Gone Away From Me

Ray LaMontagne, Cookie Monster, the Easter Egg Roll, and a few other memories from the last 18 years.

The song that put Hadley first in a trance and then moved her toward sleep was Ray LaMontagne’s “Gone Away From Me,” a melancholy ditty so effective that I learned to be strategic when I played it in order to maximize naptime.

I couldn’t cue it up the moment we pulled onto 270 after a morning at the Washingtonian Center where Hadley and I spent time at Barnes and Noble reading books and playing at the train table in the Children’s section. “It’s good to share, it’s good to share,” she’d say as she bolted to the back of the bookstore, and her voice quivered as she repeated the goodness there is in sharing as though she were calling out a headline from the Washington Post that relayed the truth, but nothing more. You’d have to read the story to understand the trouble and joy there is in sharing; in being good, and one might not always distinguish one from the other.

The Germantown Library was usually a safe bet because we lived around the corner. The mandolins, the French Horns would sound, and Ray would have just enough time to tell us that for awhile he sat there staring at a girl’s photograph; for awhile he cried and tried not to make a scene, but then we’d be home and Hadley would just be beginning to ease into some sort of contemplative reserve that only he could put her in.

Once, I made the mistake of driving past the library but not going in it, and Hadley threw a fit. “Waaabare! Waaabare!” she kept saying, but I didn’t understand. “THANK YOU!” she cried, meaning, “please,” but she had trouble remembering which was used at which time. That was one of the only times Ray’s song didn’t help. There isn’t much anyone can do to make it better when someone isn’t understood. Is there a deeper agony?

The Royal Bagel Bakery was also a safe bet for two reasons. Proximity, and also their baked goods promised to send Hadley into a sugar rush that only running around at a park could counter, which is exactly what we’d do. Hadley and I would eat a bagel and sliced apples and usually cucumbers that I’d bring along. “Is it time for my cookie?” she’d ask after each slice of fruit or veggie. I would tell her what I’d been saying at every meal - she has to eat all her fruits and vegetables before she eats the cookie that is the size of her face.

Hadley wasn’t all that convinced, so I attempted to give her some agency.

“Big Bird eats vegetables,” I’d say. “And Grover, and Bert and Ernie,” I continued while Hadley stared at me and not in wonder but in respectful annoyance - like one might look at politicians waiting for them to finish with their trite overtures and empty promises. “Even Oscar eats his fruits and vegetables,” I said.

Hadley considered her apples and cucumbers. She bowed her head as if in prayer and then raised it and looked me in the eye.

“Cookie Monster eats cookies,” she said.

The hardest times were the times when we’d go to the city and I’d try to make it home before naptime. Hadley and I went to the National Zoo one Spring morning when I was about two months pregnant with Harper, and exhausted out of my mind. (I see you Olympiads, Ironpeople, and National Champions. Be pregnant while you have a toddler and then come talk to me.)

The plan was to get to the Zoo around 8am, walk around for a couple of hours, then I’d give lunch to Hadley on the way home plus the free box of animal crackers we got for being members, and this would keep her busy while we made our way home from our Nation’s Capitol (zoo), off the Beltway, and into the great state of Maryland.

But that trip, it so happened that Jennifer Garner, Ben Affleck, and their little girl, who was the same age as Hadley were also at the zoo. I walked passed them a few times and didn’t recognize them except to think, “I feel like I should know them - did I go to high school with those people?” It wasn’t until Jennifer and I were taking turns helping our girls down a slide, and she said Hadley was a cutie pie, that I realized who I was talking to. I played it cool, although all I wanted to do was scream, “HANNAH?!?!” (You’re welcome, Geoff.)

That afternoon, Hadley slept the entire way home. I was too wound up from the unexpected playdate and didn’t feel like managing anything more. Driving home that day, I remember feeling OK for the first time since I’d become pregnant. Jennifer Garner didn’t do that, but being out in the world - figuring it out with Hadley in all its hopeful mystery and shimmering strangeness - did.

It was Good Friday.

The next Spring, Hadley and I took the Metro all the way to the White House for the Easter Egg Roll. My friend, who I’d known since we were in preschool together, was working for the Obama Administration, and got me the tickets. I drove to her apartment a few nights before to get them, and when she saw me, she gave me a hug and said, “It’s still Callie!” I don’t know what I was more grateful for - the Easter Egg Roll tickets, or that she’d seen something of me that hadn’t gone away.

Hadley and I saw Elmo and Maria. She held hands with Dora the Explorer, and she went to her first live concert - Sara Bareilles. I held Hadley on my hip so she could see Sara sing and Hadley watched her with steady eyes the whole time, and when Sara asked if she should keep playing, Hadley yelled, “Play more! Play more!” Sara looked right at her and said, “OK.”

By the time Hadley was in preschool, she wasn’t taking too may naps, and I wasn’t keen on her taking them because she’d be up - and crazy - way past when I needed her to go to bed. Still, I was careful not to play Ray’s song because the road back home was twisty and long and we drove over a river and underneath great, big trees we called “the tree tunnel,” and it would be easy enough to be lulled into a quick nap.

I loved picking Hadley up from preschool. I especially loved the part when she came out with her class and I got a glimpse of her without me. Eager and content are the words that come to mind when I think about that four year old holding a navy blue canvas bag and tapping her foot in time to some song she was singing.

One time, on the way home, we talked about the difficulty and the fun in learning new names.

“My name was hard to say for some students and teachers,” I told Hadley. She asked why, and I explained that I suppose my name wasn’t all that common or they were expecting something different, like Cathy or Carrie.

“Did you correct them?” Hadley asked.

“Sometimes,” I said. “Other times though, I was too shy to say anything.”

“I should’ve been with you,” Hadley said.

Maybe something of her was with me in those days when I tried to say my name clearly, insisting “Callie” is not a nickname, that it is not short for anything, and it is in fact complete, that I do know how to pronounce my “r’s” and the “l’s” are not a mistake. I think I understand enough about biology to understand we carry some potential essence of a life around with us until it is formed and born.

Until we feel the heft of her head in the palm of our hand, her chunky fist in ours, her legs kicking at the excitement of being in the world; of being alive. Until she can hold her head by herself, until she can walk and run and drive by and for herself.

Until it is the Saturday before she turns 18, and she is writing her 50 billionth essay for college applications, trying to name what she wants, how she lives and walks in the world, and how is she to know for sure? You certainly haven’t shown her the straight and the narrow.

You stand outside her bedroom door with a mug of cider, offer it to her and say, “It’s OK to try and see what happens.” You walk away, leaving her to sift through the words and the clove, the deadlines and the cinnamon, the SAT scores and the nutmeg. Downstairs, there is cleaning to be done and laundry to fold so you turn the radio on to pass the time and here is “Gone Away From Me,” filling your house and your heart.

“But this isn’t about us,” you think, folding kitchen towels and patting them into a nice, neat stack. “He’s singing about a break-up. That’s all this is,” you tell yourself, turning now to the socks.

The socks shake as you twine them together and Ray continues to sing, his words falling like autumn leaves whose edges have browned and crinkled and slightly scratch when they land.