Page 34 of The Holiday

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When Patrick was born, the baby’s wails filled the hallway, and Ruby clutched my hand. I didn’t know from firsthand experience, but I was imagining that she was calculating in her mind how quickly she’d gone from new mother holding a crying baby of her own, to grandmother waiting anxiously to meet her first grandchild. The passage of time is nothing but trickery, and the look on her face was pensive.

“You okay?” I whispered to her, clutching her hand and giving it a squeeze.

Ruby nodded, but when she looked at me, her eyes were filled with tears. “I was worried that something was going to happen to my baby.”

It took me a minute to realize that the “baby” in question was Harlow, though my first thought was that she imagined her new grandbaby as being “hers.”

“I don’t care if she’s thirty-six, Dex, she’ll always be my baby.”

I put my arm around her and let her rest her head on my shoulder until a doctor came into the private waiting room (they’d accommodated a former First Daughter giving birth by putting us all in a secluded suite at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“A boy,” the doctor said, beaming. She snapped off her gloves and smiled right at Ruby. “Congratulations, Mrs. Hudson,” she said. “You have a grandson.”

It was a whirlwind from there. Ruby went to Harlow, held little Patrick, and—at least in my eyes—the world’s greatest grandmother was born (and I had two pretty spectacular ones myself, so that’s saying something). She somehow instinctively knew not to offer too many opinions or too much advice, but to be there as an extra pair of hands when needed.

Just as Ruby had gone through herself, Harlow battled a bout of postpartum depression that left her unable to get through her days for a bit. I woke up one morning when Patrick was about a month old to find my wife sitting at the table of the tiny New York apartment we kept, holding a cup of coffee between her hands. She had a duffel bag at her feet, and, dear reader, my heart went into overdrive; I thought for a moment that she was leaving me.

But she was not. She was going to Harlow’s to make sure her own baby was alright. For two weeks, she cooked, cleaned, got up at night with Patrick, and soothed Harlow with walks, reassurances, and trips to the doctor to make sure everything was being checked out. I’ve never seen a fiercer mother and grandmother, though Ruby assured me that Patty had done the same things for her once upon a time, and that it had set her right again to be under her mother's care when the whole world expected her to be the one giving it.

I arrived at Harlow's apartment one evening with takeout for dinner, and everything was under control: there was music playing softly, the lights were dimmed to a relaxing level, and Harlow's husband Brooks was just home from his job on Wall Street. Brooks unknotted his tie, smiling as he leaned over to kiss Harlow, who was holding baby Patrick in her arms. It was such a peaceful scene. So domestic. So satisfying. But beneath the easy calmness, I felt a frisson of tension. Between Harlow and Ruby there passed a look here and there--almost imperceptible--that I read as Harlow needing reassurance from her mother, and each time I caught the look, Ruby would give a small nod, or she might walk over to her daughter and place a hand gently on her back to confirm that all was well. Brooks seemingly did not notice any of it, but as an outsider and a natural observer, I could see it.

Before writing about these things in this book, I talked to Harlow at length, knowing how a woman might not want her moments of perceived weakness displayed for the whole world to read. After all, how many of us, as adults, want others to know the many ways we've had to revert to childhood and seek our parents' approval or support or assistance? But Harlow was steadfast in her decision to share this period of her life--like Ruby, she understood that this was a far more common situation than most people know. Women suffer greatly, and often in silence, as their hormones and their lives change wildly after childbirth, and Harlow said she felt no shame about having struggled through postpartum depression.

I think this story is important for that reason, but it's also integral to the topic at hand: Ruby. Never one to seek the spotlight, at this point in life more than any other, perhaps, Ruby understood that her role was to support. Rather than gloating about being the matriarch of a family, she rolled up her sleeves and quietly put her knowledge and experience to work, serving as the underpinning to her daughter's new life.

Brooks and I set out drinks and brought plates to the dining room table. He speared a piece of fried shrimp on a fork and dragged it through spicy mustard as we dumped containers of pork fried rice, Kung Pao chicken, and dim sum into serving dishes.

