I want to know why you left.
“Why do I love whales?” She considers the question as she piles cookies onto a plate. “Let’s go sit outside.”
We head to the porch swing with the cookies. I gaze out at the long grass rustling in the field.
“When you were really little,” my mom begins, “maybe two or three, you loved balls.”
I laugh. “Excuse me?”
“You did! You really, really loved balls. Any kind. Soccer balls, tennis balls, spiky balls, golf balls, footballs. I made you a scrapbook with pictures of all the different types of balls, and you could name every one. Darwin had a dinosaur phase. Moby was into puzzles. You loved balls. When I was little, it was whales. The first one I can remember seeing was in the Bay of Fundy. I was probably three or four, and I was entranced.”
I remember this from the stories she used to tell. “A humpback, right?”
“That’s right.” She smiles. “We were out in my uncle’s boat. The way the whale leapt out of the water was like a ballet. I wanted tobethat whale. I imagined living in the ocean with mermaids and dolphins and belugas.”
“Like in the bedtime story.”
She smiles wistfully. “Yes. And I never stopped loving whales. I did a school project on the whales that migrated through the bay when I was in the sixth grade.”
It sounds familiar, but it’s been more than two decades since I’ve heard this.
“When I was thirteen, I begged your grandparents to send me to a marine mammal summer camp run by the Canadian Whale Institute. I cried when they said yes. It’s where I learned about right whales, and how close to extinction they are. It solidified my calling. The problem with right whales, as you know, is that they aren’t reproducing at a fast-enough rate to compensate for how many are killed each year by vessel strikes and fishing line entanglements. I didn’t quite know how I wanted to help, but I knew I needed to.” She pauses. “And then life happened.”
I listen to Mom tell me her version of that life.
How difficult it was to move to Ontario from the East Coast in the ninth grade. How she dated my father against her better judgment. She was the one to end their relationship before she went away to university, knowing she’d one day move back to the sea. She had her sights set on the whales, and nothing was going to stand in her way. She stayed friends with Dad, but she couldn’t get him off her mind, and after years of trying to deny her feelings, she gave in to them.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was hopelessly in love with your father,” she tells me. “I knew I wanted to have a family with him, even though the timing was less than ideal.”
She was weeks away from starting a field internship with theNew England Aquarium, where she’d be studying and tracking North Atlantic right whales.
“I thought I might be able to do that early in my pregnancy, but I had terrible nausea. I couldn’t even look at the sea without my stomach turning. The idea of stepping foot on a boat was repellent. I threw up constantly. I couldn’t keep any food down.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say softly.
“It’s called hyperemesis gravidarum. Extreme morning sickness, except mine lasted all day. It felt like my body had betrayed me. I couldn’t do anything but lie in bed. They didn’t say it, but my roommates were annoyed with all the puking. And”—she turns to me—“I missed your dad. I missed my family. I needed my mom. When I left the East Coast, I knew I’d be going home for good. I was being practical—your dad had a business and a steady income. There were two sets of grandparents-to-be ready to help.”
We watch a pair of rabbits hop across the field.
“I thought about whales a lot during those first few months after Darwin was born,” she says.
I smile. “Of course you did.”
“Right whales are exceptional mothers. They starve themselves to nurse their calves, and they nurse for up to two years, traveling thousands of miles with their baby, ensuring its protection and teaching it how to communicate and feed.”
I take her hand in mine, saying gently, “You do know you aren’t a whale, right?”
Her voice is tight. “But I tried. I tried to be a whale mother. I loved you all so, so much. But as the years passed, I started to become angry. Angry at myself for giving up a chance at a career.Angry with your father for letting me. It was a quiet sort of seething that ate away at me. That wasn’t who I wanted to be—for you or for myself. So your father and I agreed that I should give it a shot.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “I know you haven’t been able to forgive me. But I think I might have withered up if I’d stayed.”
“Why didn’t you and Dad sit us down and explain it together?”
“I couldn’t,” she says. “I just couldn’t. I knew the only way I’d go was if I walked out the door while you were sleeping.”
“I hated you,” I admit, my voice breaking as I blink back tears. “I hated how you gave us up for whales and then came home and baked cakes and never talked about them again.”
“You didn’t want me to.”
