Motherhood is Not for Wimps

The Briar Haven Series begins with Part I — The Demon Lives At Seven

No one greets me at the Briar Haven gate this time.

“I’m here to collect my daughter,” I say to one of four girls tinkering with some pup tents on the front lawn.

“She’s probably at activities,” they say, and then offer to holler her name for me.

I kind of hoped they were going to do that.

We count to three, and I join them in bellowing her name up the hillside.

A few seconds later, the faint echo of the return call:

“Cooooming!”

I look toward the sound. It has come from the water’s edge, where Mary sits with a cluster of girls on the teeter-totters; her head raised like a curious golden retriever, looking for me.

And then for the first time in three decades, my own name echoes on the hillside, a new name, a better name, an astonishing one.

“MOMMA!”

“BABY!!” I raise my arms and wave before I can stop myself, dorky and maternal and hopelessly excited.

She stands, starts toward me, and then shrieks and dives behind a tree.

It takes me a solid minute to cross the field. I had sort of pictured that at this moment we would be running into each other’s arms. Instead, I am talking to her through a Douglas Fir.

“I DON’T WANT TO GO!” she says. “I’m not ready!”

“Oh,” I say.

“Do you have your wallet?” she asks.

“What do you need?”

“Two more weeks,” she answers.

“Sounds like it went well,” I say.

“Momma, Briar Haven is THE BEST PLACE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET AND I AM NOT DONE YET.”

I laugh. Finally she comes out from behind the tree, hugs me, but only briefly, and then I ask her for a tour.

“But don’t you know Briar Haven?” she asks.

“This is your place now. I want you to show it to me.”

She walks me along the buildings of my childhood summers – the rickety steps to the dining hall with its long battered wood tables and little glasses of wildflowers. The assembly hall with the stone fireplace and the piano that’s probably the same one on which I learned to play “Chopsticks.”

Camp rosters going back 40 years are painted on the ceiling. I locate mine – 1982, ’83, ’84 – and point to my name. Mare is mildly impressed, but mostly she is looking longingly at the full-session girls, who are singing and making things and squealing the way only girls can.

This is Briar Haven – not the private place of my memories, where I have been taken over the years by the odd whisper of lake and pine, the place of sadness and misty shame. I am here in corporeal, my feet on the dock, admiring a wooden canoe that is “old-fashioned” but was new when I paddled it. I am here watching that brown-legged girl of mine smile and wave at friends and explain to me the procedure for signing in and out of boating.

Finally, we are in the office. Mare wants to look at the pictures of girls in bloomers. Many of them have been replaced by photographs that are more recent, although to Mare they still seem ancient. She peers at long columns of girls in unit portraits from the late 1970s and early ‘80s. I’m not helping her find mine. (I have a copy of it in the basement – I am the drawn-faced girl, standing apart, with eyes that echo darkness.)

Behind us, the desk where I called my mother 28 years ago.

I deserved better.

The thought explodes in a flash of sadness, and is quickly gone.

What better is there than Cute Husband and me, and our babies and the Tilty-Floored Farmhouse? If something died here, something powerful and good was born here, too. I love the woman that miserable little girl became, I love her nerve and her ferocity, her empathy and passion for the life she has built for herself.

This is who I was meant to be, and it is good.

“It’s time,” I say to Mare.

I load up the trunk and the duffle. Mare says her goodbyes. Amy Williams whispers in my ear, “She’s a really special girl.”

I drive away with my sobbing special girl, and now the old memories are no longer the only ones. I am a proud Havener Mother. The whole way home Mary tells me about campcraft, and canoeing and the ZIP WIRE! – Yes, she did it, and she didn’t even need a push and it was the most amazing thing ever.

I am grateful to – have come to love – the place that has cared for my daughter so well, and which in its own way protected me as best as was possible.

That night is the first in twelve that I sleep soundly. I have no idea where the phone is and there isn’t anything anybody has to say to me that can’t wait.

I get up early and make crêpes. Ren is still asleep, Eden is stomping around, and Mare is outside using her camp knife to make a fairy wand to surprise her sisters.

She comes in with blood running down her hand.

I grab the First Aid kit and execute a perfect, Briar Haven-trained pressure dressing. Cute Husband stays with the Littles and I put Mare in the car for the Emergency Room.

She sobs that she doesn’t want stitches. I tell her she can’t control whether or not she is getting stitches, so it’s best to stay calm and see what comes.

