Rescuing Julia Twice (31 page)

Wendy is a middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a firm handshake. She leads me to her desk and looks me in the eye when I talk.

“I'm looking for a better preschool for Julia,” I say. “I'm unhappy with Palisades.”

“Why's that?” she asks directly.

“For one, the atmosphere there is dingy and depressing,” I say. “More important, I don't think they have the skills to handle Julia.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, in fairness, I never sat down with the director and explained Julia's situation, but even so, my daughter was not thriving there.”

“I understand,” she says.

She waits for me to continue.

I spool out Julia's story, telling Wendy that Julia is adopted and she has a repertoire of odd social behavior. I'm terribly concerned about her socialization, I explain. I assure her Julia doesn't appear to have any learning or cognitive disabilities. In fact, everyone believes she's a very bright child. But she is not interested in other children, which is troubling. She may appear friendly and vivacious, but she doesn't engage in genuine interaction or connection. She's been in daycare since she was two and has been in many children's classes, and she never bonds. No one ever calls us to make a playdate. Ever.

I take a breath. Wendy's face is open and kind.

Then I tell her what I believe is most critical. Julia seeks out the weakest female teacher or authority figure and wraps that person around her deft fingers. What she really needs, I explain, is a disciplined environment where the teacher is nurturing but maintains distance and does not baby her.

“I get what you're saying,” she says. “We have a few other international adoptions here. I understand your concerns.

“C'mon,” she says, squeezing my arm. “Let me show you around.”

We leave the small crook where her desk sits and she leads me through two light-filled classrooms. She points out hanging artwork and a nook for books and cubbies and a bathroom. Children bring lunch. I follow her outside. Wow! It's how a Fresh Air Fund city kid must feel when he arrives at an upstate camp. There are two in-ground swimming pools, swings, jungle gyms, sandboxes, and lots of room to run. There are grassy areas to sit in and a picnic table.

“This is awesome,” I gush.

Wendy tells me about the summer program. Kids take swim lessons twice per day, and they spend most of the time outdoors, weather permitting.

My heart is a helium-filled balloon, wrestling to tear itself from my chest.

“I'll get you the application and a check by the end of the week.”

“Great. Camp starts in two weeks.” She hands me a bunch of forms and walks with me to the front door.

Shaking my hand, she says, “Don't worry. Julia will be happy here. And really, I've heard what you had to say.”

I step gingerly into the parking lot. I get in the car and drive a mile up the hill to our home. I pull into the driveway, turn off the ignition, and lean back in the driver's seat. I snap open my cell phone.

“I'm switching Julia's preschool,” I say. “That place around the corner, Playgarten. It's paradise.”

“Great,” Ricky says. “Let the wild rumpus begin!”

The hulking Victorian house sits across from the railroad tracks in the shadows of tall trees. I park at the back and scramble up a skinny flight of stairs in the dimly lit hallway to the therapist's office. Neal is a lanky man, looming at six feet, with a bushy beard and a pile of dark hair.

“Tina?” he says with his head cocked and a tight smile, “Your mother's not here yet. Go on in and make yourself comfortable.”

The high-ceiling wood-paneled room is musky and warm despite the humming air conditioner. Curtains are drawn, making it feel like a dreary March day rather than the searing July day that it is. Neal's walls are plastered with honorary degrees and baseball paraphernalia. Stacks of folders rise like accordions atop his worn desk, which is chiseled into threadbare carpet. Wall-to-ceiling bookcases overflow.
Wait till Rosalie sees this,
I think to myself with a silent chuckle.
Neal's office—my unassuming town—it's a far cry from the sophisticated Manhattan therapists we both have known.

Three chairs have been arranged for the session. Two are situated close to one another; the third faces the other two. I slink into one of the paired chairs and pull my shirt away from my sopping skin. When my mother suggested she and I go into therapy a month ago, I'd barked, “Why, so we can rehash a decade's worth of anger?” But after she planted the seed, the idea of doing something to fix our broken relationship kept teasing me.
What if? Maybe it's the only solution left. Our last chance
to find one another again. My mother's not going to live forever. What if something happened to me first? And Julia—depriving her of grandparents? What have I been thinking? Doesn't a child with an attachment disorder need family to love her, even if that family is dysfunctional?

I took it as a sign from the universe that the timing of my mother's call was not coincidental. At the precise moment I was beginning to understand what it was like for Julia to cope with a traumatic break from her birth mother, I realized I was living with parallel pain. I knew what it was like to lose maternal love. My relationship with my mother, the relationship I always took for granted, confounds me. It unthreaded slowly at first, after my divorce. My mother and I had different ideas about how I should rebuild my life. We had never been at such extreme odds. We fought and accused one another of terrible things and equally showed our mutual disappointment. In the end, no matter how much of a hand I had in dissolving our love, I felt abandoned. My mother was no longer there for me, and I found myself mourning her. She was not dead, but she was dead to me.

