I was at the doctor's the other day with my daughter for her check-up. The scene that seemed so bizarre a few months ago is familiar now - the spaced chairs, the social distancing markers on the floor, the usual pile of old magazines gone. My baby smiles at the masked faces that talk to her, their eyes shining with delight even if we can't see their mouths. This is normal for her, sadly. It's all she's ever known.
It's busy at the office so we end up waiting a little longer than usual. There's a large circular window that overlooks the street below, so I bring her to it and sway back and forth as we look at the passing cars and trucks and the enormous windmills of the college campus across the road.
An old woman, small and thin but not frail, dressed nicely in white pants and a shirt with purple flowers and purple sneakers to match, sits nearby. Another woman, taller and more filled out, maybe in her late 50s or early 60s, sits with her with a clipboard in hand.
"Date of birth?" she reads aloud. "December 10, 1923."
1923, the same year my maternal grandmother was born, and my husband's paternal grandmother, who is still living and survived COVID earlier this year. I keen my ear to their back-and-forth, trying to gather from their conversation who the younger woman is to the older - social worker? Caretaker? I'm pleased and relieved to discover that she's the 96-year-old's daughter. I'm glad for the old woman, that she is not alone, that she has family to look after her.
They continue with the questionnaire. Questions about depression, about feeling hopeless or worthless, questions about whether the patient has regrets. The mother says no to most of these questions, apart from feeling isolated due to the pandemic. But she feels fulfilled, useful, that her life still has purpose.
I'm impressed by their back-and-forth. So often I've observed elderly people infantilized by the people caring for them: the mood always kept light, the sing-song voices adults usually save for young children are employed, pet names like "honey" are thrown around, as is the word cute. But this pair, this mother and daughter, are talking just like friends. There are moments of lightness mixed with levity. As the daughter reads the questions her tone isn't loaded with innuendo; she has no agenda. And the mother isn't dismissive. She answers honestly, without drama or saccharine to assuage whatever the daughter may be feeling. It's all very, pleasantly, normal.
My daughter is losing interest in the scene below us, if she was interested at all to begin with. She kicks her legs and flails her arms, makes spit bubbles (her favorite pastime). I bounce her and begin to walk away from the window and the other women.
"How old's the baby?" The daughter asks with a large smile.
"Four months," I answer, proudly.
They ooh and ahh over my little one, their faces lit up with the kinds of smiles only babies can elicit. The daughter and my daughter share a name, it turns out. They learn I have three older children and remark disbelief, saying something about me being too tiny to have so many children.
"God bless you," the older woman says.
A couple days later I'm still thinking of this pair. I tell my husband about them, try to articulate what it was about them that stuck with me. Different reasons, I guess. How the old woman reminded me of his grandmother, how it made me think of elderly people in general, about the "usefulness" of the old, about how society views them.
"It was just nice," I said, "seeing them together. Mother and daughter. Thinking of how this old woman probably cared for the younger woman for so many years, and now the daughter is returning the favor. That role reversal. You know. I just kept thinking of them and..." I trailed off and looked at our own infant daughter, batting happily at the toys suspended above her on the play-mat in the other room.
"You want that too," he said, smiling gently. "Someday."
I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I nodded in agreement.
"The parallel was interesting," I said. "You know, me being there with my daughter and that lady being there with hers. Just the roles switched a bit. But it did make me wonder if that would be me and M someday. She taking me to the doctor. Us being friends like that."
"That'd be nice," my husband said.
"Yeah." I slowly began to smile. "It would be."
I had never thought of myself as a "girl mom" even before I had kids. Three boys later I definitely didn't think of myself as ever being a Girl Mom and fully embraced and loved the Boy Mom title. Everyone assumed I wanted a girl, that I wanted all the pink and bows after six years of ripped dungarees and dozens of tractors with missing tires. I'd usually comment that, sure, it'd be nice, maybe, to have a girl, but I liked my boys.
When we found out that our new baby was a girl it took me several weeks to wrap my mind around it all. My feelings were all over the place. Sometimes I was sad that it wasn't another boy, and then I'd feel guilty for feeling sad. Sometimes I pridefully mourned the end of my reign as a 100% badass Boy Mom. But a lot of the time I just worried. Worried about my daughter and how I'd inevitably mess her up. Worried about all the things she'd have to endure as a girl and as a woman, all the crappy parts. Worried about her safety in a world that is not always kind or understanding to women. Worried about things that had only ever been on the precipice of my mind while raising my three boys.
What if she was super girly? What if she only loved pink and glitter? What if she became obsessed with princesses? What if she was super emotional all the time? What if she wanted her hair braided and I didn't know how to do that? What if she hated dirt? Suddenly I became a student of the young girls around me. That one who loves running after my boys, but also likes butterflies. I could do that. Or that one who tags along with her dad when he goes to work. Yeah, that's my speed.
But then...oh! Projection! My poor babe wasn't even earthside yet and already I was trying to mold her into what I wanted her to be, or desperately wanted her not to be. I obsessively thought of the kinds of role models I wanted to expose her to, the colors I wanted to not dress her in in her infancy.
Then she came. She came into the world like my other babies had. She came so quickly that the nurses didn't even catch her; she landed safely onto the hospital bed and was quickly scooped up, examined, and given to me. We spent the next hours and days and weeks getting to know one another. Her name seemed too big for someone so little and I wondered if we should have named her something else.
"How do you like having a daughter?" became the go-to question from just about everyone.
"It's the same, so far," I said. "Except for the diaper changes."
I tried to be casual. She was a baby, after all. And in truth there really wasn't much different - she slept, ate, pooped, cried sometimes. Normal stuff. But, somehow, it did feel different.
"You're different with her," my mum said to me one day while we facetimed, M on my lap.
"Really?" I said, somewhat surprised.
"You seem really happy. You're happy you got your girl."
I thought again of the women I had seen at the doctor's office. I thought of my mum with me and my sister. Of my husband's grandmother and her daughters.
"There's nothing like a girl," one of my friends had said when I was still pregnant. "I don't know how to describe it, but it's just different. You love your boys one way and your girl another. It's just...so awesome. Like having a best friend."
At the time she said these words to me I hadn't known what to make of it, but now I'm beginning to get it.
My daughter. Sleeping right now, her facial muscles at complete rest. She looks almost identical to her oldest brother, but there's still something feminine about her.
"How do you like having a daughter?" people still ask, four months later.
"It's awesome," I now answer. "I'm kind of obsessed with her."
And I am. I love my sons, but this little girl...she's changed me, somehow. Already. In so many ways and in ways I never, ever expected. In ways I maybe even resisted. I love her. So. Much.
I hope someday, if I live to be 96, I'll find myself with my middle aged daughter somewhere, chatting amicably. We'll see a younger woman with her baby daughter and we'll smile at them, exchange pleasantries. I'll remember myself at that age, at that stage, and I'll smile for the million different reasons that happened in between then and this moment.
"God bless you," I'll say to the mother. "There's nothing like having a daughter."
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