She is not calm. She is shrieking. She is Freaking Out.

“Hey, want to hear a funny story?” I ask her. “Your fifth night at camp, I lost my mind and called the director.”

“You did?” she asks, sniffling. “Why?”

“Because I missed my baybeee!!” I sing-song. She giggles. “They said you were picking blueberries, and I said, ‘Doesn’t she need her Mommy?’ and they said, ‘Um, no. Not really. Seems fine.’”

Mare laughs.

“It’s true, I didn’t need you,” she says smugly. “I didn’t miss you, once.” And for a few minutes she is quiet and happy … and then she’s bawling again, begging me to tell her she’s not going to have stitches.

The PA at the emergency room peels back the bloody gauze, looks up at me and nods.

“Do I need stitches?” Mare gulps.

“We’ll give her Tylenol and we can do a topical anesthetic cream,” he says. “Followed by an injection to numb the area and then we’ll do the procedure.”

“Okay,” I say.

Her eyes dart to me.

“AM I GETTING STITCHES?”

“You are, my love,” I answer.

“Nooooo!!!” – the shriek is consciousness-shattering.

“I’m wondering whether we could give her a little something else?” I ask.

“I don’t like to sedate them,” he answers, “if I don’t have to.”

His call of course, but I am curious as to what “have to” looks like.

He sets us up in a bed and assigns me the job of soothing her before he returns to suture. I do my very best, and she is calm when we are alone, but every time the PA walks back into the room she starts howling like a cornered rabid dog with an attitude problem.

Finally someone coughs up half an Ativan.

Twenty minutes later, she is singing Briar Haven songs and giggling. We pass a lovely spell going through all the old favorites, while I think, “Look! Here’s me, with my loopy cracked-up daughter singing ‘Down By the Riverside.’”

She tells me she’s sleepy, so I tuck her in and stroke her hair, and when the PA comes back into the room, Mare is scared, but not shrieking. I sit on the side opposite the injury and tell her to keep her eyes on me. A nurse is holding her arm. I glance just in time to see it: the needle filled with anesthetic, which the PA pushes deep into the flesh beside Mare’s wound. He moves it around, pressing down on the plunger. She squeals.

“You’re doing so well,” I say. “It’s hard work, to be brave. I know it hurts, but remember that it isn’t actually harming you. It’s just pain.”

The syringe is finally empty. He withdraws it from her hand and opens a package of long black thread.

“Is he going to do the stitches now?” she asks.

“You won’t feel the stitches,” I say. “Hardest part’s over.” I stroke her hair. She pulls my face down to hers, clutches me.

“I need you.”

“I’m here,” I say.

Suturing goes easily – no pain and it’s over quickly. Dr. Button can take the stitches out at his office in a week.

Soon Mare is giggling again and we are leaving the hospital, my hand on her elbow to steady her because she doesn’t know she can’t walk straight.

For the second time in 24 hours, I put her in the car for home. She buckles her seatbelt, asks if we can still go to the playground this afternoon, looks quietly out the window.

And then she says:

“I think I don’t need you because I know that if I did need you, you would be there.”

“Sounds just right to me,” I say.

And we sing “Down By the Riverside” all the way home.

Briar Haven, Part I — The Demon Lives at Seven

We pour Mare a bowl of Shredded Spoonfuls and sit at the table with her.  She is wide-eyed and pale.  Cute Husband cracks jokes, which I am so grateful for.  The jokes center around monkey poop – somehow they always do – and Mare laughs.

We tell her to finish her cereal.  She asks what happens if she doesn’t and we say she can’t go if she doesn’t and she eats slowly.

But she finishes.

We go outside and I show her the trunk, already loaded into the back of the Loser Cruiser.   I stayed up last night watching West Wing and stenciling her name in clean white above my own faded one.   She is ecstatic, and poses for a picture with her Dad.

And then I say, “It’s time.” Her face falls. She puts her arms around him for a goodbye hug and I walk off to give them a minute.  I hear her choking into his shoulder, him patting her back and whispering in her ear.  

Then I hear, “Monkey poop,” and she laughs and gets into the car.

“You’re very brave,” he says to me through the open window.  Followed by, “No barfing until after you’ve dropped her off,” and then I am backing the Loser Cruiser out and Mary is bawling, waving, looking back at Clover Hill and the Tilty-Floored Farmhouse where her sisters are still sleeping. 

“This is so hard!” she wails.

