Parenthood

Have you ever taken a bite of food and then have a memory flash before you? We’ve all had these Proustian moments - those times when the taste of something conjures up vivid, distinct memories: vignettes of our lives that come flooding into our minds like finding an old, lost, leather-bound family picture album filled with faded, yellowing, long-forgotten childhood photos. For me, the taste of scallops invokes images of my father from my years as a teenage girl. Sometimes, I can almost relive some of those memories and experience anew the bonds of a father and daughter, the relationship between parent and child.

I often think about all of the feelings he must have experienced as a father over the years - the joy of raising four children, the worries he had as we grew into teenagers, and the pride in his heart when we became adults starting our own families and venturing into careers of our making.

I’ll never know the flip side of those experiences. I’m not a parent. As a woman in her 50s, the window of opportunity for motherhood closed on me long ago.

In my twenties, I was focused on advancing my career as a fashion illustrator and designer. Taking time to raise a family was out of the question. My schedule was as dense as a loaf of days-old, stale bread hardened by neglect as much as the realities of baking chemistry. Often, my life consisted of flying off, weeks at a time, from my home in New York City to go to some exotic location around the world. I might be in New Dehli to coordinate the manufacturing of a junior sportswear line. Other trips might have me embarking to London or Paris to get an early peek at fashion ideas to bring back to the States for the upcoming season here.

Have kids? Who me? Don’t be absurd! Nothing could be further from the mind of a young woman who had graduated from the couture program at the New York Fashion Institute of Technology. I had worked my way into a position at Calvin Klein; I was going to the top of the glamorous world of fashion design (yes, the industry is as snooty as it sounds). The ambitions and dreams of young adulthood may have had no limits, but they did not include children.

My thirties and forties marked a time when I began to feel comfortable living in my own skin. Those years represented, to some extent, a late-blooming bildungsroman for me - a time of emotional growth and maturation. I had dated a bit and had been in some quasi-serious romantic relationships that cut across a wide demographic from religion (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) to profession (shipbroker, tax attorney, ex-Marine). Yet deep down, I knew I needed to live my life alone for a time. I wanted to understand my strengths and weaknesses in the context of my own self-estimation free of the judgments or approvals of a man in my life.

To be fair, I also had my share of distractions - years of anorexia had withered away my body; I was struggling financially, as my career transitioned from fashion to media at a time that the publishing world itself was going through a seismic shift. The internet had begun displacing traditional print business, which meant lower advertising revenue. This, in turn, meant lots of layoffs and lower pay for those fortunate enough to keep their jobs.

On top of this, the medical risk was a dealbreaker. Late-age pregnancy increases the risk of chromosomal conditions like Down syndrome. The likelihood of a woman giving birth to a baby with Down syndrome increases from one percent at age 40 to ten percent at age 49. For me, having kids by now wasn’t just off the table - it had gotten swept away into the dust bin.

The closest I’ve come to having a child is that I am an aunt to three lovely nieces. I’ve babysat them, watched them grow up, and even seen the eldest get married. I’ve done what I imagine are typical “auntie” activities. One of my fondest memories with them was when I chaperoned my two eldest nieces (who are sisters) during their first trip into Manhattan from their Connecticut home when they were still pre-pubescent girls. Going into the City was a Big Deal. After a day of shopping and sightseeing, I took them to get giant foot-long hot dogs and massive three-pint servings of chocolate and vanilla ice cream at New York’s most iconic dessert restaurant, Serendipity, of movie and television fame. We had a lot of fun that day, but their father was not too pleased since I neglected to tell him our of adventures until after I returned them home that night. Oh, did I mention that I borrowed his car for this impromptu trip? Sometimes forgiveness is easier to get than permission.

But these moments cannot mimic, let alone replicate, the bond of parenthood - to know that I am responsible for their welfare, to put food on their plates, to give them a roof over their heads, to provide the clothes on their backs; to be the one to whom they come for help when they scrape a knee falling off a bicycle for the first time, to whom they turn when they get bullied in school for wearing thick nerd glasses, or to whom they talk when they become interested in boys and need dating advice.

I’ve only known parenthood from the outside (or more appropriately the underside?) - as a child, a teenager, and as an adult, always looking up to her father.

When I was a child, how many countless times did he drop me off at my piano or voice lessons and waited patiently in the car for me to return when I was done? What financial sacrifices did he have to weigh when he decided to get me horseback riding lessons on the salary of a priest with a wife and four children? When I grew into adulthood, what pain did he endure to see me waste away my body in my obsession to control my eating, begging me in tears to gain weight?

Because of his occupation, my father has seen, more than most, the frailty of the human condition - the highs of its glories and the lows of its sins. I can recall times in my childhood when my father, as a priest of the Episcopal Church, would receive phone calls that would pull him away from dinner with our family at the dining room table or that would come in the dead of the night, waking us from our slumber. These calls would sometimes be a prelude to a trip that would take him to less-than-idyllic locations - a prison, a hospital, or perhaps a psychiatric ward. I can only imagine the sort of pain, grief, and despair to which he would listen and what comfort or counsel he would provide. Not being able to speak about any of what he had heard or discussed, he simply told me once, “Nothing people do can surprise me anymore.”

Yes, priests do much more than just give sermons on Sundays.

But how much does the vocational prepare oneself for the personal? How much does shouldering the burden of secrets kept buried by the covenants of the priesthood provide fortitude when faced with the pain of loved ones?

While I was dealing with anorexia, one of my sisters was battling kidney disease since her late teens. Over the span of the last 40 years, she has undergone three kidney transplants, years of dialysis, and a host of secondary complications related to her treatments. Most recently, she had a leg amputated from above the knee due to circulation problems. This single complication required four separate surgical procedures - two from transplanting veins from her own body in failed attempts to improve her circulation, one failed attempt at amputating below the knee, and the final surgery to remove the part of the leg above the knee. I won’t catalog all her ailments, but suffice it to say this example alone is emblematic of the life she has led, going in and out of hospitals too many times to count.

Yet despite my problems or my sister’s pain, my father has always remained a bright, shining beacon of kindness and optimism. Even after his retirement from the priesthood, still, now, his former parishioners still seek him out to ask him to officiate wedding ceremonies and provide spiritual advice. I think he is so loved by everyone he meets because he has a natural way of bringing out the good in people. My father once told me when I was angry, “Whatever you do, do it with kindness.”

To this day, whenever I eat scallops, I am transported back to when I was a 16-year-old girl trying to impress her father by cooking scallops for dinner. I wanted to give him that perfect, lightly-caramelized top seared with brown butter juxtaposed by a rare, soft, delicate, slightly pink center - that almost indescribable bite where the sear produces a smokiness that blends with the natural savory flavor of the ocean, mixing earthiness with the sublime. I don’t recall how they turned out, but I remember my father’s smile when he said, “They’re perfect.”

Thanks, dad, for all your kindness and support throughout my life.