The space between
There are certain locations that we visit sparingly, maybe once or twice a year, through which we can mark time. Locations where specific memories are made year after year as opposed to the never-ending blending stream that occurs closer to home. My parents home is one of those places for me and especially their neighborhood pool.
I remember bringing Jackson and Adelaide to the pool when Jackson was four and Adelaide was ten months and still swollen from steroids while battling her infantile spasms. I remember going to the pool when Jackson was five and Adelaide was two and trying my best to keep her from overheating while Jackson got a moment of normal childhood. I remember going when Jackson was eight and Adelaide was gone and watching the other little girls playing in the water and getting lost in The Hads: I had a daughter their age and now I don’t. And now I am back at the same pool and with a little girl that is nearly the same age as Adelaide when she died. A healthy and able-bodied child who loves the water and splashing and swimming with her floaties on. A child that is so much like the little girls I had enviously watched as I fell deeper and deeper into remembering the child I’d had.
The mind screwiness of it all was more than I bargained for. Here I was with the healthy little girl I had so desperately yearned for, a little girl that I love and adore, yet Adelaide was still missing.
For better or worse, three year-olds don’t give you a lot of time to perform the mental acrobatics necessary to reflect on emotionally complicated situations. Strawbaby wanted to play mermaids and pirates and so I pushed the memories to the side to make way for my best pirate impression.
A few days later, now at the beach, Adelaide’s missing presence continued to nag at me. I looked on as Jackson and Strawbaby played in the sand. The age difference between them is significant yet, as long as my presence isn’t muddying the waters with rivalry for my attention, they are able to get along for a bit. I looked around at the other families and wondered what they saw as this ten year old played with his three year old sister. Were they looking around for a possible middle child? Did they imagine their had been fertility issues or that Strawbaby had been a whoopsie-baby?
That’s when it dawned on me that if Adelaide were alive, she would be turning seven this October. Next month she would be entering first grade. It is so unbelievably difficult for me to wrap my head around this passage of time because in my mind she is forever three. I try to imagine what she would be like at seven and see her in a wheel chair all decked out to her specifications and likes. I see her longer, taller, her blonde hair a little darker and pulled back in a pony-tail, stray hairs whisping out around her face as she peeks at her surroundings.
If Adelaide were alive she would be the middle child smack in-between her big brother and little sister.
It will be a rare occurrence for anyone to pry and ask me about Jackson and Strawbaby’s age difference. However, I know from the personal experience of having a brother who is six years younger than me that Jackson, on the other hand, will absolutely be questioned.
“Wow, seven years between you and your sister. What happened? Was she an accident?”
He will either say that he had another sister but she died or he’ll choose not to bring up Adelaide at all and just say that Strawbaby was adopted and leave it at that.
And then as I continued to watch my children play under the glaring North Carolina sun, I finally found Adelaide. She had been there along and always would be: forever existing in the space between my children.
Her physical presence is missing of course, but that undeniable space between my living children is where Adelaide lives on. An absence that is strong enough to be noticed even by strangers. And even though I wish she held more than a vacancy, I am still able to find comfort in acknowledging that the space will always be hers.
Even in death she is seen - in the space between.
