For the Daughter I Never Had with guest @TroccoloSusan

You know, your changes have nothing on mine. I’m getting older and quirkier by the day. I watch my body change and it is clear that I am not in control of anything, just whatever is peering from my eyes. It is funny—in the right mood—to see the skin take on a life of its own, folding and sagging in places and acquiring spots. Sometimes it stays put where I squeeze it, which is unnerving. And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges, says Shakespeare. Is this revenge? Is it malevolence when the skin folds and sags? And when stirring sugar in my coffee cup and for the tiniest fraction of a second, the teaspoon stops but the hand doesn’t, what do I do then? Look at my hand with murder in my eyes? Maybe I’m afraid my hand will betray me. Maybe I’m afraid it will all betray me. It will change, but this is no betrayal. Just a promise kept. The promise that is new life and the incendiary promise that life will end. Gardeners know about this. No daughter could save me from it. I can’t tell if what I long for is the usual legacy wish—keeping humanity going, though by all indications it’s going well enough without me. Is it the grandchild wish? Pictures in the wallet? The family to invite me to Thanksgiving when I’m eighty? Some rescue from loneliness? No. It is not a daughter’s job—to rescue her mother.

Still she haunts me, this daughter I never had. What if I’ve made her a placeholder for loss? All kinds of loss, some having nothing to do with her? What kind of thing is that to do to a daughter?

The question I hadn’t planned for came on a weekend away with friends. There were six of us—close women friends—away from our families, jobs and the usual responsibilities. We had known each other for years, so we were comfortable talking about everything.

After dinner, we sat on big pillows in front of the fireplace in a cozy old beach house. I remember hearing the waves breaking on the rocks outside and the hollow wooden chimes pushed around by the wind. Some of us had mugs of hot tea, with organic looking teabag labels draped over the top. We were a green tea crowd. There was a lot of talk about mothers and daughters; a lot of whining, complaining too.

My friend’s question was almost an afterthought: Your mom gave you so much in your early years, don’t you wish you had a daughter to share all this with? Nobody had ever put it like that before. A daughter. I thought my heart would break. I said—too quickly—“no, I have found ways to share.” But my eyes betrayed me and everybody saw it.

My friend’s face crumbled into horrified apology. She hadn’t meant to hurt. Reaching for a Kleenex, she said: “Of course, there are other ways to share!”

I’ve toyed on the edges of her question for years, and I have come to an honest answer. I didn’t have a child because I didn’t really want one. When the biological urge washed over me, I’d say to myself: wait forty-eight hours and see if you still feel this way. Two days would pass and the motherhood urges along with them. So, why dredge them up now?

Today—a summer’s day—in my garden, I think: This could be a good day to look at this daughter I never had. If I am going to look a heartache in the face, a garden is a good place to do it. It is time to explore this ache. It is time to knead it into something I can finally use.

I will knead it long; work in the oil, the salt, sweetness that makes it rise. Then I will bake it—laying out here in the sun—and eat it hot.

I pick a tomato from one of the vines and feel its hot red skin. I want my heartache to be visible so I can see its outlines, like the outlines of this tomato. But there is a catch: the details. I suppose I could tell my daughter about her childhood; children always want to know about their childhood.

You were the first miracle I’d ever known. Nobody had to tell me how to hold you. I wanted you to know my skin and my smell. I wanted to nuzzle your dark hair against my cheek. I was astonished to see that there were places on your head where I could see your life pulsing.

There is a pressure in my chest now. This might be harder than I had imagined. If I can only go with what I know in the garden—the hours I spend working without thinking, the hours tucking vines around their poles, feeding, suckering, watering, harvesting. The soil is warm today. Somebody planted that daughter in me years ago.

You were so silly sometimes. Once when you were a little girl, you escaped down the hallway after your bath because you didn’t want to put your clothes on. I caught up with you in my room looking at yourself in the full-length mirror laughing and pointing. What did you see there? I wanted to scoop you up in a fluffy towel and hold you, but you made a slippery escape and kept running.

