A LOVE LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER

by Jordan Ariel © 2007

An hour before you were born, I stood outside the labor and delivery

room in the hallway of the second floor of the hospital, looking out to the

street below. People were driving, walking, having conversations, living their

lives as though it was a day like any other. I stood terrified, filled with a

lifelong relationship with anxiety but denying its existence through a kind of

humorous machisma. Tears slowly fell down my face as I wondered whether I

had enough courage to go forward. Your biological mother, my lover Hannah,

labored with her small body to bring you into this world, to our arms and

hearts, and into your life, your legacy. I was paralyzed with fear.

The other day you were telling me a story about a party. The gathering

was held to celebrate the college graduation of your roommate and her

mother was hosting the party in a suburban East Bay community. You

described this woman, your friend's mother, as a cold woman, frigid. A true

bitch, you said. You'd never met anyone like her. You described your

attempts to approach her, your smile and warmth, your manners, your

openness, your repeated attempts to find something in her with which to

connect, but eventually failed. I heard the sadness and anger in your words.

And later, you described the gratitude you had for us, your family, your life.

As you said, "I had never experienced my life, my upbringing, my family, as

'alternative', until that day." I grabbed you in an embrace, kissing your

cheeks and hair in the same way I have for twenty-four years, hoping to bring

some comfort, hoping to bring my love to you as I would a gift, over and over

again. Later I thought about it and realized, as parents, we should feel lucky

that that day was a first for you, after twenty-something years, that we must

have done something right. Because, my beloved girl, yes, in the beginning,

you were a wild idea, an experiment. There is something so arrogant about

the idea that some of us feel we are so special that we can change the course

of history for ourselves or anyone else. We didn't set out to be pioneers, but

pioneers never do, do they?

It was 1982 and our biological clocks were ticking. The fact that we

were women in love in a world where many would rather we disappear, live a

life of longing and deprivation, be incarcerated, institutionalized or delivered

to hell in a handbasket, didn't stop us from wanting what women have

wanted throughout history - a child of our own. Hannah was older than me,

and so we agreed that she would go first and I would follow. Artificial

insemination was still very new, sperm banks still in their formative years.

I can't remember how but we found a Berkeley doctor, a funny old man

in his early 70s, who would help any woman get pregnant through donor

insemination. His donors were UC Berkeley pre-med students that were paid

for their generous offerings. Very little paperwork was required, very little

was discussed. The only requirement Hannah had was that the donor be

Jewish, an easy enough one for the doctor to satisfy. Holding hands, we

patiently sat in Dr. X's waiting room on that fateful day, and looked around at

the men in the room for any clues that they might be our future child's father.

Some might think us brave, others stupid or crazy, but we were giddy with

anticipation. In the exam room, where I held your mother's hand for a simple

procedure not unlike a pelvic exam, we laughed at our brazenness, embraced

our willingness to step off a cliff into unknown territory, and tried to

memorize that moment to tell you many years ahead. Looking back, we were

so naive, so young, so full of hope, love and good intentions, we could have

fueled the dreams of many with the energy of our wild endeavor.

When the doctor called after the ultrasound to tell us that you were

healthy and a girl, we both cried. We screamed with the zeal and enthusiasm

of young children. As you know now, your mother would have been a

fabulous mother to a boy, but I wasn't sure about myself. My relationship with

my father was so tortured, so full of pain and love, potential and

disappointment, that I feared I would find some sly way to abandon you if you

were a boy. I thank God today that I didn't have that chance. It is hard

enough that our own patterns of parenting are born of our own parents and

revealed in our relationship with our children.

I remember one night when you were three. I am ashamed but tell it

again here as a prayer of gratitude to you for continuing to teach me about

love and continuity. You were never a good sleeper when you were little,

remember? You would rail against the dark, against the effort it took to calm

yourself, against the predictability of rest. It was four in the morning and you

cried out for us. Your mother had already been up a couple of times to feed

you, change you, listen to you and try to comfort you. All the books had said

to let you cry, to close the door, sit down outside the door and wait until you

put yourself to sleep. We tried to do that, many times, we tried everything.

You had even started a new trick of crying so much that you started vomiting

which, of course, got our attention.

So now, it was my turn. You had just converted from your crib to your

little girl bed. You could walk in and stand next to our bed, which scared the

hell out of us. Tonight, though, you beckoned from your bed. I came into the

dark room and stood in the middle of the room, at first quietly, while you

talked about your sweet little life. I was so tired and then, angry at you. It felt

personal. Out of the quiet, I screamed. I screamed at you to stop, I screamed

until you were shocked to silence. As I stood there, shaking with memories of

my father's stern, harsh and impatient voice rising in my throat, I burst out

crying. I reached for you, to hold you in my arms. Sitting together on your

little girl bed, we both cried and I asked for your forgiveness, both to you and

quietly to myself. Rocking together, time passed. Your little hand reached up

to my cheek and patted me. You said, "It's OK, Annie. You can sleep now.

Let's sleep together." Words you had heard from us for years, words you'd

offered your stuffed animals as they struggled to sleep in your care. My

beloved sweet girl, the reluctant healer.

When you graduated from college, you were very specific about the

kind of party you wanted. You wanted it to be held in your childhood home

and you wanted the walls to be filled with the framed art pieces you had

created in the last two years of your fine arts education. You designed and

printed your invitations. In the text you wrote for the show, the celebration,

you laid out the journey you had taken in your work. You saw your abstract

watercolors as an engagement with organic form, an acknowledgement of

the evolution between material and form, birthing something uniquely

mysterious and yet familiar. It was brilliant and so accurate.

