1. Lie on the bed, then pull the covers up over everyone’s heads while everyone yells “Covers!” 2. Stay under the covers as long as possible until one of you panics and yells “No covers!” 3. Repeat until weary. Another big hit was “No-Water-Bath,” which involved playing with toys in the bathtub without any water—the bonus for the incapacitated adult being that there is no slippery child to have to pick up afterward, plus the relief of being able to lie on the cool floor of the bathroom, occasionally interjecting statements like “Uh-huh, that’s great!” or “Wow!” to fulfill your role as Game Master. “Tiny Swimming Pools” was also a favorite, requiring only a non-wood-based floor and every shape and size of plastic container, filled halfway full with water, for them to have their tiny toys swim in (bonus: clean floor afterward). And then there was Nate’s invention, “Surprise Toys,” which required me to lie down on some comfortable surface and say, “I really hope nobody comes over here and puts their toys on me while I’m taking this nap! That would be quite a surprise!” and then pretend to fall asleep while he and/or Emi placed small toys all over my body. Then, after a blessed five minutes or so of rest, with them barely able to contain their laughter in anticipation of what would come next, I would have to “wake up,” realize that there were small toys balanced all over me, and say, “What?! Oh no! TOYS!” The game would end when, in that moment of pretend toy-panic, the toys would become dislodged from their positions and fall off me. And then, of course, it would start again.

They are no longer that little, and no longer as easily distracted by my attempts to ameliorate the fact that this lying down game is my life now. I want to shield them from the reality of my exhaustion and pain the same way I did when they were younger, making the best of it, normalizing it, turning it into something fun. When they were younger, when they were toddlers, the thought of adults having needs was nearly developmentally impossible, and my attempts at consistency and calm despite whatever was going on with me personally helped ground them, helped give them a solid base from which to learn to cope with their own needs. Now, too, as teens, the idea of adults being weak or having needs is scary and overwhelming—this is why the scorn, the disdain, when the cracks begin to show, when you realize the so-called grown-ups around you are as clueless as everyone else, that this competence is all a charade. The charade is still important; it’s still important for me to try to be consistent and calm, to model things for them, which is also a way of modeling things for myself. However, it’s also important for me to allow them to see a little of the effort it takes to do that.

And so I embrace the space that’s left when he is gone, I let us fill it together. I am playing the lying down game all the time, but I try to play it near them, lying down with them while they do homework, lying down with them while they watch TV or play video games, lying down with them while they hang out with me in my bed, telling me stories about school and friends and funny things that happened on the internet. I worry that they might feel lost in all this space,