Day 15: Eva Retrospective on Mandy

I was terrified of her when she was finally born. She was sickly and thin, like an alien. In fact, very much like E.T. I don't know what I'd expected -- I had seen Ronnie when Mama took him home from the hospital, and he was really little and thin. But he wasn't mine; I hadn't seen him come out.

And she was mine. This bleating, gross, alive thing. And I loved her. That's why I was terrified. I counted all her fingers and toes the minute they left me alone with her; I memorized every small inch of her. I beamed my love into her with my eyes.

And they trusted me with her. Everyone trusted me to know what was best for her. To act on instincts, like a cat herding her litter, nipples sagging to the ground. That faith was just as terrifying, because it left me no other recourse. I was the sole owner of this tiny beast.

Well, Bram and I. In the three years leading up to my pregnancy I had all but rotted from the inside out, looking to him for instruction and decision and inspiration for every single movement I made. From what to cook to what to think. And so, I had stupidly expected the same level of puppeteering when we decided to have a baby -- it had even been his idea, mostly as a gesture of competition towards his colleagues who were already starting families.

But, as it turns out, there were a few more relevant reasons Bram decided he wanted to have kids, none of which were known to me at the time. Two things became clear, though, within a couple of weeks after we realized we'd conceived--Bram expected me to know exactly what to do, and was perfectly happy abstaining altogether from any active role in the process. It wasn't that he was unsupportive; I think that, to him, this was the mystery of the weaker sex. We may be helpless or even spineless, but when it came to babies the light turned on.

For the most part I grew to believe this story for myself -- that only I knew what was best, that any answer I came up with would be the right answer because it would be based in a primordial network of instincts that I had full access to but limited awareness of. Because -- she was mine. Ownership begat expertise, or at the very least right of operation.

Still, in the beginning it was terror and disbelief. The first few nights we brought her home I would have nightmares about having left her at the hospital, or in the car, or too near the fireplace. I would sit with her, and be holding her, and suddenly snap-to with a rush of adrenaline if I caught myself drifting off in thought for even a minute.

I hadn't expected any of those feelings to be so intense, or so crippling. My fear throughout the pregnancy had been in the opposite direction -- that I would be disappointed, and that I would not love her. Of course I told myself hundreds of times that, should she come out and be disfigured or substandard in some way, that I would love her more intensely in spite of that. That her mine-ness would ignite the maternal flame, no matter how insipid she turned out to be. However, I wasn't convinced, down in my core, that I was capable of that much unselfishness. I was worried I'd have to fake it, but was terrified I would just be unable to.

Maybe it's true that God only gives us problems to deal with that he's sure we can handle. Because, despite her initial ugliness, Mandolin was perfect. Better than. She excelled at everything -- spoke early, walked early, learned quickly. She was eager for everything. She was a direct answer to everything I had been afraid of.

And it was so overwhelming that I started to hate her. I couldn't help it. I loved her so fiercely, I knew her, I was what was best for her. Every step she learned to take was an indication that someday she would walk away from me. As she filled up with words and ideas and information, the mine-ness in her was crowded out. Her independence sickened me.

But somehow I let these feelings exist. She would be sitting on the floor and pick up a block, and I would take it from her and then give it back to her, to instill in her the idea that I was the one who made these decisions for her. In the nine months it took her to be born, I was also reborn, as a sick puppet master. I am reminded, now, of the times in my adolescence when my Mama would laugh at me folding the laundry. I would venture to guess that she was fighting the same feelings of hatred, of despite -- she just manifested them differently. I was so far gone, in her case, that all she could do was laugh cruelly at me, and know that I was no longer hers. And I suppose she knew, too, that that laughter, and everything that led up to it, made me hate her in return. How bitter that must have been.

And how lucky I was, then, that Mandy never hated me. She went her own way, of course, and it broke my jealous heart, but I don't think she ever hated me. Or maybe that's the curse of the weaker sex, as it were -- the love and the ownership are so intensely overwhelming, and yet it's not guaranteed to be a two-way street. Maybe love and hatred are the same thing.

-------
Word count: 965