“It is,” I say.  “All the great things are.”

There is, of course, no way I am doing this without very strong coffee.  By the time we hit the Starbucks drive-through a few miles down the road from home, Mare is breathing normally with only a few sniffles.  She asks for a lemon loaf and right away I think, “She’s much better off than I was.  I could never eat.”

Once we are back on the road, I ask Mare how she is feeling. I say her right hand is “nervousness” and her left hand is “excitement” and ask her to show me where they are relative to each other.  She holds her hands flat and raises nervousness just above excitement.

“But when we were leaving, Momma,” she says, “nervousness was up here.”  Her hand hits the roof.

“Well, baby that was the hardest part, and it was ten minutes ago and already things are leveling out, so you’re doing great.”

She really is doing great.

“I wanted to tell you to turn around and take me back,” she says.  “I didn’t want to go any more.”

“Yes.  That’s what happens when you feel that bad – you don’t think clearly.  It’s very important to have a plan for those times so you don’t rely on your thinking of the moment, but on what you figured out ahead of time.”

She nods, chewing.

“I thought about all the great things I would be passing up and how sorry I would be,”   she says.   “So I kept going.”

We are turning on to the highway, the same one we have turned on to at least once a day for the last three years.  It leads to school, and the mall and ballet class. 

This time, it will lead to Briar Haven.

I will never forget that this is where she said that.

“That is very adult thinking, Mare,” I say. 

“Are you sure I am ready?”

“Yes.  I really am.”

“I think this is how I will feel on the ropes course.  I will want to go down the zip line but I will be too terrified to go, but I’ll know if I don’t do it I’ll always wish I had.  Do you think someone would shove me off the platform?  I would want someone to shove me so I wouldn’t have to jump.”

“You can ask,” I answer.

And then we’re on the highway and I begin the long hours of saying the last things I will say to her before she goes.  Periodically, I ask her to show me her hands.  Nervous and excited change positions once or twice but remain close together.  Nervousness does not hit the roof again.

I find Briar Haven easily.  It is the same hand-carved wooden sign at the gate, topped off by the hanging basket of petunias that manage to be the exact shade of pink I remember.

We park, and the efficient Briar Haven staff whisks the trunk and duffle out of the back of the car and into a pickup.  We are approached by a young woman with long curly hair and a daisy behind her ear.  She is wearing camp shorts and flowered Wellie rain boots.   She is the head of boating, and she is adorable.

“Okay, Mare,” she says, putting an arm around my kid. “You excited?”

Mare nods, pale.

“Your counselor is Amy Williams.  She’s up in your cabin waiting for you.  We don’t have phones to let her know you’re here, so want to see what we do?”  She cups her mouth, inhales, and then shouts:

“Aaaaaaamy Wiiiiiiiiliams!”

A few yards down a counselor walking to Arts and Crafts repeats the call.  Campers passing her shout it, and more campers and counselors echo it further and further up the hillside until we hear a faint call back:

“Coooomming!”  – brought down the hillside on five more voices.

“WOW!” Mare says.

A minute later, a fit young woman is standing next to us.  Her long chestnut hair is gathered in a trim ponytail at the base of her neck.  She has perfect skin and a competent, serene smile.

Around her neck are three string necklaces, with little circles of birch wood hanging off them.  Mare’s name is written on one.  Amy takes it off and slips it over her head.

“WOW!” she beams.

My daughter is now a Havener.

Amy walks us up the hillside toward the cabins, and I am sick and fascinated.  I am seven years-old again, in the woods buzzing with girls, making our beds, walking to the wash house, playing cards while we wait for our morning activity period to begin.

It looks the same, I suppose, but I’m not sure I really remember it.

It seems overgrown. 

And then I realize that trees grow a lot in 28 years. 

“That was my cabin, Mare,” I say, pointing when I finally orient myself.

“WOW!!” she says.

Mare’s cabin is right next to the swings.  (“WOW!”) She is the first to arrive, so she gets her choice of bed.  I assume she will do what I did and go for the one along the window, with a view of the sky when you can’t sleep.  No, Mare picks the bed that is between the other two, “So I can talk to both of them!!” she squeals.

Her trunk is not there yet, so Amy suggests we all go to the infirmary to wait in line to file health forms.

Mare can’t stop talking.

“I am so glad you’re my counselor!” she says.  “I feel like we’re the same –  but we’re also different and I like different because the world would be so boring if everyone were the same and if we were all the same there would be no Olympics!”

