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No one is prepared for motherhood, not really, or so Angela has been told. No one can plan for what sort of child theirs will be, or what sort of challenges they will face. One can have some idea of what it is one wants, as a mother, some idea of what one thinks will be set for one’s child, some idea of how to handle different situations, what answers to give for certain questions—but one cannot know how things will happen in practice, cannot know what one will say or do in a difficult situation, cannot plan for everything.
This, Angela does not like, for she is the sort who does best when she has a plan, when she can walk herself through the steps of a situation beforehand, can check and double check that she knows what is best practice. Even in her work as a combat medic, she has some idea of what is best to do, what is expected of her. She cannot know, going in, what damage has been done to a person’s body, what she might be expected to do, but once she assesses an injury, she can call upon her prior knowledge, prior experience, and address the problem in whatever way she knows to be best.
With motherhood, however, Angela has no experience, no way of knowing what might be expected of her, no way of judging her performance, deciding whether or not she has done enough, whether she has met some accepted standard of best practice. Other people may have opinions on her parenting, but other than Fareeha, no one else has any experience with parenting her child, cannot say for certain whether or not she is meeting Izzah’s needs.
Angela is left, then, to worry, worry that she has said too much, or done too little, worry that she is somehow failing her daughter, that she is overprotecting her, or not protecting her enough, worry that in fifteen years, in twenty, Izzah will look back and think That was wrong, will be able to trace an invisible line from a mistake Angela made, now, when she has so little experience with mothering, to some trauma which follows her still.
For the most part, Angela knows, these worries are unfounded. All parents make mistakes, and most of those mistakes are relatively harmless ones. Izzah seems to be a very happy child, gets along well enough with her peers, despite being the fact that she is one of only two Deaf children in her playgroup, and she is meeting all the milestones which one might expect for a child of three, nearly four. All outside measures would seem to indicate that Izzah is doing well, and that, therefore, Angela and Fareeha are doing a good job of parenting her, or at least an adequate one.
Yet, still, she worries.
Given how young she herself was when her parents died, it has been easy for Angela to lionize them, to make them into something greater than they were. She was too young, yet, to get to know them as people when they passed, to see their flaws, to know the ways in which they were, likely, just as scared as she is, and it is hard, in the face of how much she has missed them over the years, to look back at all they said, all they did, and find them in any way wanting, hard to say that she wishes they had done anything differently. Intellectually, she knows that they could not have been perfect, but it is hard, now, decades later, to recall anything that she particularly finds fault with—and she does not want to know it, if there is something she is forgetting.
(As a teenager, Angela found and then obsessively read her mother’s old social media, but it is not helpful, here. Whatever negative things her mother might have had to say about raising Angela, whatever self-doubt she might have felt, is entirely absent from her posts. There is plenty of talk about how blessed she felt, to have had a child after nearly twenty years of marriage, nearly a decade after she gave up on becoming a mother entirely, is plenty about how she could not have imagined what this would be like, despite having dreamed of it for so long, but nothing at all that speaks to her fears, her worries. Perhaps she really did believe, as she claims to have, that God gave her Angela, and therefore thought that she must be ready, able, to be a mother, or perhaps she simply felt that after wanting this for so long, she could not allow herself to complain about anything, to show anyone that after everything, motherhood was not entirely what she thought it would be. Either way, everything Anke said about motherhood is glowingly positive, in a way Angela cannot possibly relate to.)
When she compares herself to her parents, therefore, she always finds herself wanting—and wanting them. For Fareeha, she imagines this must be easier, because Ana and Sam are still alive to talk to, still there if she wants or needs advice, and because her relationship with her parents was more complicated than Angela’s, Fareeha, too, need not worry about idealizing them, or her relationship with them.
