Circuitous¹ conversations, they went something like this: “Let’s try to have a kid – but we’ll need a new car – we can’t afford that – so we’ll just work a little longer – but if I had another degree surely I’d make more money – yeah, let’s wait to finish school – but then I’ll be too old – fine, let’s try to have a kid – but…”

On the evening in question, her dad declared: “Seriously, will there ever be a good time?” Locked in an embrace that would distract him from that question, I never did voice the fear that hovered² above my right ear: What if we raise her wrong?

I know so little about everything. Well, at least everything that is important to raising a child right.

I Know Nothing About Life After Death

“There are over 300 bones in a kid’s body,” I read in our daughter’s scholastic³ science book. Skulls⁴ are filled with brains, vertebrae are stretched along the spinal⁵ cord, and the femur is covered by muscle and skin.

“So, what do you call it when all the bones are put together?” I quizzed, just for fun.

“A skeleton! That’s what you find in a grave, right?”

I nodded, suddenly wary⁶.

“Would we find your grandma’s skeleton if we dug her up?”

I searched the room for an answer. “Honey, my grandma wasn’t buried. She was – ah – she was cremated⁷, meaning …” Man, my throat was dry. “Her body was burned up – in a special oven.”

The child’s shocked eyes stared into mine unrelentingly. “In an oven? Why would they burn her?”

“Remember, when people are dead they don’t feel anything, right? So I guess some people would rather their body get burned instead of – [oh God] – be eaten by bugs⁸?”

I Know Nothing About the Natural Order

Walking home from the bus stop with her father and a friend, she spotted⁹ the block’s feral cat taunting¹⁰ a mouse.

As she bent¹¹ to see how the shivering creature was faring, her friend’s large winter boot crashed forward. Before they could stop him, he did it again. With a quiet pop, the small body ruptured¹² and its soft tissue melted pink in the snow.

She refused to be comforted even as her dad soothed¹³, “The mouse was almost dead, love. The cat would have killed it.”

“But it’d have been better if the cat had killed it.”

I Know Nothing About Finding –or Making –Love

She was 5 when I gave birth to her brother. As my belly¹⁴ grew, it didn’t take long for her to ask how the sibling¹⁵ in my tummy would escape. Thank God for the Internet.

Within seconds my phone had conjured¹⁶ up a computer-generated video of a baby descending¹⁷ through the birth canal. Over the clinical narrator’s voice, I perkily editorialized: “Isn’t it amazing how girls’ bodies are made to open up and give birth? Just a miracle, don’t you think?”

At first I didn’t notice the tears, strangely unaccompanied by sound, flowing down her cherub¹⁸ cheeks.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“But I don’t want to have a baby,” she whispered.

Hastily, I tried to explain. “Just because your body can have babies doesn’t mean you will have them. It’s totally your choice.”

“Really? But how do I choose to have a baby?”

As her dad watched the scene with an eyebrow¹⁹ cocked, I struggled for something better than: “Trust me.”

I Know Nothing About Letting Go

The day I’d anticipated and dreaded²⁰ for five years finally arrived. We stood in the rain that smelled of frost and waved good-bye. Her nose was a flat triangle pressed against the greasy²¹ window of a yellow school bus driven by a stranger.

That morning, we hid our anxiety behind smiles that were too broad and voices that were especially loud. We comforted ourselves with the knowledge that we’d prepared her as best as we could. We’d warned her of Stranger Danger. We’d talked about privacy and modesty²², and how friends don’t keep secrets. I’d told her of words that could get her in trouble if spoken out loud. She could recite her address, phone number and full name.

We returned that afternoon and waited as kids dribbled²³ out of the bus. Our baby reached the top step, and on seeing us she grinned, leaped to the curb²⁴ and raced to her dad.

With the dexterity²⁵ of a martial²⁶ artist, she landed a karate²⁷ chop squarely to his groin.

We stood stunned²⁸. This is what she’d learn in kindergarten.

I Know Nothing About Being Prepared

She owes her existence to that question: “Will there ever be a good time?”

It was a topic never concluded as, that evening, hot pulse turned dust, turned atom, turned cell, turned into lungs, limbs and a beating heart.

She entered the world as a salmon²⁹ erupts from crystal falls – breathless, then gasping³⁰.