What Was Mine (11 page)

Who were we now that our baby was gone? Were we still even parents? Tom wanted to know. I assured him we were parents and would always be. We were parents of a little girl who is out there somewhere. But Tom stopped believing that. He stopped hoping. We separated, thinking we were cutting the problem in half and now we would have to deal with only our half of it. But separation just made things harder, for me.

T
here we were in 1990, stumbling along as new parents, learning how to take care of a baby, learning what our daughter wanted, what she liked, getting a sense of who she was, her personality. We talked about her constantly, Marilyn and I, planning her future, dreaming about what she would do, who we would help her turn out to be. Maybe she'd be a rock star. Maybe she'd be the first rock-star president.

Then, one day, without warning or explanation, that person, that part of our life, was gone. My wife went shopping with our daughter, and then, she wasn't shopping with her anymore. A baby was ours, and then, suddenly, she wasn't. There were no notes or phone calls, so we knew it wasn't for ransom.

I worked with detectives searching for her. We led search parties at night, using flashlights. Sometimes I'd go into the office on no sleep at all, stumble out of the elevator not knowing where I was.

For the first few months, my imagination went wild with all kinds of scenarios, like Russian mobsters grabbing our daughter, selling her to rich Germans.

Then one night, I thought I heard Natalie cry. I woke up knowing what I heard was impossible, but there it was, impossibly, her little cry. I got out of bed and went into her room, thinking I might see our baby back in her crib. How could this be? I was still half
dreaming, but it didn't feel like a dream. I looked down at her crib, and could see in the moonlight, of course she wasn't there. The mattress was empty. And then, I knew she wasn't coming back to us. It had been months since we lost her. I was a man in mourning for a daughter who would never return. I had to face facts.

Tragedy happens to lots of people. You can decide to let it destroy you, or you can decide to move on.

I made myself stop thinking about what had become of our baby. I couldn't imagine what had happened to her, and didn't want to. What good would it do?

I wanted my wife to stop imagining, too. I thought it would be healthier for her to live in the present. I thought it would be better for us to move on, to stop living for the baby we didn't have anymore, start living for us. But I didn't have the words to say this to her, at least not words she was able to hear.

I
could no longer trust myself. I couldn't rely on my own judgment. I'd made a terrible choice in stepping away from the baby. How could I trust myself not to make such mistakes in the future?

I stopped cooking and often forgot to eat. My hair started coming out in clumps in the shower—I didn't care. Sometimes, instead of cleaning, I spent the day in bed with a book. All I read were books on kidnapping, children who had disappeared—Charles Lindbergh's baby, Etan Patz, Adam Walsh. I thought stories of other kidnappings might hold some clue, might lead to the whereabouts of my own child who'd been taken.

There was a list of psychics the FBI worked with, and some days, I'd find myself calling them all, barraging them with questions, trying to tease out any information they could glean from the universe. After I hung up the phone, I'd clean something. Or I'd walk. I'd walk and walk. I'd walk for hours, to keep from being in an empty house. I lost thirty pounds. At first, I was glad. I wanted to shrink, to disappear. I'd lost all my pregnancy weight, and more.

I began to imagine ways I could kill myself. Pills would be painless. But that would mean my daughter would lose me twice. I had to stay alive for her sake.

I began seeing a therapist. I was desperate for someone to talk to,
someone who'd listen, who'd know how to help put me back together again. Tom had left by this time.

The therapist did help. She explained that losing a child was like having a nerve severed. When a child dies, eventually the skin grows over the nerve, so the pain is reduced, though it never goes away. But because I didn't know where my child was, my nerve would stay raw, constantly exposed. Until she was found, I couldn't expect myself to heal. Because I'd have to keep imagining what had happened to her. All I could do was think of ways to distract myself from the pain.

Memories of Natalie would hijack my thoughts while driving to the grocery or reading a magazine in a waiting room—suddenly I'd hear her squealing happily as she splashed bathwater or see her tiny hands opening and closing as she slept—and then I couldn't breathe, my stomach twisted, contractions intensifying until I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming.

Changing surroundings might help, said the therapist. She suggested I consider a move. At first, I resisted this suggestion, worried that Natalie would somehow come back to the house and I wouldn't be there for her. But when a former colleague called, offering me a job at Clorox in San Francisco, my friends—the few still talking to me—encouraged me to start fresh. They helped me see that staying in the house wouldn't bring Natalie back. She'd been taken at four months. It's not like she'd ever come walking back there.

I didn't think I could pack up that house. I didn't think I had the emotional muscle to do it. But packing up the house turned out to be a great salve. First, it kept my mind and hands busy, it kept me in the present moment, not the past. I couldn't let my mind wander down bleak paths when I had to concentrate, had to make decisions, had to do the work of going through all my belongings, deciding what to take, what to leave behind. It forced me to come to terms with loss. So many things I'd held on to because of who they'd belonged to once:
my grandmother's wedding dress, my grandfather's stamp collection. Now I saw they were just things. The dress wasn't my grandmother; the stamps weren't my grandfather. And Natalie's things—her tiny shoes, her little coats, her crib and swing and playpen—they weren't Natalie. Giving up her things wasn't giving up on her. I could still have hope that she'd come back to me.

And yet, when my plane took off for California, I felt like I was abandoning her.

Y
oga saved me. It really did. I put my toe in the water slowly at first. Clorox offered Vinyasa sessions in the employee lounge at lunchtime. It was good exercise. It made me feel strong and in control in a way I hadn't felt since it happened.

Then I saw a flyer for yoga designed to reduce anxiety and increase happiness levels in the brain. I was willing to try anything that would do that. From the first day, I was hooked. Just walking barefoot into the spare, white space made me feel hopeful, as though the serenity all around me could be put inside me, too. I also liked the teacher. Sonya was someone who I could tell had been in the practice a long time. Her manner was gentle; her eyes were wise and full of compassion. She taught me to breathe. I realized I hadn't known how to do that before.