At least Fareeha, too, has admitted to feeling lost at times, to worrying whether or not they are doing right by their daughter, are capable of being everything that she needs. She does not seem to worry as much as Angela, of course—but she never has been the anxious sort, is confident in nearly all of her decisions from the moment she makes them, and Angela cannot fault her for that. Most days, it is helpful to know that Fareeha feels confident in what they are doing, in how they are raising their daughter, even if Angela sometimes feels envious of that confidence, or worries that Fareeha really is a better mother.
It used to be that she worried about that far more than she does now; when Izzah was still a baby, all Angela could see was the things she got wrong, with their daughter, and the things Fareeha did right by comparison. Eventually, it became enough of a problem that Fareeha deemed it necessary for Angela to see a psychiatrist, and although Angela hated doing so at the time, did not want to admit that she might need help, things are easier, now that she is on medication. She will always worry a little too much, but it is more under control, this way, and now that she and Fareeha have agreed to work on their mental health together—for the sake of their daughter, if not for themselves—it is easier to talk about it with her, easier to allow herself to ask for help.
Partially, it is easier because Fareeha, too, is on medication, and something about knowing that—about knowing that Angela is not the only one whose mental health is less than perfect—makes her feel a little less of a failure, a little less alone. They rarely discuss specifics, but she is better, now, at naming what she needs, both of them are, and that has surely made them better mothers to their daughter, and happier people, too.
(And it is good, to not have to worry as much about Fareeha. There were times, before, when Angela worried she might lose her wife, worried on the worst days that she should not leave Fareeha alone, because Fareeha might not reach out, if she needed to. According to Farehea, it was never that bad, but Angela knew people, in her time in the original Overwatch, for whom it was, and so that fear was hard to assuage. Now, though, Fareeha’s lowest points are not nearly so low as they used to be, and Angela breathes just a little bit easier.)
Being somewhat better, however, does not solve everything, has not given her answers to all of her questions. There are always going to be times when Angela feels out of her depth, when Izzah says or does something Angela could not have anticipated, and Angela realizes that she has no good response for the situation, can only say what she thinks is best in the moment—and wonder, later, if that response was the right one. For Angela, more conversations are fraught than for other people, and so it is hard to know when Izzah is going to say or ask something for which Angela cannot give a good response.
Sometimes, the hardest conversations are ones with very simple beginnings, ones which should feel safe.
Today, it begins like this, with Izzah returning home from daycare with a question, “Where’s my dad?”
This question, Angela was prepared for. Before Izzah was ever born, she and Fareeha discussed what they would tell her about her family structure, her conception, her heritage, and when they would say which things. “Everyone has different parents,” says she, and when she makes the sign for parents, she keeps her hand in a p-handshape like she always does, to differentiate from saying that everyone has a different mother and father, as the unmodified sign does. “A lot of people have a mom and a dad, but—”
“Everyone has parents?” Izzah does not wait for Angela to finish her sentence before she is replying, an incredulous expression on her face as she signs the word everyone, motion large and exaggerated.
Although it is a little more complex than just that, Angela says, “Yes,” for now, thinking she can explain when Izzah is a little older that some people have complicated relationships with their family of origin.
“Parents have parents?” This information seems genuinely shocking to Izzah, who evidently has never considered that her own mothers were children once.
“Yes,” Angela answers again, trying not to give any indication of how amusing she finds the question. “Your jedda,” she uses Ana’s sign name, here, and wonders if that is part of the problem, that they have not been using the sign for grandmother when talking about her, so Izzah has not realized that that is who Ana is to her, “Is your mommy’s mom.” They have two different signs for mother, between them, Fareeha’s is the usual straightforward motion, and Angela’s the modified version that some use in more informal contexts, wiggling their fingers. It is easier, that way, to know whom Izzah is speaking about or to. “And your grandpa is your mommy’s dad.”
“Oh,” Izzah says, using the sign for I see, and then tilting her head to ask, “You have parents?”
And suddenly, this conversation is not so funny. Here is where, if Fareeha were in town, Angela would turn to her in a panic, and ask for her to step in, to handle this conversation—but Fareeha is not here, right now, is away on a mission, and she cannot always be there to step in, when Izzah asks difficult questions.