I was awestruck at your young wisdom and confidence. Since I had

started my own journey at your age as a visual artist, I was filled with my own

memories, a jealousy of your youth, an immense immeasurable pride and

love, and a sense of wonder at your life, where will it take you now?

Remember all those weekends when you came to stay with me and we sat on

the back porch and did art together -- t-Shirts, hand towels, photography,

easter eggs, collages, drawings and more drawings. And your mother, a

gifted landscaper and lover of nature. Remember when she would take you

into her greenhouse and show you every single plant? How you rolled your

eyes and told me, 'how could anybody remember all those long names', and

your middle name, Tivona, meaning 'nature' in Hebrew. Your mother and I

never really had any plans for you: you were an open book, you were our way

of participating in the greater human experiment of family, parenting, legacy.

Everything about you was a gift and yet, at your graduation, I felt given back

to in a very unexpected way. I saw myself in you. I saw both of us in you. For

me, without the biology, without the everyday life over the years, without the

traditions and framework of this world as we know it. I just never expected

that.

Over a year ago, after five months of travel throughout Southeast Asia

with your friend, Cassie, I flew over to meet you in Bangkok. It hadn't been

planned but an opportunity presented itself, and we took it. Cassie was

leaving in two days to go back to the States and then Africa for the Peace

Corps; you and I would head to the beach and spend some R&R time

together. You had had some tough time in your travels, some extraordinary,

but others more challenging and I was ready to listen. When we arrived at the

hotel in Kraki, you nearly cried when you saw the bathtub and a television,

rare luxuries on your long journey. For a few nights, we just sat in our room

with a bottle of wine, surreally watching 'American Idol' and talking about

everything that came up for you, now that there was time to unwind. One

night when we were in bed in the dark, you started talking about the pain and

struggle you witnessed in Cambodia. You started to cry. This was one of the

first chapters in your young life where you were confronted face-to-face with

the harsh realities of our world, with it's pain and injustice -- and it hurt you

deeply. You said to me, "What am I going to do, Lynnie? I'm not strong

enough to change the world. What will happen to all of us?" Your tears

brought back so much of my own pain during the Vietnam years, and the

disillusionment and anger I felt later within the feminist and gay rights

struggles, and finally my current skepticism and distance I've taken from

most of the political debate today. I rolled over in bed and held you while you

cried. I tried to tell you that you will do whatever your heart guides you to do,

that I was proud that you felt the pain of others. I tried to tell you that there

will always be pain and human suffering in the world, and that each of us has

to navigate our own relationship to it. Each of us can mmake choices that

honor our passion, our love and forgiveness for human frailty, and our

commitment to stay open to each of our own gifts as they are revealed to us.

You are an artist. Your gift will look different, and it hadn't been revealed yet.

I told you that you didn't have to change the world right now. Right now, you

needed rest.

When your sobbing started to soften, you fell asleep. Later as I laid

next to you in our big bed with all that mosquito netting, in the middle of a

country I barely knew, I listened to the tropical sounds of Thailand alongside

your breathing and was filled with a rare sense of contentment and mystery

that was exhilarating.

It is now a year later and today is my wedding, the second in my life.

You were there for the first one too, do you remember? You were five, and

you were the shy ringbearer. It was 1989 and I was marrying Christine,

another beautiful woman that you grew to love as well. Your mother held

your hand during the ceremony as you hugged her legs and peeked at me

from across our community circle. Today, I marry my sweet gentleman and

friend of eight years, Eric. Upstairs before the ceremony, you are giggling

with excitement and joy. Susannah, my New Zealand niece, is here too and

the two of you are enjoying each other's company, like sisters, I imagine. As

talented, young, independent women in the arts, your friends are not getting

married yet, so I watch you both bask in the newness of such an old tradition.

You fuss over my dress, over the bouquet, over the event details, stepping

away every now and then to rehearse the song you will sing with your mother

in our ceremony. Eric and I had talked with you about including you and his

son in a part of our vows that asked for your support and love in this new

journey of ours, and you said yes you would. Eric and you have had your

issues, but you have come to a peaceful place with it, with him. You are

ready for this next part of my path, to be there yet again, as I wade through

this journey we call our lives.

No one can prepare another person for moments of astute clarity and

peace, those enlightened seeds of bliss that spill into our consciousness, but

when the four of us stood together today, up in front of our community, and

those words were spoken, I was witness to one of those brief moments. Your

eyes locked with mine, both filled with tears, and then, it was gone. It was as

though all those years of loving you, caring for you, embracing your wonder

and fear, listening and talking about small animals, plants, art, rivers, boys,

pain, growth, fashion, love, justice and injustice came rushing into that one

moment to remind me that we are only as human as our ability to love

unconditionally. The moment took my breath away, and then just as quickly

as it came, it left. Overwhelmed with a serenity and love still being revealed

to me, I turned back to my soon-to-be new husband as he and I began to

carve our own path forward.

When your mother and I stepped off that cliff twenty-four years ago to

take part in this big and scary experiment that is our lives, this wild journey

of parenting outside the law of averages, of changing the world with love, I

could never have prepared myself for what actually happened. My beloved

sweet girl, thank you for every day that we've had together. You are the gift I

asked for in that paralyzed moment at the hospital, that one hour before you

were born. And so much more, my sweet.