Untamed

Fifteen years ago, when I got pregnant with my second child, I decided to wait to find out the biological sex of the baby.

I learned the sex of my firstborn before his birth, but now I was a parenting veteran, so I was vastly more mature and disciplined. At what would have been the reveal sonogram, I lay on the examination table and looked back and forth between the small green screen and the technician’s face. Both were indecipherable. When the technician left and the doctor arrived, I had to trust what she told me—that there was, in fact, a human being inside me and that this being seemed, in her words, “Fine, so far.”

A fine, so far human being was exactly what I’d been hoping for. A fine, so far human being is what I have continued hoping for throughout my parenting career.

With that news—and only that news—I left the doctor’s office. When I got home, I sat on the family room couch, stared at the wall, and thought about how far I’d come from the controlling, dramatic, first-time mother I used to be.

Look at me, I thought, patiently letting the universe unfold as it should.

Then I picked up the phone and called the doctor’s office. When the receptionist answered I said, “Hello. This is Glennon. I was just there.”

“Oh. Did you leave something here?”

“Yes. I left extremely important information there. Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I changed my mind. Could I still find out the sex of my baby?”

She said, “Hold on, please.”

I held on please. She came back and said, “It’s a girl. You’re having a girl.”

One of my favorite words is selah.

Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment, because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply. The poetry in scripture is meant to transform, and the scribes knew that change begins through reading but can be completed only in quiet contemplation. Selah appears in Hebrew music, too. It’s believed to be a signal to the music director to silence the choir for a long moment, to hold space between notes. The silence, of course, is when the music sinks in.

Selah is the holy silence when the recipient of transformational words, music, and sketchily acquired information from radiology receptionists pauses long enough to be changed forever.

Selah is the nothingness just before the big bang of a woman exploding into a new universe.

You’re having a girl. My eyes widened like a camera lens adjusting to a blast of light. I sat on the couch, phone still in hand, wordless, motionless.

“Thank you,” I finally said to the receptionist. “Thank you. I love you. Bye.”

I hung up and called my sister.

“Sister, we’re having a girl. We are having a girl.”

“Wait,” she said. “What? How did you find out? Did they accidentally tell you?”

“Yes. After I accidentally asked.”

She said, “Holy shit. This is the best day of our lives. Another one of us. We are going to have a third. A third sister.”

“I know. Do not ever tell Craig that I called you first.”

“Obviously,” she said.

Just then I heard my two-year-old son, Chase, waking up from his nap, hollering from his crib his usual announcement, “I AWAKE GWENNON!”

I hung up, climbed the stairs, and opened Chase’s door. He sat up in bed and smiled. For the first time I saw him as my daughter’s big brother. She’s so lucky, I thought. I kissed his silk cheeks, and he followed me downstairs, holding the railing, one careful step at a time. I wrapped him up in a puffy jacket, scarf, and hat and took him for a walk on the path around the tiny pond in our neighborhood. I needed to get outside. I needed more space surrounding this gigantic news. I needed sky.

I remember that Chase and I were chilly. I remember that the air was crisp and the sky was clear. I remember that halfway around the pond, when our little town house had become tiny in the distance, a goose crossed the path in front of us and Chase laughed. I remember that the goose got a little too close, so I picked up Chase and I walked the rest of the way around the pond with him in my arms, his legs wrapped around my waist, my nose nestled in his neck. All these years later, I can still smell his neck: powder and toddler sweat. I can still remember thinking: I’m carrying both of my children. All by myself. My son’s head resting on my shoulder, my daughter’s heart beating in my body. I have everything.

We decided to name our daughter Patricia, after my mother. We’d call her Tish. She’d be wrapped in the same olive skin, black hair, and Japanese features her older brother inherited from his dad. I dreamt of her all day, every day. I could not wait for Tish to be born. In fact, when I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, I got in the bathtub and told Craig that I would not come out until he found a way to schedule an induction. He found a way. A few days later, I was holding my daughter. When the nurse placed her in my arms, I whispered, “Hi, angel”—and then took a good look at her. I was surprised. She was pink, with light skin, hair, eyes. She and I matched.

Along with his looks, Tish’s older brother inherited his father’s easy-breezy, accommodating temperament. I’d made the rookie mistake of attributing Chase’s easiness to my masterful parenting. When my friends complained about how hard parenting was, I’d agree outwardly and think: Suckers. What’s so hard about this? Then Tish was born, and I suddenly understood what was so hard about this.

Tish was born concerned. As an infant, she cried constantly. As a toddler, her default was set at displeased. For the first few years of her life, I spent all day, every day, trying to make her happy. By the time she was six, I’d given up on happy. Each morning, I’d sit on the floor outside her bedroom door holding a whiteboard that said, “Good morning, Tish! We will be pleasant today!” When she came out scowling, I’d point to the board and explain that “pleasant” meant: Act happy. Just pretend. This is our social contract with the world, kid: ACT HAPPY. Suffer silently like the rest of us, for the love of God.

