“Yes, hi. What’s happening?”
“The baby is happening. I’m in labor,” says Nina, sounding uncharacteristically rattled.
“Oh my god,” I say. “Are you okay?”
I can hear her breathing through some pain. “I’m trying to be. Mom is getting a flight, and our doula is on the way.”
“Nina! This is really happening!” I scream. Then I try to calm myself. “You can do this. You were born to do this.”
“I sure as shit hope so.” She laughs briefly and then growls in pain. “I need to go. Nils will keep you updated.”
With that, she’s gone. I look at my watch: 2:00P.M.here, so 8:00P.M.in Stockholm. I’ve heard that first babies can take a long timeto make their entrance, so I take a deep breath. But how can anyone be Zen at a time like this—when there will soon be an entirely new person in the world?
I pause and turn my attention back to the conversation happening in the great room.
“It’s odd. Now that I’m dying, I feel more alive than ever,” says Anita, tearfully. “I just keep wondering, what will happen to me? Where will I go?”
“You will go somewhere much better,” says my father, in a voice that sounds grounded and certain. “A place that is so beautiful, you can’t even imagine it.”
“How do you know?”
There is a pause, and then my father says, “I’ve been there. So have you. It’s just that, here, in this human form, we forget all the things we inherently know. I am just now starting to remember.”
“What is it that you remember?”
“That life gets much, much bigger on the other side. That there is absolutely nothing to fear.”
I lean against the wall as I eavesdrop, hoping that what my father says is true—and hoping even harder that he has learned these truths from Seth, who is already in this bigger, better place.
“But is it lonely there? Once I’m gone… will I be lonely?”
“Just the opposite, Anita.” He uses her name as if he has known her forever. “And you won’t be gone. No one is ever truly gone.”
After Anita leaves, I join my father in the great room. He is running his hands along the cribbage board as if trying to recall something. He was still capable of playing the game when I moved back here last year, but now he can no longer remember the rules. At some point this winter, we must have played our final game without even realizing it.
“It’s a beautiful day,” I say. “Shall we go sit by the water?”
I help him up, and we walk out to the porch, where we ease our way down the stairs toward the path. It’s slow going, and my father leans onme more heavily than in the past. I’m keenly aware of his frailty lately. Even a year ago, this walk used to culminate in a swim or a canoe ride. But my father has not wanted to swim this summer, and he doesn’t have the dexterity to get in and out of boats anymore. So we just walk down and sit on the dock, which is enough of an adventure for now.
“What a day, what a day,” my father says once he is seated in his rusted folding chair. Alzheimer’s may have eroded his sense of context, but it has given him the gift of extreme presence. “The happiest day of my life…”
I wait for him to go on, curious as to when that day might have been. When he stays quiet, I ask, “When? When was the happiest day of your life?”
“Today, I think.”
“Today is the happiest day of your life?” I look at him, wondering if he can somehow sense that he is soon to become a grandfather.
He closes his eyes and lets the sun hit his face. “I can’t see why not.”
I happen to know that he has difficult days—hours when he is disoriented, worried, frustrated, or uncomfortable. When he gets agitated with me and I lose my temper with him. But he sheds them easily and we try to revel in his better moments. If he says these are his happiest days, I have no reason not to believe him.
The loons are back this year. At least, I assume they’re the same ones who laid claim to the pond last summer. They have a new loonlet with them this season. In June, when we first spotted them, the baby was always riding on its parents’ backs. But before long, it began to swim and keep up with them. It has spent the summer absorbing as much wisdom as possible before it is left to make its own way.
Last year, it was a shock to me when the adult loons took off at the end of the summer and left their baby behind. I was frantic, thinking they had made a mistake, but it turns out this relinquishment is how loonlets come of age. Left to their own devices, they must survive on their own and, ultimately, figure out how to make their first migration solo. It seems too much for a three- or four-month-old to manage, and yet, they do.
I look at my father as he watches this year’s loonlet pass our dockunaccompanied. It navigates the waters with eagerness, and after a few minutes, its mother surfaces beside it.
“They’re such good parents—the loons,” I say. “The way they guide the baby with such a soft touch.”
