Table of Contents
To my mother, the artist
Just be elegant.
Emilie Benes (my grandmother)
MY THANKS to Judy Hottensen and her colleagues at Weinstein Books, for believing in this project, and to Mel Berger at William Morris Endeavor, for helping me to get the word out and stay on point.
To Dan Paisner, who somehow found a way to do something I have never been able to doorganize my life, from beginning to end, collaborating with me to match the stories with a message we believe will resonate with women of all ages.
To Leslie, Beth, Jenny, Gina, and Jay, for their patience and encouragement along the way.
To SuSu for making all things at once even remotely possible.
And my greatest thanks to Jim, Emilie, and Carlie, for their unending support of Mommy.
COLD OPEN
October 30, 1998Yonkers, New York
HER TINY BODY had gone limp. Shes not moving! I screamed into the phone. The noises shes making are all wrong. It doesnt sound like her. And shes not moving at all, from her chest down!
I could hear the alarm in our pediatricians voice. Mika, she said firmly. You have to get her back to the hospital. Drive her yourself, if you can. Well call ahead and get them ready for you.
I followed the doctors orders, moving quickly, mechanically, all the time chanting, Please make her okay, please make her okay. Over and over. Pleasemakeherokay, pleasemakeherokay...
I dont remember putting my infant daughter in her car seat or driving to the hospital. I have a vague memory of pulling in to the emergency room parking lot and flinging open the driver door. I know I left the engine running, and the car angled in the ambulance zone. It had barely been a half hour since wed been to this same emergency room, since these same doctors and nurses had examined Carlie and told me she was okay. But they were wrong. We were met in the reception area by the same hospital worker whod checked us in on our first visit, and now he was trying to put me through the same procedure all over again.
Name? he asked calmly. Social Security number?
I didnt have time for procedure. Carlie didnt have time. My doctor had called ahead, I explained. It had all been arranged. But I could not make myself understood, and now the mechanical fog that had gotten me to the hospital was lifting. I went from panic to confusion and finally to rage. Now all I could think was that this man and his forms were standing between my baby and the help she needed. He needed to get out of our way. I placed Carlies car seat gently on the floor and flew toward him, grabbing his shirt and the skin on his neck. I dug in and told the attendant in the clearest language possible that his life depended on his ability to get out of the way. Out of Carlies way. Then, in a swift, single movement, I rushed toward him and shoved him against the wall. As I did so, I flashed on an image of a mother summoning the strength to lift a car off her injured child. To me, it was a matter of life and death. I had to get my baby in there. Nothing would stand in my way.
From the corner of my eye, I could see one of the nurses reach for a phoneprobably to call security. Then, another nurse stepped in as if to separate me from her colleague. She didnt have to. I saw her approach and let the man go. The nurse saw me retreat and reached instead for Carliestill in her car seat, still on the waiting room floor. In that moment the nurse must have seen they were up against the power of a mothers instinct. Or maybe the message from Carlies doctor had finally reached the reception desk. It didnt matter which.
Instantly, Carlie was surrounded by doctors, nurses, technicians. Some of them I recognized from before. But they were different now, all moving in the urgent choreography of emergency. I stood off to the side. I called my husband, Jim. He was on his way before I could finish my first sentence... but it was a Friday, and he was coming from the city, and it would take him forever.
I watched helplessly as doctors pressed a series of needles into Carlies little toes, and got no response. She was awake and conscious, but she was completely unresponsive. I was still standing uselessly to the side when I heard someone whisper words that rang through my brain as if through a loudspeaker: Spinal cord damage.
Everything got quiet and far away. Then I heard the words echo again: Spinal. Cord. Damage. If I hadnt been leaning against the wall, I would have melted to the ground. It was like being stuck inside one of those dreams where you want to scream but nothing comes out.
One doctor called a spinal cord expert at another hospital. How soon can you get here? I heard him say.
I watched as they rolled little Carlie into an adjacent imaging room for an MRI. All I could do was wait. I felt my knees go soft and my back slide farther down the wall as a terrible thought began to take shape: this was my fault. This didnt have to happen. Wed fallen down a flight of stairs, because I was exhausted. Because I was spent, distracted. Because I was practically sleepwalking with my baby in my arms, weighed down by my impossible schedule and worries of what lay ahead. One moment Carlie was in my arms, and then she wasnt. One moment I was on my feet, talking a hundred miles an hour to the sitter. The next, I was in a free fall, crashing down a full flight of stairs... bumping down hard, bouncing off the steps and up against the wall, unable to stop myself or my baby girl. When wed finally crashed to the landing below, her tiny frame was pressed between me and the floor.
Now my four-month-old was in that imaging room, on the other side of the door, inside a giant metal machine, while I was slumped against the wall, reliving the horror of what had just happened to my precious baby girl. She was only a few months old, and I was supposed to take care of her. Nothing was more important. But at this moment all I was thinking about was how I had failed Carlie. How I let this happen. How I was to blame.
How could I have let myself get so run down, so exhausted at work that I would fumble over my own feet and fall down a steep flight of stairs with my newborn in my arms? It made no sense to meand yet, here I was, waiting for word about what her life would look like now. Wondering if shed ever be able to move. All for what? A blind ambition to be all things to all people? To be a super hockey mom?
After another beat or two, I could no longer stand against that wall. My legs crumbled beneath me, and I slid to the floor. At one point, I was looking at this pathetic scene of myself as if from above. I could see my face pressed against the cool, filthy linoleum of the hospital floor. I could see that I was weeping.
This was my rock bottom, and as I lay there I thought, How can I ever forgive myself for what Ive just done?
INTRO
Sometimes You Have to Take a Step Back
AS A YOUNG GIRL, whenever I imagined my career, I always had an age-based end date for it all: forty. That was no target date or deadline by which I meant to have arrived at whatever job or place or purpose Id set out for myself. Nothat, to me, was the finish line.
After that, Id be done. Id retire into motherhood and the role of supportive wife, which I had always wanted to be at the center of my identity.