half, we see a child that is well-managed, confident and self-reliant.”
She reminded me of Azalea sitting across from me in the Chinese restaurant, waiting for me to return, and so many other times, too, “managing” herself as the world swirled around her.
I began to wonder, thinking about the little I knew about Missy, and myself and Azalea, what is the thread that connects us?
* * *
—
UNLIKE MISSY, AZALEA certainly hasn’t been born into poverty—modest or otherwise—but she tends to appreciate what she has. An only child, Azalea has never wanted a sibling, lest she’d have to share her American Girl dolls or Barbies or clothes or books. Or us. At the same time, during a recent vacation with another family of three boys, she was in heaven, loving having someone to play cards with and make a video with, to laugh with, to complain about the adults with. “It’s so fun to feel like I’m in a big family!” she said.
When I asked her recently about her feelings about being an only child, she answered with her usual balance: “Well, there are pros and cons to both.”
Azalea met her two best friends when they were all six months to a year old. Going into seventh grade, they are all still BFFs. She has attended the same school since kindergarten, getting a ride each day with the dad of one of her best friends, who teaches at the school. He recently sent me a video of the girls on their way to kindergarten. Azalea’s long, curly hair is in pigtails, and she’s wearing a red dress that she loved so much she wore it to her first day of first grade, too. Her front teeth are missing, and she and her besties are sitting in car seats, singing and throwing their little bodies around to a song on the radio as our friend videotapes them through the rearview mirror.
It’s the kind of friendship I’ve dreamt of my whole life.
The school gives written comments instead of grades, so, while these reports are certainly no longitudinal study, I can see themes in the teachers’ comments. Unlike her mother (but like Missy), Azalea has been doing well in academic subjects, and, even more unlike her mother (and like Missy), she always gets reports of “exceptional” social skills and emotional intelligence from her teachers.
Comments about Azalea’s work ethic and ability to focus have appeared in every school report since kindergarten, something she certainly didn’t inherit from me, seeing as I did poorly in school until college. Sroufe and his colleagues found that one of the most marked traits to come from a secure attachment in infancy is tenacity, an ability to believe in oneself, stay on task, and not get too easily frustrated. Missy also showed this trait again and again in the lab and in school. I’ve always wondered if this trait of Azalea’s belonged to her alone, or perhaps is something she inherited from Thayer.
I don’t know anything about Missy’s father. But from the time Azalea was born and Thayer jiggled her in his sling to Hawaiian music until she fell asleep, and carried her in the hiking backpack through the woods, and rode her on his bike seat into town, the two of them have been—well—birds of a feather. Every year they go to Comic Con in New York City together, dressing up as their favorite superheroes while I stay home and read; they go on an annual canoe trip while I do a weeklong sesshin. These days, Thayer starts seeing patients early in the morning three days a week so he can pick her up from school and take her to the gym, where they train in Brazilian jiujitsu. Together.
And then there’s my dad and I.
In April of our second year at the monastery, we were visiting Thayer’s parents’ house when my mom called to tell me that my dad had died.
He had had his first heart attack at forty, after a life of smoking and loving the toasty brown edge of fat along a steak, extra hollandaise for his eggs Benedict at Big Boy, and “hamburgs,” as he called them. Right after his heart attack, his business went belly-up and we lost everything