“I get to be just like Ruthie Camden!” My daughter exclaimed to me. Ruthie Camden was the youngest girl on Zoë’s favorite show “Seventh Heaven.” “I get to go to school and make friends just like her!”
“Yes you do,” I told her. I turned towards the lake, bringing to knees up to my chin and folding my arms around them. “Aren’t you going to miss the summer though?”
“There’s another summer coming up, Silly!” Zoë laughed scooting closer towards me on the blanket.
“I know, but when winter comes we can’t sit on the blankey and talk.”
“But we can see Santa!” Zoë insisted.
“But we can’t watch the ducks on the pond or feed the geese. What if they starve?”
“Geese have to fly back south for the winter, Daddy, don’t you know that?”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Yes, you’re right. They do.”
There was silence for a few minutes. I sat in that position watching the ducks and swans swim gracefully around the pond. The summer sunlight sparkled down on the water causing the tall buildings of the city to reflect into the water.
“Daddy?” My daughter spoke up. She knelt up on her knees. I noticed she was starring at my face. She moved some of my blonde hair out of my ear and tucked it behind. “Why are you so sad lately?”
I was shocked. How did Zoë know what was going on in my head? Did she pick up on it somehow? She must’ve. And what she said next frightened me even farther.
“Don’t worry Daddy, my new brother or sister is going to be fine.”
I looked at her in awe. “How did-” I stopped speaking.
Zoë lifted up one of my arms and slid her body underneath it. She leaned her head on my knees. “I don’t know, I just knew.”
We sat in silence watching runners go by the lake as well as some rollerbladers and bicyclists. A few dogs ran by, their owners sometimes stopping to throw a Frisbee for them to catch.
“Daddy?” Zoë asked, her crystal blue eyes starring up into mine.
“Yes, Zoë?”
“Can we get a puppy?”
I shook the memory of the park conversation between my daughter and I out of my head as I sat on a park bench. My family and I constantly went to Central Park for picnics but the last time I was there was the week before Zoë’s school had started, the last week of summer. Me and Zoë had gone alone because Clare was not feeling so well that morning. That was the day when Zoë had read my mind and told me not to worry about my unborn daughter or son. I still didn’t understand how she knew what I was thinking. I was happy she didn’t pick up on the nervousness that I had about her going to school. She didn’t need to know about that.
I racked my brain for reasons why I was so nervous about her going to school but I couldn’t only come up with one big one: she was growing up. My little girl was now going to school, a cycle that wouldn’t end for years to come. Sometimes those years seemed so far away but other times they seemed so close. I wanted to put my life in a bubble and keep it that way until I could deal with change. Unfortunately that point in my life was not coming soon.
I was 27 years old, with two extremely young children and yet I felt so old. I guess it is because I had been an adult for about 17 of those years. It started when I was 10 years old and was expected to watch my younger brothers and sisters a lot of the time, and at that point I was also very much involved in singing with my brothers. Three years later my old, familiar, not-so-special name, Taylor Hanson, became a household world. A famous name to everyone I met except for me. I was still the same-old-person who loved to watch He-Man and wrestle with my brothers. But then again I had a career at age 13, I had to grow up fast.
I learned quickly that I could not prevent change, everything changed. I grew older, my parents grew older, my family grew older... I wanted desperately to stop it but I couldn’t. I had to go with the flow.
When my daughter was born I cherished every moment of her young life. I watched her breathe, I watched her grow, I watched her first step and heard her first word. Yet every day I prayed for the day to last longer, to somehow gain more hours. I prayed that I’d have more time watching her grow then the few short years that we were experiencing as life went on.
Zoë was still a baby according to the rest of the world, but to me she was still growing up too fast. Don’t get me wrong I mean I was looking forward to seeing her get older but I wanted to cherish the moments we had to the longest and most fullest extent. Too bad time couldn’t stand still... wouldn’t stand still.
I had a right to worry about my new child, Clare’s pregnancy with this one was different then anything we had experienced before. My wife was sick a lot and she sometimes she couldn’t even get out of bed. It was only the fourth month and there was much more to come. I rushed around the house with Anya, feeding her and tending to her every need while Clare was bed-ridden. I also took care of Zoë and my wife at the same time. Mostly it was only for a day that Clare was so sick but I didn’t take any chances, I must have called the doctor at least twice a day one week because she couldn’t keep anything down. The doctor asked me a few questions about Clare’s condition and when the answers were negative, he told me that it was normal but if I had any other concerns or anything worsened call an ambulance and bring her to the hospital. Usually after the call Clare would feel a little bit better again and start eating.
Clare’s condition scared me a lot because I had seen it briefly before with Isaac’s wife’s first pregnancy. They had lost that child due to a miscarriage. Unlike Clare, Andy hadn’t made it to the third month. That at least gave us hope.