Angela will have to answer this for herself, and she should be able to, has had conversations about what to say to Izzah when she is older, should she ask about what the Crisis was like, or the way in which her grandparents died, and they have talked about someday taking Izzah to Angela’s hometown, showing her the monument to those who died there, letting her trace her fingers over the names of grandparents she will never meet. Angela has some idea of what she will tell her daughter about her heritage, how she will fill in that gap—but she has no plan for answering this question now. Izzah is still so young, has no concept of death, of war, of loss, and Angela does not know that she is ready to explain all of that to her just yet, does not know how she can express why it is that Izzah does not know her other grandparents.
(She remembers how happy she herself was, before her parents’ deaths, back when she did not know what sort of world she lived in, and she does not want to take that from her daughter, not yet, wants Izzah to be happy and protected for as long as is possible. Once she loses her sense of safety, it will be very hard for her to get that back, and Angela wants to keep her young and innocent just a little longer, if she can.)
“I do,” says she, because her parents being dead does not mean that she never had them, and she does not want to pretend that they did not exist, even if it would make this conversation easier for her. She has parents, dead ones, ones whom she still loves dearly, still misses, particularly at times like this, when her very curious child is asking her difficult questions. Her parents were always able to answer what Angela asked of them, even when it was difficult, even when it was the sort of question one might expect from a much older child, because Angela had read about something in one book or another that her parents were not yet ready to address with her.
“Where are they? Canada?” Knowing that her grandfather lives in Canada, and that is why she does not see him as often as everyone else in her life, Izzah assumes that anyone she has not seen in some time must be there, too.
“Not Canada,” says Angela, and this is why she does not want to explain, yet, what death is, because her daughter still thinks that there is only one other place in the world besides her home, has no way of understanding, yet, experiences outside of her own—meaning that she thinks, too, that anything that happens to anyone else must also happen to her. When one of her playmates’ mother got pregnant, Izzah assumed that either Angela or Fareeha, or both, must also be having a baby. So how can Angela explain to her about having been orphaned, and not make Izzah afraid that she will be, too?
Izzah has yet to learn the value of patience, and so she demands again, “Where?” before Angela has time to finish deciding how to best answer the question.
“Somewhere further than Canada,” Angela explains, although she is not entirely certain that Izzah really grasps distance, yet. “Somewhere we can’t go.”
“Why not?” At least, Angela thinks, she has not asked where again. That, she would not know how to answer—although she knows what she herself believes about death, about the existence of heaven, she also does not know how to soften that for a child without making it seem like something it is not, without making it sound like her parents’ death was a positive thing, ultimately, because for Angela it was not.
But how to explain this? “Something has to happen to you first,” says Angela, because she does not want to say that it is something people earn, or choose or be ready for, because her parents’ death, like so many others’ was senseless, was too early, was not what they would have chosen for themselves, even if they did believe that when they died, they would be at peace, would be somewhere better. They were not ready, yet, to go.
(They would not have left her, had they the choice. They would not have. This, at least, Angela feels certain of. If she learned anything from her mother, from what was written about raising her, it is that her parents would not have given her up, not for anyone in the world.)
“Like waiting to get big?”
“Something like that,” Angela tells her, because although that is not true, although her life and work have taught her that death waits for no one, she is not ready, yet, to explain that to Izzah, and she does not want to think, either, that anything will happen to Izzah before she is fully grown, could not bear to lose her.
Apparently, Izzah understands, but she does not seem to like that, complains that, “That’s forever from now!”
What Angela thinks is that she hopes so, hopes that death always seems such a distant and abstract thing for her daughter, and what she says instead is that, “It is,” nothing more, and nothing less, so as not to lie to her daughter, or to lead her to ask further questions.
But that is not enough to deter Izzah, who has inherited Fareeha’s natural curiosity. “Can we call them? Like grandpa?”
