Then, We Knew Everything

Abstract

44 THEN, WE KNEW EVERYTHING EMILY SINCLAIR O ne of us saw her in a magazine. It was on a weekend in the luxurious mountain town of Crystal that one of us idly opened the copy of Crystal Life! the hotel had generously supplied. There, among the society photos of standard-issue-blonde, weather-worn women in expensive dresses, was Lydia Collins. She was holding a glass of champagne and standing between an older, silver-haired man and the artistic director for the Crystal Ballet. Her name was given as Sybille Moreau, and she was listed as a dancer. Our cell phones began buzzing. What Lydia C. said is True! She’s French, too. Text me back! When we knew her some years ago, Lydia Collins was wife to Walt, mother to Elsa, Henry, and Bronson. She was delicate and olive-skinned, with slender arms and legs and round, full breasts. Lydia had pushed the children to preschool in an oldstyle British pram. The children wore coats with big buttons and shoes that closed with real buckles, instead of Velcro. She spoke in a breathy Continental accent, like Audrey Hepburn. She lived her life alongside ours, but more gracefully than we did, and now, as we slid into the middle of our lives, trenchantly ourselves, Lydia had become, at forty, Sybille, the French dancer . What, we wondered, did it mean for us—the other mothers, who’d thickened in the middle and learned disappointment, the lumpenmutter, we called ourselves—that the goddess among us had gone away and begun again? The story of Lydia’s defection is the story of those of us who stayed. The children are two. Neurally speaking, they stand at a developmental precipice: Little dendritic connections are forming all over their brains, and all the pathways that don’t get used will die off very soon. It is our job, as mothers, to ensure the frantic and wide-ranging development of their brains so that connec- 45 Sinclair 45 tions are retained. We hug them, we sing to them, and we are in a church, waiting for a music class developed by child experts. On the worn carpet of the church meeting room, Lydia sits, her wavy hair flung over a shoulder, her legs, encased in tall black boots, stretched out in front of her. We eye her. Lydia absentmindedly rocks a baby in a car seat, and a small, still girl sits next to her. When we go around the circle, introducing ourselves , Lydia says, “This is my daughter, Elsa, and my son, who will either be called Hunter or Bramble.” We nod. “Welcome, Lydia! Welcome, Elsa!” we say. Hunter and Bramble are stupid names and how could you not have named your baby already?—but we try not to judge. We tap our finger cymbals and try to find the beat while keeping the egg shakers out of our toddlers’ mouths. The toddlers rock from side to side on sturdy legs as we hold our infants, with their wide, wet eyes, in our arms. Lydia is a beautiful woman with beautiful, chocolate-eyed children. We will absorb her into us. We sing happy songs and watch through the window as autumn leaves release themselves from the trees. Our bodies have run marathons , given birth, fed our young. Our lives are rich and tender and the intensity of feeling nearly unbearable. At the end of class, we ask Lydia if she liked it. “I miss New York,” she says, shrugging. “Oh, well,” we say, somewhat at a loss for words. “Denver’s not New York. But Denver’s a really nice place to raise children .” We gather at the white wooden fence of the little Montessori school on Snyder Street, waiting for our children to come out of their morning toddler class. We wear jeans and ponytails, and we carry paper cups of expensive coffees. We have parked our minivans and station wagons and suvs at the curb, some with sleeping younger siblings in car seats. We have groceries in the backs of our cars. Some of us have on clothes from the gym or yoga studio. We were lawyers, doctors, teachers, and editors before...