"Thanks for being willing to spare Ruby for a bit," Brooks said, chewing the shrimp and washing it down with a beer straight from the bottle. "I felt like I wasn't going to be able to get back to work and leave Harlow here alone with the baby, and I really needed to go to the office."

"All good," I said, in the way that men do. "Not a problem."

And it wasn't a problem; I was in the middle of final edits on a book I'd been working on for nearly two years, and being in New York made it easy to work on that and to take meetings with my editor. Of course I missed having Ruby at our apartment, but it was easy enough to pick up coffees for her and Harlow and swing by to say hello, or to drop in for dinner, as I was doing that night.

Later on, as Ruby was bathing baby Patrick and giving Harlow and Brooks a chance to sit on the tiny balcony of their apartment to catch up on the day, I boxed up the leftovers and put them in the fridge. Harlow had photos and notes affixed to the refrigerator with fruit-shaped magnets, and I took one of them off, holding it in my hands. It was a picture of her and Athena as little girls, standing together with Ruby behind them. Noticeably absent was Jack, their father, and it looked as though they were in a school setting. I wondered how many things in their young lives were solely the domain of their mother--Girl Scout events; school performances; dentist appointments; clothes shopping--and whether it was like that for everyone. Did we all assume that the women in our lives would take over the lion's share of the domestic activities and the childcare-related duties? Why did fathers so easily abdicate their responsibilities to attend choir concerts, school field trips to the zoo, and medical appointments that required hugs and the wiping of tears after shots were administered? Some of it made sense--the practicality of a man needing to work to support his family--but how many of us had mothers serving as the full support system inside the home? And how many of those mothers battled depression of all kinds (postpartum or otherwise) without a Ruby in their lives to step in and shoulder some of the burden?

After filling the fridge and wiping down the counters, I wandered back to the small nursery in the two-bedroom apartment to see if perhaps Ruby was rocking Patrick by the light of the tiny moon-shaped lamp. Instead, I heard her in the bathroom, singing softly to the baby as the sound of a lullaby machine played in the softly-lit nursery. I stepped in, feeling a bit awed by the smell of baby lotion, the flannel sheets in the crib, and the dangling mobile hanging over the crib with its little moons and stars and planets.

But it was the sight of the inflatable bed on the floor next to the crib that really caught in my ribs; my sixty-three-year-old wife was bunking on an inflatable camp mattress next to her grandson's bed so that she could wake up with him all night. She was within arm's reach at all times, and I knew her well enough by then to know that she wouldn't have had it any other way. I stood there in the pale blue nursery for a few moments, just looking around at it all: the world of babies; the domain of an infant who would grow up and become a boy and then a man in this world. He was someone's son, and one day he might be someone's father. I had a moment where it truly hit me hard in the gut: I'd missed that step; dropped a loop somewhere in the stitching of time. I was someone's son, but I'd never be a father. Never raise a child and send them into the world to decide whether or not they wanted to become a parent.

I'd missed it--given it up willingly.

I want it to be clear that it wasn't regret filling my heart the same way that powdery baby smells were filling my nostrils in that moment, it was purelyacknowledgement. The realization that I'd let that thread of life go.

Before the sensation wormed its way fully into my body and toppled me completely, Ruby walked in with Patrick swaddled in a yellow towel that was covered in baby ducks.

"Hey!" I said, perhaps too loudly, too jovially. "It's the man of the hour!"

Ruby looked right at me and her eyes went wide. No words passed between us, but I knew that she saw what I'd been feeling, just as I saw her own emotions etched all over her face. She held a baby in her arms, and she knew that I was imagining her as a young mother--something she'd been while she was married to Jack, but would never be with me--and that I could also see her now for what she was: a grandmother. It came in waves as she stood there holding Patrick's warm, squirmy little body, and I watched as she grappled with each thing:

I look old.

I'm a grandmother--what does he think of that? Does he see me differently? Am I less sexy?

Is he regretting that we'll never do this together? That he'll never do it at all?

Did I make a mistake in taking this from him?

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