Switched at Birth: The True Story of a Mother's Journey (14 page)

But it’s doctor’s orders. So I walk.

I meander slowly, past the nurse’s station (smiling to myself as they continue to gush to each other about having just met a real KC Royal) and on toward the waiting lounge. I see a man buying a Snickers from the vending machine, and an elderly couple—grandparents to be, I assume, beaming at each other in anticipation of a new little one to spoil.

I shuffle onward. I turn the corner …

And here is what is so bizarre. In the memory, I am surprised, but back of my chair in the hypnotist’s inner sanctum, it is as if I already knew.

She was there. She
is
there.
Here
.

Regina! Regina is standing at the broad glass window of the nursery.

I see her as plainly as I saw her just that morning in the driveway, where she asked me if Daphne had left her trigonometry notebook in my kitchen.

Her dark hair is pulled up in a loose knot and she isn’t wearing any makeup, but I am startled by how pretty this young woman is. She is still a little heavy around the middle since our deliveries only occurred the day before.

I peer at her from the future, through the eyes of my reminiscence, and I see vividly the smoothness of her not-yet-thirty-year-old face, the fine tautness of the skin on her artist’s hands. This stranger I knew would be here in this dream. This memory of a person who will come to share my life in a way I couldn’t possibly imagine. I am confusing my tenses. I am here and there at the same time, and the understanding is somewhere in between.

Everything connects, everything is intertwined.

I see her yellow chenille robe and her scuff slippers.

I see that there is no ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.

I see someone who has not been driven to this hospital in her husband’s Range Rover, listening to him say “I told you so” about eating take-out Indian food.

She must feel me staring at her, because she turns away from the glass.

I feel the movement of her head here in the future—or the present—I feel her turning to meet my eyes. And she smiles. Quick, small. A guarded smile, but one that says, “I know exactly how you feel.”

“My doctor wants me to walk,” I hear myself say.

The words come out of the past, and I imagine them echoing in the hypnotist’s office. I spoke to her. Dear God, we actually chatted!

“Mine, too,” she says. “The Mommy Marathon.”

I laugh. “The Postpartum Parade.”

She smiles again. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl.” I sigh. I am still giddy about it. “You?”

“Girl.”

And then the lactation coach is appearing at Regina’s side and ushering her back to her room to begin the process of learning to feed her daughter. Who is my daughter.

And as I watch her go, I hear the voice of the hypnotist crossing the cognitive plane that separates then from now, before from after. He is calling me back, telling me it’s time to climb the stairs out of my subconscious. I have unlocked a memory, and I carry it back with me.

It was time to return to the leather chair.

I drifted upward, losing that sense of long ago and drawing back toward right this minute. Then he clapped his hands and I opened my eyes.

“You remembered something,” he said. It was not a question. He knew.

I nodded.

As I paid him for his weird but much appreciated services, I made some silly joke about hoping I wouldn’t cluck like a chicken every time someone snapped their fingers. He gave me a look that said, “Oh, like I’ve never heard that one before.”

And then I left.

As I drove home, I went back over the memory I’d just stepped out of. There was something profound in what I had just experienced, something that once again goes back to the idea of fate and karma. Regina and I, for whatever reason, were bound. Destined to collide, to interact, to join forces. We inhabited that moment together, and although it seemed so inconsequential at the time, I take great comfort now in knowing that our journey began face-to-face. We hadn’t known it, and neither of us actively remembered it—consciously, at any rate—but we’d stepped into this whirlwind having already made a connection.

The robe, the slippers, the ringless finger, the smooth flawless skin—all of that had been tucked away in my memory. In some abstract way, I had been carrying Regina around with me for sixteen years. It was just a matter of finding her.

Like a Gunne Sax dress and an embroidered white windbreaker. You just have to know where to look for them.

I have two heroes. Heroines, actually. And I’m proud to say that both of them call me Mom.

Throughout this journey, Bay and Daphne have been the two people who have juggled the most emotions, who’ve had to face the most profound changes. For Regina and John and me, it has been trying, to say the least, but at no time were our very identities swept away from us. Bay and Daphne, who at sixteen were only just settling in to a sense of self when we discovered the switch, were suddenly forced to ask themselves two questions that would frighten most full-grown adults: Who am I? And where do I belong? The grace and courage with which they have taken on the challenge of answering these questions has amazed me.

This is not to say there weren’t some highly tense moments between them.

Part of it, I think, may have been my fault, and that was because I was making the jump from being the mother of two to being the mother of three.

I think about it now and I know that this is a problem all parents have to deal with at some point: striking a balance. The rule is “no playing favorites,” and as rules go, it’s a good one. But frankly, sometimes it is impossible to find an equitable middle ground. Sometimes, one kid’s immediate needs simply outweigh another’s. It’s a squeaky wheel scenario. And to be honest, there were days, if you asked me which kid was my favorite, I’d have told you, “Well, since Toby broke the dishwasher by trying to steam clean his drumsticks, and then told the babysitter that when Mommy can’t find the car keys she uses the S-word, today Bay is my favorite.” But there were other times when I would have answered, “Bay just hosted a séance to contact the ghost of her friend’s deceased hamster and nearly burned down the house because she forgot to blow out all the candles she lit, so today, Toby is my favorite.”

But those would be votes cast in the heat of a very stressful moment. I have always loved both of my two children with equal intensity.

And then we learned about the switch and I suddenly found myself loving three.

I’m sure I made mistakes in those first few weeks. I’m sure Bay must have felt as though all of my attention was focused on Daphne then. And she was probably right. Daphne was not only new to us, she is deaf. We had to learn to speak her language, and to adjust things about our daily lives that until now had been second nature.