Amy looks a little overwhelmed.  Mare looks like she holds a degree in history and has been a counselor here for two years.

And then the bugle sounds and it’s like a special little instruction straight to my stomach to deposit its contents on the infirmary  porch –  but I remember Cute Husband’s edict, and then imagine telling Karin later how I had to stop myself from executing a duck-and-cover and shouting “PTSD!  P-T-S-D!!” in front of all those poor innocent girls.

Mary is still talking.

“Where’s the ropes course?”  she demands.

“There,” Amy points.

“Can I go?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“How?”

“You sign up.”

“Where do I sign up?”

“At breakfast.”

“Is it scary?  Is the zip wire scary?  Will someone push me if I am too afraid to go?”

Mare is excited, I am nervous – it’s getting worse and I can’t be here any more.

We go back to the cabin, where we find her trunk and duffle, and I make her bed as I’d promised I would.

My mother used to make perfect hospital corners, tucking my wool camping blankets in around the thin striped mattress.  I never wanted to send my sheets to the laundry the first time because then she would be gone.

Mare’s not going to be here long enough to do laundry.

I take out and unroll the foam egg carton mattress pad.  I put it down and cover it with the fitted sheet.  Next, the long flat sheet. 

The steel frame of the bed is exactly the same one I remember, which means I know to stop the sheet at the curve of the bolt that holds the legs on.  This will give me enough to fold back over, nicely, to keep the scratchy blanket from irritating her chin.

I lay down the new purple fleece blanket.  Over it, the old red watch camping blanket, a real honest-to-God wool one.  It was Ducky’s.  Last: two pillows — fluffy pink ones.  

The bed is now unmistakably Mare’s. 

I send Mare outside to the swings and turn to Amy.

“What’s your procedure on homesickness?” I say.

“I stay up with them,” she answers.  “I help them make a plan for what they’re going to do the next day.  I don’t sleep until they do. – Are you okay?”

I am shaking.   My skin is cold and damp in the hot summer morning.

“A bad case of homesickness lasts two nights,” she tells me gently.  “I’ve never had one go longer.”

“And if it does?”

“We call you.”

“Okay,” I say.

I walk down the cabin steps and over to the swings, which Mare has climbed in order to improve her chances of scaling the tree behind them.  Amy is behind me, at a respectful distance.   She feels like the executioner, looming over my shoulder.

“It’s time,” I say.

“I don’t want you to go,” Mare’s blue eyes are huge.

I hug her, kiss her, turn away.

“Let’s go unpack,” Amy says.

I start down the hillside, listening for Mare to call me back, but what I hear is the sound of her feet going up the cabin steps.

There’s your shove, baby girl.  Momma loves you.

I find the Loser Cruiser, incongruous to me here at Briar Haven — like my cell phone, my wedding band, the stretch marks and crow’s feet and extra twenty pounds. 

I consider taking myself on a quick tour of the dining hall and the dock but then I hear:

“AAAAMY WILLIAMS!”

Mare will be coming down with Amy in a minute to collect her first bunkmate, and I must be gone. Her place is here and mine is back at the Tilty-Floored Farmhouse where life must go on for the next week with meals and swim lessons and trips to the market.

I start the car, roll along the gravel to the main entrance. If I take a right, back toward the highway, Mary will see me.  So instead I go left, and in no time at all I am bawling hysterically on some back country road with no idea where I am and no cell signal.  (Forget a road map – I haven’t seen one of those since the late ‘90s.)

I drive and cry and admire the countryside, which is familiar only because I am going in circles.

It is an hour before I sort myself out, find the highway, and gather speed away from Mary.

When I get home, Cute Husband and I take the Littles to Cambridge.  We feed them Nutella crepes and then go to our favorite bar where Cute Husband buys me a stiff drink.  My stomach won’t tolerate it so I have water instead and a few bites of fish taco.

When the sun sets, I lose all rationality.  I clutch my cell phone in the darkness of the bedroom and wait for it to ring.  I consider an e-mail to the camp director demanding that she tell me exactly what is going on with my daughter at that precise moment.   I fantasize about driving back just to sneak up the hillside and check on her.

I am convinced that I have broken my healthy daughter.  That she is breaking right now and it’s my fault and it’s too late to stop it.

I tell myself – over and over – that what I am thinking right now doesn’t count.  This plan looked right when I was rational, so it is right, and if I wait to feel better it will look right again.