“No, Izzah, we can’t call them. They’re busy,” this seems the best way to explain the situation, because Izzah does understand that sometimes, when one of her mothers is at work, they are unable to call, are too busy. It is a concept she can understand, one that is not so heavy as the permanence of death.
“Okay,” Izzah says, and then, “Can I call grandpa now?”
Quickly, Angela checks the time before confirming that, “Yes, you can.”
It is a welcome distraction, setting up a computer and calling Sam, is something that will keep Izzah occupied for quite some time. It is welcome, and it is painful, when he answers, and her daughter’s face lights up, because she is intimately aware, in that moment, that in another world, Izzah might have had this with her other grandfather, might have been so loved by more people.
(Of course, it would not have been as easy for her to talk to Angela’s father, who unlike Sam, is not deaf, and as far as Angela knew, did not know any form of sign language. He would have had to learn it, to speak with his granddaughter, and would not have had Sam’s easy fluency—but Angela is certain, from what she remembers of him, what she read of him, that he would have done his best to learn. He would, at least, have had the opportunity to try.)
Sometimes, it is painful, raising her daughter, is a painful reminder that she has not her own parents to talk to, to turn to, to be cared for by. Sometimes, it is not, is something better, is something like a connection to her past, when she teaches Izzah to garden, the same way her parents taught her, teaches Izzah to look at the world the way her father did, as an artist, to notice and appreciate color, shape, and movement, teaches her how to be independent, like her mother always wanted Angela to be, to know how to do things for herself, even if most of the time, other people will be there to do them for her.
Most of the time, however, it is like this, is something bittersweet, is the ache of knowing that her daughter will never know her oma and opa, will not have the connection to them that she does to Fareeha’s parents, but knowing, too, that they would have loved her, that she would have loved them, that she wants to know them.
This does, of course, present another dilemma; now that Izzah knows her other grandparents exist, or did once, she will want to know more about them, and Angela does not know, yet, what to say, does not know how to do enough to introduce her daughter to the idea of her grandparents so that they feel, to her, like real people. It would be too much, Angela thinks, to expect Izzah to come to love them, just from hearing about them, too much to expect her to really come to know them, but she wants her daughter to have some kind of connection to them, some tie to that part of her family, too.
Ana and Sam are wonderful grandparents, they are, but Angela does not want Izzah to think that her heritage on Fareeha’s side is all that matters, even if it is true that she is only genetically related to that side of her family, and only knows them. Even without that biological connection, Izzah is still as much Angela’s daughter as Fareeha’s, and Angela’s parents are equally her grandparents. She should have them in her life, in some capacity, should know enough to be able to decide for herself what matters, when constructing her identity, and not feel like there is a large piece missing.
(Of course, Angela does not actually know what it would be to have had her parents in Izzah’s life, does not know what they would have thought about the fact that their only grandchild was not biologically related to them. If they tried to adopt, before Angela was born, she does not know about it—although, now that she and Fareeha are trying to adopt themselves, Angela is getting a better sense of the fact that there are no guarantees that one will be chosen by a birth parent, or that an adoption will not fall through. They may have tried, and failed, and considered it too painful to speak about. So what they would have thought, Angela does not know. Still, she hopes that they would have loved Izzah all the same, thinks from how much they wanted to have a child, how long they tried to have her, that their desire to become grandparents would have outweighed any hypothetical reservations about biology. Angela will never know what they would have thought, of course, and that is hard, but she cannot imagine that anyone could know Izzah and not love her, not see how lucky they are to be related to her.)
When Izzah asks what her grandparents were like, what will Angela say?
What Angela knows of her parents is this: she knows that they loved her, and dearly, knows that they wanted a larger family than they were able to have, knows that they were good people, who worked hard, and who volunteered to help others, and who cared more about doing things that they thought were good, and brought them joy, than they did about making money. She knows that they loved each other, and were strong in their faith. She knows that they made her a very happy child, ensured her needs were met, even when she was not what they were expecting from a child, when she learned too fast and asked too many difficult questions, and when she did not behave like the son they were told they had. She knows she loved them.