But here’s the thing. All kids speak their own language. Bay’s, as we found out, was “Art with an acerbic accent.” Toby’s was “Rock ’n’ Roll,” but he was also fluent in Cleverness, and he is learning to speak Wisdom. All kids are different, and that is the gift they bring us.

Bay never said anything directly about feeling overlooked (and Bay is nothing if not direct), but I think someday, when she’s feeling less vulnerable, she’ll call me out on it. I won’t blame her, either.

And when that happens, I will tell her that I am sorry. I will not defend my mistakes, but I will ask her to try and understand. The equation of our life had a new variable in it, and we had to solve that. Bay was a given; Daphne was as yet an unknown.

And I will tell her that I loved her through it all, even when I seemed to be occupied elsewhere. I will tell her that she was as present in my heart as she ever was. The addition of Daphne to our family did not subtract from my love for Bay.

Lately, I’m happy to say I’ve noticed a positive shift in the dynamic here at Chez Kennish-Vasquez. Bay told me that she’s finally figured out how to classify Daphne when anyone asks her to explain their relationship. “I tell them she’s my brother’s sister. And when they say, ‘Doesn’t that make her your sister, too?” I say, “Nope. But I’m her brother’s sister, also. Oh, and she’s my mother’s daughter.”

I laughed, even though it sounded a little like a pitch for a Jerry Springer special to me.

And just the other day, I looked out my window and saw Daphne and Bay in the driveway, bent over a giant homemade banner. From where I stood, it looked like teamwork in the making. Later I found out that Daphne had planned to use the painted sign to invite her boyfriend to the Carlton prom.

Daphne was about to discover the advantages to having her brother’s super-creative sister in her corner. With Bay’s help, Daphne put together a skit that had her dressed as a law enforcement officer arresting this lucky boy and charging him with taking her to the prom.

I understand there were even handcuffs involved. I chose not to ask much after hearing that.

And a few weeks before, Daphne had helped Bay provide Bay’s boyfriend, Emmett, with the birthday gift of a lifetime. The girls turned our property into a movie set and filmed a zombie movie, all of the dialogue in which was done in sign language. Regina did hair, John and Toby were extras, Bay starred, and Daphne directed.

And I set up a well-stocked craft services table in my dining room!

It was a meeting of the minds, for all of us. A pooling of skills, a celebration of all our individual talents and gifts.

But of course, this spirit of collaboration wasn’t always our mantra. In fact, during the first months of this daring experiment in cohabitation, this place was a veritable powder keg.

Early on there was scuffle, a territorial dispute between Bay and Daphne. Over what? Well, when you consider our circumstances, it probably could have been over anything, but remember, these are teenage girls we’re talking about, so you go ahead and take a shot in the dark.

If you guessed boys, you get the prize. But it was inevitable, I suppose.

I was in the process of planning a school fund-raiser, and I was both thrilled and anxious about having Regina and Daphne attend. We were still reeling from the switch, and I was concerned about how people would react when our “news” went public. Aside from my own insecurities about myself as a mother, I was worried about how people would treat Bay when they found out that she wasn’t “really” ours.

My concerns for Daphne were less frantic. I knew she would have the advantage of being the pretty new girl, and her sweet, sunny disposition wouldn’t hurt either. I worried a little bit about her being deaf. People would be polite, but clumsy, and probably curious. They would struggle to say the right thing and would probably say the wrong one. They might even say “handicapped,” and Regina would bristle, but Daphne would be patient and forgiving. Basically, though, I couldn’t imagine any of the well-heeled folks in my social circle being anything but courteous, with an eye toward politically correct.

Bay was clearly in the more difficult spot.

Would people suddenly think of her as a stranger despite the fact that she’d lived here all her life? Would she be seen as a pretender to the lifestyle and all that it afforded her? After all this time, would she suddenly be treated like an outsider?

Anyway, with no choice left but to put my fears aside, I invited Daphne and Regina to the fund-raiser bash.

Daphne was excited. “Can I invite my boyfriend?” she asked.

Mention of a significant other took everyone by surprise. But I was able to ask, “What’s his name?” and it barely sounded like prying at all. “I’ll put him on the guest list.”

“Liam,” Daphne announced, giddy in that way that only a new boyfriend can make a girl giddy. “Liam Lupo.”

This bombshell made Bay the very opposite of giddy. “Wait....
My
Liam?” She sounded as though she’d just been ambushed.

I was with Bay on this one. It didn’t make sense. “How are you dating Liam?” I asked Daphne.

Daphne signed and spoke: “I met him when I visited Bay’s school.”

“Who is Liam?” Regina asked, even more waylaid than I was.

I answered, and Daphne turned to Regina for the ASL interpretation. “Bay’s boyfriend.”

“What?!” Now it was Daphne’s turn to look ambushed. “He never told me he was going out with you.”

“We’re not,” Bay grumbled. “Anymore.”

Ambush number three! I turned to my dark-haired daughter. “You broke up with Liam and you didn’t tell me?”

“Not the point, Mom,” Bay told me, then shifted a look at Daphne. “You’re dating someone from my school and you didn’t think it was worth mentioning before now?”

The firestorm went back and forth like this for a few minutes, Bay with her own perfected and branded angry teenage sneer, and Daphne’s fingers fluttering and flying with the passion and pace of the conversation.

“Look,” I cut in, not wanting this to erupt into a full-on battle. “I’m sure we can figure this all out....”

But Bay had yet another surprise up her black lace sleeve. “No, Mom. It’s fine. Besides, I’m dating someone else now.” She shot Daphne a smug look. “His name’s Ty.”

“Wait,” said Daphne. “My Ty?”

“No,” Bay snapped. “
My
Ty.”