On double lives

Day after Christmas, Ramona woke up with a fever. We left my in-laws’ house a day earlier than planned and drove home. I remember saying to Dan that I wanted to be close to Yale in case we needed to take the baby to the doctor. I said this in the dutiful way of a mom believing caution alone is protective. For the next two days, Ramona’s temperature hovered between 100 and 102. On December 28^th, she woke up from her morning nap shaking and whimpering, indifferent to milk. Her tremors persisted as her eyes stopped focusing. By the time I got her undressed at acute care, her body was slick with sweat and hotter than any skin I’ve ever touched. The nurse didn’t want to tell me my baby’s temperature. I pressed her, and she admitted it was 105.4.

I’ve fantasized about returning to the year I met Dan and meeting him again with the confidence of knowing how it all works out. Giving birth to Ramona was a version of this fantasy, realized. I knew how it went, having a baby. I never doubted my ability to take care of her or that I am the best person to do so. It was easy to fall in love with her. To accept how much the baby needed me, and I her, and to not fear that need. 2025 was the best year of my life. A year I spent almost entirely in Connecticut, a place for which I’ve nursed contempt so diligently you could mistake my contempt for a labor of love.

In 2025, I was mostly a mom. Which is easy, verging on disingenuous, to say, because my book was reviewed in eight newspapers and stocked in airports. I sold short stories and a film option. A stranger recognized me in the park and another stranger recognized me at the New Haven train station. A friend I made this year asked me if I feel like I’m living a double life. The answer is no, because my children are always with me. I brought them to my events in New York and Portland and Toronto. The answer is no, because don’t most mothers have jobs? We’re not asking our dentist if she’s living a double life. And the answer is yes, because all mothers live double lives. All dentists, too.

What I really mean: in 2025, I loved being a mom. Wholeheartedly I succumbed to the never-ending routine of nursing and naps and long walks in the sun. And I loved watching my eight-year-old become a person undeniably separate from and mysterious to me: a person who canters on a horse and writes songs about cryptic characters named Jack and Money. I loved watching my children watch each other. At acute care, Ramona vomited on the sweater my mom sent me for Christmas. Her eyes fluttered open and closed while Wes sat in the corner, arms in a knot, silenced by terror. Dan took Wes back to our house to get picked up by my father-in-law. I rode in the ambulance with Ramona. She looked small strapped to the stretcher. Yale’s campus was covered in snow. Parents fear the bad thing happening to their child. Every bad thing is negotiated into something less than the bad thing. You can’t call it too early, or the real one will knock you out.

In the pediatric ED, doctors attempted three times to do a spinal tap on Ramona. Dan stayed with her. I waited in the hall and made my mind as blank as possible. Tried not to think about the four times I’ve had a needle thrust into my spine in vain. On Ramona, too, the procedure failed. I went back into the room, picked her up, and held her close to me for hours.

Her fever broke that night. Her temperature stayed down through the next evening and we brought her home. She’s still sick, but from every nap she wakes a little happier, a little more like herself. Yesterday my mom showed her a small plastic fish, and Ramona’s eyes lit up as she pointed toward the kitchen where Wes’s pet fish lives. At dinner she addressed a poster of Sonny Rollins as “Dada.” It feels so crucial, and so useless, to communicate how much I love her. I felt the same way when I fell in love with Dan. Twenty years later, I suppose everyone gets what I was trying to say.

I’m writing this from my dark bedroom on New Year’s Eve. Ramona is asleep next to me, her white noise machine whirring. Wes and my mom took the dog for a walk. I’m going downstairs to see if Dan will have a splash of whiskey with me. We’ll be in bed by ten, awake again soon after. Happy new year’s, baby.