On Definitions

How can I confess that I do not know the person I gave birth to; who literally came from within me? The truth is, I am constantly getting to know her – her definition grows, twists, vanishes then comes back, darkens then brightens, it is palpable and then it is barely evident – a whisper in my ear during a rock concert.

When she was a baby, I took her to story time at the library. She would have none of the rocking and the singing in mama’s lap. She sat in the center of the circle, or, when she learned to walk, as close to the book and to the storyteller as she could get.

“Hadley,” I’d murmur as loud as I could so as not to make too big of a scene in front of the librarian and the other mommies, whose kids were all sitting on their laps, waiting patiently for the page to turn, “you need to back up so everyone else can see the story.” She’d look at me to let me know she heard me, but turn back, shove her hands in her overalls, and take a step closer to the story.

She still does this – not at a library story time, and not in overalls – but at night, when I read to Hadley and Harper. She won’t always listen, she’ll stand outside the room where I read, her back turned. She’ll say she needs water, she’ll say she needs to ask Dad a question; she’ll say she’s too tired to listen. I hate when this happens, but I won’t stop this nightly ritual. I can’t let it go. Sometimes though, she sits next to me and rests her arm on my shoulder. It is not to say, “I’m glad to be here; I love you mama.” It is so she can get as close to the story as she possibly can. Sometimes, I cannot even see the words and I’ll tell her.

“Hadley,” I’ll say in another mumble, this time, to let her know this is not easy on me, “I can’t see.” She will look at me like she looked at me in the library when she was one – not out of disdain or belligerence, but simply to relay a fact: “I’m not backing up, so you and I will have to figure out how to read this story together.”

We do, sometimes. We make slight changes so the other feels comfortable, feels like she has part in the tale, or so that if one of us makes a mistake we are quick to point it out – neither of us quite trusting that the other is fully capable of narrating what it is that’s happening.

This has remained the same: when Jesse is traveling for work, and it’s well past when Hadley is suppose to be asleep, she comes downstairs to talk. She’ll begin standing and she’s direct: I have a question about, or, I can’t stop thinking about, and she names the subject, and I’ll sit up straighter and say, “OK,” drawing out the “K” carefully, hesitantly, unsure how to balance what I say so that I’m someone she will talk to, and not someone who probes. It does not matter the subject, and it hasn’t mattered what age she is, Hadley’s been doing this since she was old enough to climb out of her bed, and this is how she begins.

The closer she gets to me though, the less direct she’ll get. Now, she sits down, she drapes her legs on my lap, she grabs my hands, she gets as close to me as she possibly can. It is awkward and painful at times because she’s a bullet of a girl – all muscle and hips and elbows, and what she is trying to tell me is complicated and vague and I suppose she leans in so close because she is trying to understand this story with changing and twisting and darkening and brightening definitions and maybe talking to a teenager is like walking on a tightrope: you think you have balance, you think you know how to walk. You have no idea.

“Sometimes, things can’t be defined,” Hadley tells me on the night she has taken my place on the couch while I’m still on it. She is not grieving when she says this, rather, trying to understand this new fact of life.

I put a hand on her head, smooth out her hair, squeeze her shoulder, and tell her sometimes things don’t need to be defined. I tell her sometimes those are the best stories to live.