Each yoga session, no matter what practice, ends with Savasana, which means you lie on your back on the floor, eyes closed, releasing any residual tension. Sonya would go around the room as we lay, gently pressing a finger onto our foreheads, “the third eye,” and when she did that, all my anxiety floated away. One day, at the end of the class, she offered meditation. And so I was introduced to the dharma. How Sonya explained it resonated with me: that the Buddhist way is about living in the present, about letting go of what could have been, what should have been different.

Through the practice, I've come to learn that pain is inevitable in this world, but suffering is optional. No matter what happens, there are attitudes and practices that help you survive, even thrive. I learned to feel pain as it manifested in my body, to recognize the tightness in my muscles, the change in my breath when I thought about what had happened, and to use this awareness to open up opportunities for healing and growth. To be ready and open to Natalie when she came back. I knew she'd come back.

After studying Iyengar for a while, which is all about getting the poses right, Sonya moved me on to Ashtanga yoga, which is about connecting the poses to each other. I'm a Gemini. I thrive on connections.

Through someone I met at yoga, I joined a grief group. I met others who had been through wrenching experiences. I learned how many ways there are to suffer the loss of a child—one woman's teenage son had been a star soccer player, but was now paralyzed, no reason, no diagnosis. Another mom's talkative four-year-old boy disappeared, not bodily, but lost his ability to speak. A couple lost their three daughters on Christmas Eve; the tree in the living room had caught fire while they were asleep.

We had to learn that what had happened to us, to our children, had just happened. Nothing had been “done” to us, or to them. We weren't being punished. I learned to believe that I had not been singled out.

I learned to take refuge in wherever the light is, because anything else is darkness that can pull you down deep.

I learned that every time I thought of my child, I was sending her love. I learned as long as I believed I would be reconnected to Natalie, it would happen. I learned to make choices to promote that alignment.

When I'd done the work of becoming one with knowledge that creates happiness, I met Grant. He did carpentry for the
church my grief group was in. I met him coming out of a session. He stood on a ladder, fixing the light above the entrance door. The ladder was blocking my way, and as he apologized, looking down at me from the top rung, saying he'd be down in a minute, all I could think about were the crinkles at the side of his eyes, how he looked like someone who loved to laugh. I was ready for happiness.

W
hen I met Marilyn, she was an executive at a big company. I didn't think she would go for a man who worked with his hands. I'd dated women like that before. They tend to have expectations no man can meet. I made a choice a long time ago, to do the kind of work you can see. When I was a kid, I turned down a scholarship offered by a boarding school back East. Some people thought I was wrong to turn down opportunity like that. But I didn't view it as opportunity. I saw it as obligation I didn't want to fulfill. My father had a contracting business and taught me everything he knew. I liked that work. I knew if I went to that boarding school, I wouldn't go into business with him. I never regretted it. My father died in his fifties. I was grateful for the time we'd had together. I'm sorry that Marilyn never got to meet him.

When I met her, I'd just bought an old factory in San Mateo and was renovating it myself, on weekends. She started helping me strip it back to brick, replacing the windows, jacking and leveling the chestnut floors, putting in electric, sanding and varnishing. I work with only green materials. I like to sustain what's already there. Marilyn wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. I knew right away she was different from women I'd dated before.

We married in 1995, two years after she moved west, five years
after her daughter was taken. She took my name. I didn't ask her to do that, but she wanted to.

We were blessed with three children—two boys and a girl. She quit her job after the first came along. The last came when Marilyn was forty-three. That one took a bit of praying. And a lot of homeopathic meds.

Early on, we talked about whether or not to tell the kids about Natalie. We decided it would be confusing and possibly scary for them. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe it would have been better if they had gotten used to the idea of having a sister, so her turning up wasn't a shock for them. But honestly, I didn't expect she'd turn up.

I
didn't meet Mia until she was seven months old. Lucy brought her upstate for Thanksgiving. It's a five-hour drive from Manhattan to Emmettsville. Lucy took a cab! She said there were no rental cars left, she'd forgotten to make a reservation. She didn't want to take a train or bus with a baby. I'll never forget the sight of a bright yellow Checker cab chugging up our steep driveway, driven by a man in a blue turban. I wasn't sure what the protocol was—should I invite him in to stretch his legs, use the restroom? But before I could do that, Lucy had paid him and he was on his way. Lucy knew how to handle any situation. That is something I've always admired about her.

I remember how we used to play house. I'd be a mother with two dolls. Lucy would be a mother with two dolls and a nanny. Even then, Lucy knew what she wanted. And Lucy always knew how to get what she wanted.

I
told Mia she was adopted, when she was three and a half.
Are You My Mother?
was her favorite book for a while. One night, I was sitting on her bed, reading it to her for the zillionth time. When we came to the end, something about the moment seemed right. I explained that while most mommies have to take the baby given to them, I was a luckier kind of mommy. I got to choose my baby myself. She took it in, nodding. Then asked me to read her the story again.

I heard her the next day telling the news to a friend we saw on the bus: “My mommy didn't have me, she
picked
me!” she crowed, repeating this happily many times during her childhood, and whenever I heard her say it, a hot coin formed in my chest, knowing it was true in a way that she couldn't imagine.

W
hat I hated most was the lying. I know that sounds suspect, coming from someone who lied for so long. But I hated having to commit an elaborate construction to memory, carefully placing one lie on top of another, almost convincing myself of the truth of each one, building a palace of them. Or, rather, a prison. I told so many lies I started to believe them myself. Fooling oneself turns out to be easiest of all.