Tish rejected my memo. She would not act. She refused to be pleasant. One day when Craig came home from work, I met him at the door, crying. Tish was upstairs, crying. I said to him, “She is untenable. Incorrigible. I cannot handle her. Where did this drama COME FROM?” To his credit, he did not answer in words. He just looked at me sitting on the floor, weeping, and gave me enough time to think: Oh. I see. Tish is me.

My therapist neighbor warns me not to force this limiting, narcissistic narrative on my daughter; she insists that children are not carbon copies of their parents. To that I say, “Okay. I see your point. But I also see my daughter, lady.”

When I realized that Tish was me, I remembered that acting happy was what had almost killed me. I quit trying to make Tish happy or pleasant and decided just to help her be Tish. Tish is fourteen now. She is still turned inside out. What she feels and thinks on the inside, the world hears and sees on the outside. When she becomes upset, we assume she has her own valid reason. So we say, “I see that you’re upset. Are you ready for a solution yet? Or do you just need to feel this way for a while?” She usually just needs to feel this way for a while, because she is becoming. We don’t rush her anymore. In fact, when we try to rush through life, through pain, through beauty, Tish slows us down and points. She shows us what we need to notice, think, and feel in order to stay human. She is the kindest, wisest, most honest person I know. There is no one walking the Earth I respect more. Tish is our family’s conscience and prophet. She is our selah.

When her father and I divorced, Tish’s world fell apart. Day in and day out, week after week, month after month, she held us close to the pain. When the rest of us just wanted to “get over it,” to act happy, Tish kept us honest. She would not act. She would not be pleasant. She insisted that when worlds crumble, it is time to stop the world for a while. She let us skip nothing, and she made us feel everything. She asked the hardest questions. She cried herself to sleep every night for a very long time. She was our Joan of Arc, marching us straight into battle, day in and day out.

For her, war was being waged on two fronts. The first was the divorce between her parents. But the second family transformation rocked her just as deeply: watching me fall in love. Tish had always understood that she and her siblings were the loves of my life. Her father and I were partners—in love with the family we’d created but not with each other. She was watching her mother, who until now had existed solely to serve and adore her, become fully human in front of her eyes. She lost her mother as she knew her. She watched me become a whole, alive woman. She watched me become complicated. Things had seemed so simple for so long. As I fell in love with Abby, Tish felt as though I was falling away from her.

One night, as the battle raged on, I was tucking Tish into bed. Since she knows her feelings and how to speak them clear as crystal, she looked up at me and said, “Mommy. I am afraid that I’m going to lose you.”

I sat down on the bed and said, “Oh, baby. You are never going to lose me. You are never going to lose me, baby.”

“Say it again,” she whispered.

So I said it again. And again. I never stopped saying it. Three years later, this is still our nightly ritual.

Lights out. “You’re never gonna lose me, baby.”

This means that the last thing I say to my prophet daughter every single night is a bold-faced lie. In this life of unknowables, there is one thing I know for sure, and that is that someday my girl is going to lose me.

I used to lie to Tish all the time. I used to promise her things that would temporarily dazzle her, placate her, protect her.

Yes, I’m certain that heaven is real. Yes, I believe in Santa! No, your parents will never, ever get divorced. Yes, life is fair and there are good guys and bad guys. Mommy knows best. Everything happens for a reason. You are safe, honey. I will keep you safe.

That was back when I thought my job was to keep Tish safe instead of allowing her to become brave. Back when I thought I should make Tish’s life easy instead of allowing her to learn that she can handle life’s hard. Back when I thought there was more magic in what was pretend than what was real. Back when I believed a mother was supposed to be her daughter’s hero instead of allowing her daughter to become her own hero.

I thought my role was to protect Tish from pain, so I ended up teaching her that disaster was just around the corner. By shielding her constantly, I taught her how to be afraid. I taught her to hide. I taught her that she was not capable of handling what life might bring. Be careful, baby, be careful, baby, come here, honey. Mommy will protect you.

But then, four years ago, I became the very one who brought disaster to her and placed it right in her lap.

I broke the heart I had been given to protect.

I watched Tish grieve, and then I watched her rise.

I learned that you can break a child’s heart without breaking a child. Now, three years after the divorce, Tish is no longer in hiding, on constant lookout for danger up ahead. The worst came, and she survived. She is a little girl who no longer has to avoid the fires of life, because she has learned that she is fireproof. Only people who stand in the fire can know that. That is the one thing I need my children to know about themselves: Nothing will destroy them. So I do not want to protect them from life’s fires; I want to point them toward the fire and say, “I see your fear, and it’s big. I also see your courage, and it’s bigger. We can do hard things, baby. We are fireproof.”

If I could do it again, I’d toss out the sign I once hung on Tish’s nursery wall that read: “Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright.” I’d replace it with Buechner’s “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

Since I don’t believe in lying to Tish anymore, I’ve been brainstorming simple ways to adjust my nightly vow to her and make it true. It’s been tricky. For example, I could tuck her in, smile at her, and say, “Lights out, honey. You’re definitely gonna lose me.” But that’s a bridge too far, perhaps.

Here’s where I’ve landed. Here’s the promise and hope I have for Tish, for myself, for all of us:

“Good night, baby. You’re never gonna lose you.”