the night i became a mother, she slept in her new cage. she was now an nyc chick, rescued from tennessee. the second she saw her red rubber crab, she knew she was home. sadie, our sweet silver-haired shepherd-husky provided my foray into motherhood: sleep-free nights (she vomited ad nauseum from pneumonia that first evening), agida (before mastering 'come' i, red-knuckled and reluctantly, let her run free on a martha's vineyard beach), patience (barkbarkbark... 'shhh, it's just fedex." barkbarkbark...'shhh, it's just fedex'...). sadie's nine now, still scared of cats, has developed an irrational carrot obsession and in the most soulful way, she teaches me, moment-to-moment, about humanity.
a week before sadie arrived, an astrologer predicted that i would not get pregnant for at least 6 months; something about my moon and mars and other baby-making planets squaring off, not allowing the baby to come through. "if you got pregnant," she said, "it would be a miracle."
i was pregnant and didn't know it.
february 2003 i gave birth to my grandmother. daisy is a clone of mama paula, my straight-talking, yoga-posing, life-of-the-party love who grew up on the lower east side of manhattan and somehow, in between marrying her boss and moving to the 'burbs, developed a british accent. daisy (muse #1) and mp (#2) have a penchant for:
1. posh: mama paula click-clacked daily in 2-inch heels which permanently molded her feet; dais: 'mom, can i paint my room hot pink, gold and black?'
2. paris: mama paula was french-fluent, had piles of non-pareils always waiting in a lucite box and reigned at her eighteenth soiree in the city d'amour; dais has studied French since pre-school, happily blasted mama paula's parisian chansons from an old boom box at her transplant anniversary party and considers croissants a staple.
3. poodles: mama paula's little grey poodle gaby had poor eyesight which earned her - i swear - black-rimmed '50s glasses; at 2, dais stood in her crib, begging me for a white poodle she could spray paint pink. she's still pining for one and would even settle for a neutral shade.
every once in a while, i'll knock on daisy's forehead and ask, 'mama paula, are you in there?' i know she is. at the end of her life, i helped usher mama paula out, while when daisy was ready, i helped escort her in. despite clear, external city-girl similarities, the two are inextricably linked at their cores.
mama paula's husband joe, eighteen years her senior, died suddenly when she was fifty-tw0. her son ben unexpectedly died at forty-eight. 'i live with half a heart,' she used to say. given her grace, no one would believe her darkness. in the '40s she beat breast cancer and endured a mastectomy. i imagine she survived far more aches of the heart and soul yet i did not have the privledge of knowing them as i started to bloom when she began to wither.
like her great-grandmother - who of course refused that title, shortening it to 'gg' - daisy's shoulder-shrug attitude and indominitable life force propels her. at 3 1/2 she received a small bowel, liver and pancreas transplant, the enormity of which she is not yet aware as she's too busy, thank God, being 8: making movies with her friends, jammin' on her guitar and spooning nala, our naughty greyhound puppy. recently, dais recalled a scene from her French class skit:
dais: i was the last one picked at my table to use the phone.
me: how did you feel about that?
dais: it's fine. it's a phone, not a nobel prize.