What Angela does not know is nearly everything else. If Izzah asks about them the same kinds of questions she asks her living grandparents, Angela will not be able to answer, will not be able to say what their favorite color was, will not be able to ask them if they were afraid of the dark, too, when they were little, will not be able to say for sure what their favorite flavor of ice cream was. None of these questions are particularly important, ultimately, but they are, right now, the sort of thing Izzah wants to know about people, are how she connects to others, comes to understand them, in absence of the life experience and vocabulary necessary to ask about things more central to a person’s being. This, right now, is what Izzah judges people on—and without it, she will have no way of knowing how she feels about her oma and opa, what she thinks of them.
Later, of course, she will be able to ask more complex questions, will want to know about people’s hopes, their dreams, their motivations, will want to know their opinion on important issues, will want to get a sense of their personalities, and then, at least, Angela will be able to answer some questions, or at least make an educated guess, cobbling together what she remembers, what she read, what other people have told her of her parents—but she will never be able to give Izzah something as concrete as Sam or Ana could, because Angela was young, when her parents died, too young to have yet wondered about those things herself. There is so much about them she never had the chance to ask, and most of the time, she can content herself with that, can accept that they will always be to her what they were to her seven year old self, parents, but not really people, not in any individual sense, but now?
Now, it is harder.
Now, she wishes she could go back and ask them more, wishes she could demand to know about them things which, when she was a child, did not matter to her, because although Angela can accept not knowing some things, or at least tolerate it, that is because she did have a relationship with them, once, knows they are real because they held her when she cried, kissed better her scraped knees, tucked her into bed at night. For Izzah, there will be none of that, no memories, only questions, and without answers it will be hard for Angela to paint them in three dimensions, will be hard for her to convey that, although she remembers what her parents wanted to see of them, remembers them as a mother and a father, she does not truly know who they were as people, and cannot help Izzah make sense of them that way, cannot use that to fill in the empty space where they should be.
For the time being, Izzah is young, and her questions are easy ones, but one day, she will be older, will know that she is Arab, and her mom’s side of the family is Muslim, and maybe she will ask about what Angela’s parents, white Jewish people, thought about Israel, about Palestine, and what will Angela say then? The truth of the matter is that she does not know what her parents thought, knows only that her father had some family in Israel, from whom he was estranged, and nothing more. Surely, that will not be enough to satisfy her daughter, will not be enough for her daughter to judge their views, and find them either to be acceptable or not, and Izzah will never be able to try, either, to have a discussion with them about it, will only have to extrapolate from the few things Angela knows, and from Izzah’s own experiences, what that might have meant. It is not an answer, is not anything definitive. If Angela were in Izzah’s position, she would want something more.
(In fact, Angela does wish she knew the answer to that question, wishes she knew what her parents would have thought of Fareeha, if they would have been able to get over the fact that she is not also Jewish, and accept that Fareeha makes Angela happy, in a way no one else ever has. She hopes that her parents would have come to love her wife, would have understood that what matters, more than faith, is that Angela has found someone to love, and although they might have preferred Angela found love with a Jewish person—she did not. She found love here, instead. What Angela knows of her parents makes her think that they would have been tolerant, but seven year olds have a hard time understanding their own biases, or those of their parents, and so even though Angela does not remember anything her parents said which might have proved them less accepting than she would have wanted them to be, that does not mean that it was not there.)
And if Izzah ever wonders what her grandparents would have thought of her mothers’ marriage, what then? Will Angela be honest, and say that her parents always expected her to marry a woman, because at the time that she knew them she had not yet realized that she was trans, and so her parents had hopes and dream’s for their son’s family? Or will she not mention that, and say only that, honestly, she does not know what her parents thought of gay people, knows only that her parents did not seem unkind—to seven year old Angela’s eyes—to their neighbors, who were both men, but nonetheless never seemed to consider that their child would be anything but heterosexual? Will she say that she is most afraid that her parents would not have thought of her marriage to Fareeha as a gay one, would have been relieved when, at last, Angela started dating a woman, and thought that things were as they ought to be?
