Diana Abu-Jabar

Not What She Expected

My mother and father were young, enthusiastic1 parents. They had just entered their 20s when I was born. Children defined their new marriage and their lives as adults. Their daughters were their joy and legacy, the center of attention. Limited resources necessitated difficult choices: My sisters and I shared beds, we had a black-and-white TV in an age of color, and restaurants were a wild extravagance.2 Both my parents worked and worked at jobs they found unfulfilling3 and, when they were home, seemed to nap constantly.

I wanted something different. Namely, a satisfying career-and the freedom to move and to take risks, to be unencumbered4. I dreamed of distant travel, elaborate dinner parties, and the worlds most secluded study.5 Kids didnt seem compatible6 with these goals.

Many of my literary heroes had no children: Katherine Mansfield, Edith Wharton, Eudora Welty.7 Virginia Woolf was childless, and her famous declaration on the importance of a room of ones own made me feel she was even rather chilly toward houseguests. From these authors, I gleaned that the pursuit of ones passion subsumed all of ones energies, leaving little behind.8

At age 30, my efforts paid off when I learned my first book was going to be published. I burst into tears; it was a happiness unlike any I had known. Not long after, a male colleague at a dinner party warned that, if I wanted to have a child, there wasnt “time to spare.”But I did have time. I didnt want children. And I married a man who felt the same way. Instead, I taught and wrote. My husband and I held dinner parties and traveled, trying out those early dreams.

But as my sisters began to have kids and I greeted my new nieces and nephews, something shifted. I believed that being an aunt would be the perfect fit-all glory, no guts9. It was lovely to have children to spoil without having to worry about the daily realities of parenting. But to my surprise, aunthood brought its own sort of discontent-a subtle, quiet appetite for more. After public readings, I was frequently asked if I had children-for no reason that I could discern other than my being female. One day a woman in the audience blurted, “Dianas books are her children!” I knew she

was trying to be helpful, but I felt a twinge of discomfort.10 I wasnt sure I wanted my books to be my children.

I started registering clear signs of ambivalence.11 My husband and I acquired Yogi, a little Italian greyhound12. And I promptly developed a telling habit of flipping Yogi on her back in my arms while cooing, “Be the baby.”13 She helplessly let me cradle her while my husband rolled his eyes.

I turned to books for guidance. I read in a biography of Julia Child14 that, despite a life of fame and excitement, she may have regretted not having children. I felt those words reverberate15 in me. Still, I was in my 40s by that point. There were risks associated with late childbearing, of course. What felt more daring still was challenging my own idea of who I was: I had never thought of myself as a mother, and it seemed a little late to make such a drastic change to my identity.

But, I realized I had changed already; it had happened so gradually I almost hadnt noticed. My work had given me great satisfaction, but there were parts of me that it didnt reach. I didnt want only the solitude of work. I yearned for more joy, more clamor, more life in my life.

My husband and I began to discuss the possibility of having children. He had found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed being an uncle, discovering the pleasures of play and making merry. He allowed that he too had felt a deeper pull to create a family.

For me, the transformative moment came, oddly enough, through my work: I had been writing a memoir that was, in part, a wish to understand my life without children.16 But one morning I started working on a novel about a woman who had grown up without any biological family, who stands starkly17 alone in the mystery of her own identity. While researching the book, I started chatting with a mother and her eight-year-old daughter in a café. It came up in conversation that the daughter was adopted. After showing me her crayoned drawings, the girl turned to her mother and very delicately wrapped one arm around the womans neck. I watched, bewitched18. And I walked away with a new dream, feeling all but certain that I wanted to adopt my own child.

I was terrified: The more important the decision, the more frightening it is. I collected quotes on taking risks. When we began the adoption application process, I cut out a quote from journalist Dorothy Thompson, who said, “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”

And then, this past January, my husband and I brought home our one-day-old baby daughter. As we drove away from the hospital, I told my husband in a wondering voice, “Theres a baby in our car!” Even after all the preparation, it seemed nearly impossible. Throughout the first weeks with her, my husband and I stared at each other in sleepdeprived astonishment, laughing and asking each other, “Do you feel like a parent?” And slowly the answer shifted from Um, maybe? to Yes. Absolutely yes. We named our daughter Grace; its an old family name, but also a word for possibility and renewal. Through Grace, we transcended19 our old fears and perceptions of ourselves that no longer fit. We discovered that life could be so much bigger than we had imagined.

Grace is sitting on my lap as I proofread20 this essay. Its possible that my work has slowed down somewhat, but I also think that Ive gotten more efficient, cutting away nonessential tasks. Life pours into new containers: I write during nap times and mull over plots during feedings.21 Grace and I are halfminded together, dreaming together; she reclines on my lap and reaches for the pages of her cardboard book. To my joy and surprise, Ive learned that as important as it is to have space to work in, I dont always have to do it all alone. Sometimes a tiny new perspective is the best inspiration of all. ?

1. enthusiastic: 滿(mǎn)腔熱情的，熱心的。

2. necessitate:需要，使……成為必要；extravagance: 奢侈，鋪張浪費(fèi)，放縱的言行。

3. unfulfilling: 不稱(chēng)心的，令人不滿(mǎn)足的，使人不愉快的。

4. unencumbered: 沒(méi)有阻礙的，不受妨礙的。

5.elaborate:精致的，精心布置的；secluded :隔絕的，隱蔽的；study: 書(shū)房。

6. be compatible with：與……和諧,與……共處。

7. 本句提到的女性依次為英國(guó)作家凱瑟琳·曼斯菲爾德、美國(guó)作家伊迪絲·華頓和美國(guó)作家尤多拉·韋爾蒂，下句提到的Virginia Woolf是英國(guó)著名作家弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫。

8. 我發(fā)現(xiàn)，追尋一個(gè)人的激情夢(mèng)想會(huì)消耗其所有的精力，幾乎所剩無(wú)幾。

9. guts: 勇氣，膽量。

10. blurt: 脫口而出；twinge: 陣痛，一陣刺痛，一陣思緒（通常指不快的）。

11.register: 顯出，顯示；ambivalence: 矛盾的心理。

12. greyhound: 靈緹犬，原產(chǎn)地意大利，體型小巧。

13. 我很快養(yǎng)成了一個(gè)說(shuō)話的習(xí)慣：一邊輕拍抱在懷里的Yogi背部，一邊柔聲地說(shuō)“乖點(diǎn)兒?！眂oo: 溫柔可愛(ài)地說(shuō)話，柔聲地說(shuō)。

14. Julia Child: 茱莉亞·蔡爾德（1912－2004），美國(guó)知名廚師、作家與電視節(jié)目主持人。

15. reverberate: 回響，回蕩。

16. transformative: 改革的，變化的；memoir: 回憶錄，自傳。

17. starkly: 完全地。

18. bewitch: 蠱惑，使著迷。

19. transcend: 超越。

20. proofread: 校對(duì)。

21. 生活注入了新的內(nèi)容：我在（寶寶）睡覺(jué)時(shí)寫(xiě)作，在喂奶時(shí)構(gòu)思情節(jié)。mull over: 仔細(xì)考慮。