For Al

Romance isn’t dead, at least not in our home. 

But let me start again. 

It’s a little over seven years ago. Picture us driving to pick up our baby, a safe delivery, a little girl born in a hospital in Southfield, Michigan. Picture me crying most of the way there. Yes, happy tears, but also tears for fears. Wow, I finally understood the meaning behind the silly name of that 80s English pop band. 

Speaking of names, my husband and I didn’t have one. We’d planned on calling a girl Harper Lee, but the birthmother asked if the baby she carried and brought into this world could have a name beginning with A. Her name began with the first letter of the alphabet. Her other two children had names beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. 

Such a small request considering the weight of her gift. Plus, our names started with A, too. What’s in a name anyway? Most would view this as mere coincidence. I don’t know that I’d label it fate, but I would deem it poetic.

Speaking of poetry, I don’t read nearly enough. Still, I do have poems I turn to again and again. Seven years ago on our drive to Southfield we listened to Marie Howe read and talk about her life on "Fresh Air." (I wholeheartedly encourage you to click on the link and listen to the program in its entirety.) I haven’t found the words to describe how much her interview and reading moved me. Toward the end of the program, Howe says, “Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die.”

I didn’t have one of those aha moments. I had one of those Holy Shit experiences. 

Picking up a new life and those words, combined with her own story of becoming an adoptive mother late in life, and oh by the way, her poems—accessible, mystical, illuminating—they filled me with such hope and gratitude. Hope that it was possible for me to tiptoe down the plank blindfolded and plunge into motherhood. Gratitude for the privilege of being able to at last do so, and maybe most of all, for being alive in that very place and space in time, for being able to feel every bit of that roller coaster rise and fall of joy and terror. 

Without listening to Howe, without sitting in that car beside my bundle of bouncing energy, without signing your shaky signature on the paperwork, without stepping through the whoosh of the doors of that sterile Catholic hospital, without laying eyes on itty-bitty sleeping Ava—the nurses both happy and sad to see her go (these days there aren’t many babies rooming in hospital nurseries for them to ooh and ahh over)—without feeding her for the first time (How do you hold a bottle? How do you burp a baby?), without driving away with the sudden responsibility of this living and breathing being next to you in the back, nestled in the car seat you quadruple checked was snapped in place, I realize probably none of this seems earth shattering to you. Forgive that last run on. If only you could’ve rode shotgun the day our daughter came into our life. That same day Marie Howe sparked the reassurance I so desperately needed. 

I bought two of her books, What the Living Do and The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, within days of returning home with Ava. The title poem in What the Living Do about the death of Howe’s brother struck a visceral chord with me. It continues to strike that chord. To this day I can’t read or hear it without the hairs on my arms standing at attention or my eyes welling. Two hundred and thirty-nine words that together pack such a heartbreaking punch. 

And boy am I a sucker for heartbreaking punches. My husband of almost twenty-one years knows this painfully well. He’s not a bring home flowers on a random Tuesday kinda guy. He’s not a gush about his spouse on social media kinda guy. He’s not the kinda guy who proposes to his girlfriend of eight years by popping the question with skywriting at halftime or a diamond ring buried in a chocolate soufflé. 

For this I say thank God. 

He may lose his wallet or his phone on the daily. He may leave drawers hanging open like dumbfounded mouths. He may be enthusiastically devoted to clutter. His mind may be burdened with fantasy football, buying and selling cars or “House of Cards.” (Damn you for being an asshole, Kevin Spacey!) He may hate to fly and to put up the Christmas tree. He may love Jell-O salads and Phish jams lasting fifty-nine thousand minutes. (Are there any other kind?) He may forget the key ingredient for the soup and the casserole, but recall an urgent need for underwear and canned corn. All first-world struggles. All what the living do. 

For this and more I say thank God. 

But let me circle back to the beginning. 

It’s mid-to-late October, 2018. Picture What the Living Do pulled from the shelf, innocently stacked atop my husband’s New Yorkers, right there next to his glasses and hair tie and water bottle and iPad and discarded socks, and my interrogation regarding said discovery. What’re you reading? Why are you reading this now? Have you read it before? Do you know how much this book means to me?

Yes, I know and I have, he says. I remember. I always like to read it around this time of year. 

Picture me nodding and then returning to the everyday business of life, the retrieval of stray socks and empty water bottles, or the unpacking of half-eaten apple slices or half-exploded Go-Gurt in Ava’s lunchbox. All the while my husband prepares and plots for my birthday gift … what I’d intended to be the trip we recently took to Mackinac Island. 

Despite my best intentions—I’m not a “make a big fuss over my birthday” kinda girl—Al says he has an errand to run one early November afternoon. I'll be home soon. I’m picking something up for you. 

The “Something He Picked Up for Me”: Not only did he go to the trouble of having some of his sweet coworkers orchestrate the layout (thank you), but also called Marie Howe at Sarah Lawrence College to tell her our story. She graciously agreed to sign the poem (thank you, thank you) and Al had it framed. “What the Living Do” now hangs in our living room.