Hot and perspiring now, I find a smooth place to lie on my back and watch the corn sway. There would never have been any guarantees. Who knows what you would have said to your friends at an all girl weekend while you held your mug of green tea? You might have said I never understood you and that you were glad to leave home. I wonder how my mother felt, before she died, about raising two daughters who were so different. I wonder if she ever thought about it or if parents just take that as a given. I’d like to think my sister and I could talk about anything, but we can’t. We have to keep the conversation light or my sister gets nervous. I make her nervous because I’m prone to introspection. Jill hates introspection. When she almost died from cirrhosis of the liver a few years ago, the moment I cherish most was the time she let me help her out of bed. She actually asked for some help. I try too hard with my sister, I know. Big sisters get a bad rap. Just as a joke during our last phone call, I said, “OK smart aleck, we’ll just take turns with the big sister thing. I was the big sister last year, now you be the big sister this year.” I heard all the air being sucked out of the line.

It was silent for a long time. I thought Jill was laughing, but she was crying, “No, I can’t. I can’t be the big sister. I’ll screw it up.”

Time passed and you had slumber parties and school plays. You had flute lessons and soccer practice. You outgrew your shoes and your wisdom teeth. Life was both better and harder because of you. We went one summer to a small town on the coast for vacation. You were ten years old that year with long legs like a colt. We walked on the old dock curling our toes at the edge of our sandals because of the long splinters in the sea-torn wood. It was September, but there was a chill in the air and fog in our pockets. We watched men loading wooden crates on to barges. The ships groaned with the sound of metal against wet, creaking rope and wood. You stood mesmerized before the largest ship there, an ocean liner going to Finland. When the ship’s horn shook the depths of its metal hull and dark smoke churned through the fog, you shivered. The ship groaned away, slipping heavily through the deep water and you asked, “Is God like a ship going to Finland?”

What could I say to you about God? I don’t know myself. But we could have walked in the garden on a day like today. “Get down on your hands and knees with me”, I would say. “Look close at the bean sprout, see how it knows already what it will become. Look at how the potato greens up; then dies back when it goes underground to make the potato. See the roots of that red sunset maple, as deep in the ground as the maple is high. Hear the voice of the wind in the hollows of your ears. Listen for the voice of the rain on the corn, and all the voices pushing up towards the sun—only listen with me. You will have your answer.”

The teenage girls were standing in a circle in front of the long mirror in the school bathroom. It was your school bathroom and you were among them. At thirteen, you were all legs and arms and shiny hair. The circle was vibrating with energy and giggles. Some of you had braces on your teeth; most had T-shirts that didn’t completely cover their tummies. You were all talking non-stop to each other, but looking in the mirror at yourselves as you talked. Nobody seemed to mind this—it was understood that you could talk to each other without looking at each other. Really the whole purpose of the talk seemed to be to watch yourselves say things, laugh, toss your hair and laugh some more while watching the effect in the mirror. You were trying to figure out who you were—and desperately hoping the mirror would provide some clues.

I never carried you for nine months. I never planned birthday parties for you or put a band-aide on your scraped knee. I didn’t feel your wet tears against my cheek. We didn’t have that talk about sex. We didn’t go and visit colleges. I don’t know who you would be by now, now that I am old enough to be a grandmother to your children. That is, if you had even decided to have children.

The sun is dark red in the sky. This is the time of day the tomatoes love. I sit in the heat of that late day sun, tears on my face, dirty hands and dirty nails, my basket full of dirt-caked vegetables. I am worn out, but lighthearted somehow. The loss is built in, into the code of the creation. No guarantees, this business of planting seeds. As for mothers, they sometimes leave too—leave you to make your way.

I feel close to you everyday. Sometimes I even see you in a stranger’s smile, a girl who might have been like you. But I know you don’t belong to me. Even in the best of circumstances, I would have to give you up. I would have to let you go.

About the Author:
Susan Troccolo is a writer, gardener, and community volunteer. She still loves telling stories, especially humor and gardening essays for her blog: Life-Change-Compost. She writes for Culinate, Open to Hope, and Lighthearted Travel and her essays have appeared in Voicecatcher and Northwest Women’s Journal. Her gift book entitled The Beet Goes On: Essays on Friendship & Breaking New Ground was published in 2015. Susan lives with her husband, Patrick, and Fly, a love-bully of a Border Collie in Portland, Oregon.