I neglected to mention to my wife that earlier this past week I had been to a psychiatrist. I told Clare I was going out to Costco, which I did afterwards of course, and I made sure I went on a day where she felt well enough to be left at home alone with our two children. I was nervous about going but somehow I pulled myself out of my car and up the stairs to the office. Once I started talking to the doctor my whole life poured out and before I knew it our time was over. I made another appointment for the following week. During the next visit we would talk about the recent concerns in my life. We touched briefly on them but she told me that it would take up a whole session to lay out everything in the correct way. I didn’t fully understand the reasoning but I agreed anyway. I decided that I’d tell her about my nightmare and why I thought I kept having it every night, and about my concerns for my new child. Those issues would probably take up the whole session and maybe with some luck my nightmare would stop. Unfortunately my next session was the day after Zoë started school.
One piece of advice the psychiatrist did give me was to slow down and take each minute one minute at a time. I was under a lot of stress having just gotten home from traveling around the United States on a three month concert tour with my brothers, and the pregnancy complications and Zoë’s schooling were just adding to it. She advised me to sleep earlier and spend as much time as I could find talking and relaxing with my family. Comfort Clare when she got sick, don’t rush around the house trying to make everything perfect, things like cleaning could wait until I had help.
I wish I could have listened to her but being a young father with two crying children and a pregnant wife was too much of a job to just sit down and ignore.
“Aren’t you Taylor Hanson?” A female voice asked from in front of me. I blinked my eyes back into focus and raised my head. There was a young lady standing there holding a baby close to her chest.
I nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“I saw your concert last month here in New York City,” she went on. “It was amazing.”
I smiled softly. “Thank you.” I reached out my hand to her which she accepted. I scooted over on the bench indicating for her to take the seat next to me, which she did.
“How is your family?” She asked me with genuine concern. “My name is Beth, by the way.”
“Hi Beth,” I said. “My family is great, thank you for asking. I just dropped my eldest daughter off at her first day of school.”
“Aw! Tell her congratulations for me! That sure is exciting.”
“To tell you the truth I’m a little nervous about it.”
“Why is that?”
“She’s never been away from me for this long. Sure she’s been to friends’ houses before but her mother has always been with her. I guess I’m just being an overprotective father.”
Beth shook her head. “I know how you feel. I have an older son in the second grade and on his first day of school I was a complete nervous wreck. I only had one child at the time so it was easy for me and his father to watch out for him at school. You have two children, am I correct?”
“Yes, and a third on the way.”
“Congratulations! That’s wonderful!” Beth said happily. “When is your wife due?”
“January. What is your baby’s name?” I asked changing the subject. Beth held the child away from her body so I could see her tiny face.
“Mary Ann,” Beth replied.
“Hey Mary Ann!” I said softly to the baby. I smiled and tickled her cheek with my finger. I looked back up at Beth. “I love them at this age. My Anya is about 10 months now but she looks about five months. My wife jokes that she is always going to get carded at bars. I just hope I’m not around to see that.”
The thought of my children becoming my age depressed me so much. I loved their childhood innocence. I once told Zoë that when I was her age we didn’t have a computer in my house. She was dumbfounded and she asked how I could live without a computer. I told her that I watched cartoons on television and she was amazed to learn that we had TVs in the 80s and 90s. That had made me feel very old.
“I best be going,” Beth said to me after our few minutes of chit-chat. “I promised Mary Ann’s father that we’d be home in time for lunch.” We said our good-byes and she left me sitting on the bench, once again alone to meddle in my thoughts.
I’m not fully aware of what happened next but I remember thinking that I had to pick Zoë up in three hours from school, I promised Clare that I’d go to the doctor’s, and Anya was probably hungry. I became worried about Clare, thinking that she might need me because she might get sick. I stood up off the bench and without warning the ground became slippery. I struggled to keep my balance but the grass swirled and threatened to make my feet slip out from under me. The water from the lake started coming up onto the grass, engulfing the green and turning it to a brown color as it crept closer towards me. The buildings became higher and came closer together, they too now a brown color. They were starring down at me menacingly, challenging me to remain standing with my feet planted firmly on the slippery grass. The sun was now gone. Everything was brown, different shades of brown all around me. Nothing was as it used to be a few moments before. There were no more sounds coming from the park, no more rollerbladers, no more bicyclists, no more dogs chasing Frisbees.
The brown colors darkened and I sank to my knees, thankful that my feet hadn’t given out and toppled me head first onto the slippery brown grass. I tried to breath but the air was filled with dust and I couldn’t get enough real air into my lungs. I screeched as a sharp pain shot through my chest. At first it went away, lasting only for a second, but as the buildings got closer and closer and the air got less and less, another pain started not nearly giving me enough time to brace myself for it’s impact. This time it started in my arm but it grew and grew until I felt it tearing through my already pained chest and I could not stand it any longer. I tried to scream but I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs to make a sound worth yelling about. At that point the brown grass faded into the brown buildings and everything went black.