That seems unfair, even if it is true, because her parents never had the chance to decide if they accepted Angela as she is or not, never had to confront the fact that their assumptions about what their child’s life would be were incorrect. Maybe, given the opportunity to be accepting, they would have been, maybe they would not have been fazed by it, would only have apologized to Angela for assuming, or maybe they would have needed time, but come around. Angela will never know, and to speak of her fears would seem to imply that such was likely, when really, Angela has no idea what her parents would have thought, none at all.
So it is hard, very hard, to contemplate the questions Izzah will ask about her oma and opa in the future, hard to imagine ever giving any satisfactory answers, anything that takes them beyond the shallow understanding Angela had of them at seven years old, of them being good people, or does not color them too much, instead, with Angela’s present anxieties, her worries that her parents would not like or understand what it is that adult Angela has done with her life, the kind of woman she has become, the family she has made, the person she has fallen in love with.
None of this, Angela knows, is what her parents indicated that they expected for her, but it is nothing, either, that they ever told her that she could not, should not, have and want. It is all all one great unknown. How, then, can Angela answer Izzah’s questions, when she cannot answer them for herself? How can she imagine herself giving an answer that is satisfactory enough that one day, Izzah can with pride, I get my sense of humor from my mom’s dad, and I get—what? What does she get from her maternal grandparents?
Nothing that Angela can think of. Unless Izzah becomes an artist, or a birder, then there is nothing that Angela can confidently say is her taking after her opa, because there is so very little Angela knows about her father the man, his wants, his dreams. If Izzah becomes interested in history, in restoration, or if she likes to work with her hands, then Angela might say that she takes after her oma—but in some ways, Sam and Ana have both of those traits, too. What will be there to connect her daughter to her past?
Once, this is where Angela’s anxiety would have continued to spiral, where she would have taken this line of thought to the logical extreme, imagined the worst possible result of her not having answers to her daughter’s questions. What she would have thought, in this situation, it is hard, now, for her to say, because it is not easy anymore for her to slip into that way of thinking, again, is not easy for her to access the irrational level of worry she once tended towards on purpose.
It is true, her daughter will never have the same relationship with Angela’s parents as she does with Fareeha’s, will never have the chance to be taught anything by them, or look in the mirror and see some of their faces in her own, it is true that it is not certain yet what they will mean to her, if anything—and it is true that Angela will probably always wish she could say more, wish she could build a better connection for them.
It is true, too, that Izzah will not be lacking in people that love her. It is true that she has a family, a large and loving one, even if most of them are not grandparents, or cousins, or blood relatives, even if they are not the same as everyone else’s family. It is true that Angela has made sure, along with Fareeha, that Izzah has plenty of people in her life who love her, and who will not fill the roll that Angela’s parents might have, but will fill a role, will help patch over some of that.
What she needs, right now, is not to worry about this, what she needs is to set this aside, and to make dinner for her daughter, and to text Fareeha and ask her wife to remind her, when she returns from the mission she is on, to talk with her about how best to ensure that Izzah feels a connection to both sides of her family, how they can work, together, to guarantee that Angela’s parents and heritage are still a part of Izzah’s life, as much as she wants them to be, even if they are not physically present in her life.
In the end, Angela cannot introduce Izzah to her parents, can never truly make them known to her as people, but she knows that with Fareeha’s help, she can still ensure that their daughter feels loved, feels connected to her past, feels complete with what she has, and what she knows.
How they will do that is a mystery, but Angela trusts that, with Fareeha’s help, it will happen, she will be prepared when the time comes, and so for now, Angela is content not to know.