The Hand of Compassion

It was the second day of the conference, and I was thinking about not very much of anything very much over my morning coffee when she approached me.

“That made me sad,” she said. “What you said yesterday over lunch.”

Photo by Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash

For a terrible moment, I wondered if she were, not simply another conference attendee, but the creator of the chicken with mystery sauce about which I had been, if I do say so myself, really quite entertaining.

“When you said that you and your husband were disappointed,” she said, “that you couldn’t have kids.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, touched. Nobody has a perfect life, and for Mr. Los Angeles and me, a profound source of sorrow has been our inability to have children. We all of us have our burdens to carry in this weary world, and this of mine is not one I usually bring up in general conversation; but, because it had touched upon something we were discussing, I had briefly mentioned it. “Yes, it’s not how we wanted it, but we all deal with what we’re given, and that’s what he and I got. Thank you for your sympathy.”

She nodded, pleasantly.

“I have two myself,” she said. “A daughter and a son. They’re the best thing my husband and I ever did.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s nice.” Because I had not a shred of doubt that, for her, it must have been very nice indeed.

“They’re both of them just wonderful,” she said. “I can’t imagine my life without them.”

“I’m sure you can’t,” I agreed. Because I was indeed sure that they were. And I imagined she probably could not.

She smiled, fondly.

“It’s really a miracle when you think about it,” she said. “They arrive as these tiny little babies, and they’re just so cute and squishy and adorable and you can’t believe how much you love them. Then, OK, you go through the toddler years and the teenage years, and, yeah, that can be difficult, but you know it’s not forever, and you still love them anyway, right?”

I took a sip of my coffee, and began to wish I had picked up a cookie.

“I do hear that you do,” I said.

“And then one day,” she said, “you wake up and there they are, these amazing, interesting, charming adults, and they’re healthy and they’re happy, and they’re fun to be around, and you look at them and you think, ‘Wow! I made that!’ And it’s just the best feeling in the world!”

A chocolate chip would have been nice, I thought, although gingerbread rarely goes amiss.

“Yes,” I said. “I can believe it must be.”

“They’re in their twenties now,” she said. “Well, my daughter’s going to be thirty next year, can you believe it? Thirty!”

She nodded at me incredulously.

“Thirty,” I said. Then, since more seemed to be required, “Well.”

“She got married last year,” she said. “It was a beautiful day, just beautiful. My husband walked her down the aisle, and I have to tell you that the day you watch your husband walk your daughter to her wedding has to be, hands down, the most beautiful experience that a woman can have. Seriously. The. Most. Beautiful. You think you’ve had beautiful experiences in life, but when you see that one … well, your heart just wants to burst.”

During the hellish years of our fertility struggle, I suffered two miscarriages – the doctors had told me that both had happened too early to detect the sex, but I had known, deep in my bones, that the second had been a girl.

“Burst,” I confirmed.

“My son, now,” she said, “he’s still single. But that’s OK, because he’s a guy and guys have more time to find someone than women do, right? They can find the right person at any age, can’t they?”

“They certainly can,” I noted, because I do, after all, live in Los Angeles.

“Now, girls,” she said. “They have to think about the ticking clock. I say to my daughter, I say, ‘Phoebe, you’re OK to make me a grandma now, but you’d better not wait too long,’ because a woman doesn’t have forever to do this, does she?”

The reason that I had failed to carry Mr. Los Angeles’ and my children to term was quite straightforward: it was that by the time he and I had met and married, I had grown too old.

“I happen to know she doesn’t,” I said.

“Oh, Phoebe has time,” she reassured me. “She’s only twenty-nine. And if she’s anything like me, she and her husband will only have to look at each other funny and they’ll get pregnant. We’re a crazy fertile family.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “Aren’t you lucky?”

She beamed, proudly.

“I have to tell you,” she said, “I cannot wait to be a grandma. Can. Not. Wait. I’m already planning ways to spoil my grandkids, I’m going to be the spoiliest grandma on the face of the planet. My husband’s so funny, he says to me, he says, ‘Lynn, you’re already spoiling those kids and they’re not yet a twinkle in their Dad’s eye.’ He’s so cute.”

With the swift precision of an eagle, I swooped upon an opening for a conversation in which I might also participate.

“Husbands, huh?” I said, because, I, too, have one of those.

But I had swooped in vain.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “He’ll spoil those little ones even more than I do once they come along, he just doesn’t know it yet.’

She stopped and chuckled.

“He’s like my sister that way,” she added.

A little bird told me that I was about to hear about her sister.

“Now, my sister,” she said, “She used to say she didn’t want to have kids.”

… OK, about her sister and her children.

“She figured they were too much trouble,” she said. “And I’d say to her, I’d say, ‘Marcie, they may turn your orderly little life upside down for a few years, but if you don’t have them, you’ll be missing out on the most wonderful experience a human being can imagine.’ The. Most. Wonderful. You know?”

“So people tell me,” I said.

“But, oh, no, oh, no,” she said. “Children weren’t for her, she didn’t even want them. And then, get this, she got pregnant by accident! With twins!”

She nodded at me, delightedly.

“Twins, huh?” I said.

“And of course,” she said, “now her kids are the best thing in her life, she’s all about being a Mom, and I say to her, I say, ‘Marcie, was I right or was I right?’ and she says, ‘Oh, you were right all right.’ Hahahahaha!”

“Ha,” I affirmed.

She stopped, and thought for a moment.

“You don’t really know about love, you see,” she explained, “until you’ve had kids. You may think you do, but you don’t, not really. It’s like they open up a door in your heart that you didn’t even know was there, and on the other side of the door, there’s this whole, wide, enormous world of feelings that you’d never even dreamed about till then. I swear your heart just doubles, and until you’ve experienced it, you don’t even have the capacity to imagine it. I guess you haven’t grown up, really, not in the full sense.”

I pondered in vain an appropriate response.

“I always tell people who can’t have their own kids they should adopt,” she said. “You can adopt at any age, did you know that? And there are so many kids out there who need a home, it seems wicked not to offer one if you can. I tell you, if I couldn’t have kids and didn’t adopt, I couldn’t look myself in the eye. OK, I’d better go find my seat. I guess I’ll see you at lunch, huh?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think I’ll try the sandwich place down the street.”

She chuckled. “That chicken was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” she agreed. “Well, I just wanted to tell you I was sad for you. I wanted you to know that.”

And, humming contentedly to herself, she made her way to her seat to wait for the next presentation.