THIS IS US
I’m Mourning the Life My Daughter Never Got to Live
Not all children grow up
The first playdate was the product of an infant/toddler reading hour at my local library in the fall of 2002. I’d been freshly laid off from a dot-com job that had consumed me. My daughter Ana was 18 months old.
I’d been adrift, aimless, caught in the purgatory between unemployment and whatever came next. Suddenly I was in the company of a toddler all day, every day.
And so I found myself in the library at 11 a.m. in the middle of the week, my little girl squirming on my lap as the librarian paged through a picture book at the front of a crowded playroom.
Those midmorning story hours marked the beginning of something new — a shift from a working mother who felt perpetually guilty about having to divide her time between work and home to the self-employed mother who prioritized her child’s schedule, fitting work around playdates and nap time.
I don’t recall much from those fragile early days, but I do remember holding Ana in my arms as we sat on the threadbare library rug, her wide blue eyes taking it all in, the feel of baby-soft hair tickling my chin. The memory is like a faded photograph, sepia, worn at the edges.