Rosalie was everything to me when I was a child. Our bond strengthened as I went from my teen years to young adulthood. Even when I spread my wings and experimented with sex or smoking cigarettes, she cheered me on or caught me in a great big net of compassion. Either way, I couldn't lose because I knew that wherever I was, she was there too. She insinuated herself so deeply into me that I had trouble understanding the difference between me and her. It was stunning to watch something I presumed to be as solid as marble chip away.

Divorce had stripped away my privileges, my whole way of living. It horrified my mother, me going solo, seeking independence. She didn't trust it. She'd been taught that women couldn't take care of themselves, but I wasn't going to wait for Prince Charming to come to my rescue. I didn't want to be like her. Maybe that's what she understood deep down.
Maybe that's how I hurt her. Still, in the early years after my divorce, I believed she was there for me and always would be.

Letting go of my mother's love was a choice I made, and I guess I thought I could reverse it. Julia lost her mother's love before she even had a chance to know her. A mother's love can be replaced and repaired, but only if a clamped heart is willing to reopen and allow a second chance. Julia's heart has yet to decide whether it can open up, and if so, how much it can open. She'll never recover from that first love lost.

Julia suffers, though she's too young to understand why. Her unconscious yearning must be wrenching. I, at least, have my grudges or rationalizations to explain why I'm in pain. Like I said before, I don't think it's a random coincidence that Julia and I have been brought together by unseen forces. We are both afraid of mother-daughter intimacy because we know the stakes. Is it worth it to try again?

In early July, I decided to give therapy with my mother a shot.

Neal lingers on the landing. I hear my mother's lumbering footsteps clank up the stairs. Her breathing is labored. She is on time, which is unusual.

“Are you okay?” Neal yodels.

“I'm fine,” my mother says.

“Your daughter's here. Please, please, come in. We'll get started.”

I am startled to see how hunched my mother is when she enters the therapist's office. I haven't seen her in months.

“Hello, Tina,” my mother says in a disingenuous sing-song.

“Hello Rosalie,” I say, our eyes meeting. It's the only way we can touch. We have not physically embraced one another in years. “Find the place okay?”

“Your father drove me. He's gone to your town library to wait for me. Do I sit here?” she asks, gesturing to the chair close to me.

Neal nods, and she settles in.

Neal is eyeing us. What does our body language say? What does he already know? What have we already told him about us? He clears his throat. He stretches his long legs into the center of our circle, his large shoes cocked upward. I look at them to avoid my mother's eye.

“Mrs. Traster,” he says, addressing my mother. “I had an initial conversation with your daughter on the phone. She's explained that the two of you have been at odds for many years, that there's been a lot of strife in your family, but there is a mutual desire to repair things, especially for the sake of your granddaughter, Julia.”

He pauses, the way shrinks do, with a deep breath.

“Is that right?”

“Absolutely,” she says. “I have barely seen my granddaughter in four years. She's a stranger to me and my husband.”

“Okay,” he says, turning to me.

“From our earlier conversation, you've expressed a desire to work on the relationship with your mother,” he says. “Is that right?”

I nod, thinking about whether Julia even remembers Rosalie. And if she does, does she ponder what happened to her because she hasn't seen her in months? Did Rosalie simply disappear the way her mother did, the way adults seem to do all the time? I feel panicky. What if therapy works only in the short-term, and we introduce her again into Julia's life and then the bottom falls out?
Focus,
I tell myself.

“I want to hear from each of you, for just a few minutes, a summary to explain what you view as the heart of the problem. Tina, why don't you start?”

Heat flushes my face.

I look at Neal, not at my mother, while I explain my theories about why my mother and I have come apart. I tell him about the divorce, the disappointment we both felt toward one another, and how we've never recuperated because I have not felt emotionally supported.

I occasionally glance at my mother and I think and hope so completely with my whole bone marrow that she's hearing me for the first time in a decade.

My voice is unsteady, but I continue. I tell Neal how my mother has not been able to celebrate or relate to my choices, and therefore she has missed out on so much.

“Okay. That's a good beginning. Mrs. Traster. Your turn. Why are you here?”

“I don't know where to begin. My daughter and I used to be best friends. My friends would always comment on this. They couldn't believe the relationship we had. Tina was a special child. My husband and I gave her every opportunity in the world: college, Europe, traveling. A beautiful wedding at Tavern on the Green.”