THAT phone call…
Sitting at the dining room table, I stared across the room and studied my husband’s face. He was seated at the desk in the living room, speaking on the phone. I watched every expression for a hint as to the “bottom line” of this call. The conversation seemed pleasant. The call was brief.
Hanging up the phone (Yes, this is before cell phones), Ed turned to me and said,
“Well, the job in North Carolina is ours if we want it….Do we want it?”
Never has there been more of a pregnant pause between us…not even the time I called him when I was actually pregnant….
1989 – 1990 and baby milestones
Late spring not only eased up in terms of weather and outside temperatures, but also our son’s moods. There were still many challenges, but we actually managed to overcome his hatred of baby applesauce and discovered he loved carrots and sweet potatoes.
Also, his awareness of things around him started to expand. He recognized the pizza delivery boxes and demanded crusts to chew on. And when I would pick up Asian food, he reacted to the aroma of lo mein flooding the car with intensity. First, it was a quiet “litany of “nam, nam, nam,” then he would say the words louder, until finally he started to wail because he wanted some RIGHT THAT MOMENT, and we weren’t home yet! Minor detail. Also, the dog had finally stopped living behind the bed. She had discovered that sitting by our son’s high chair meant food.
He had his own very definite words for things. Planes overhead were “Mios,” and a
truck was, yes, “F-ck!” Try explaining that one in a restaurant when he is yelling that one out loud when a truck drives by. Sure gets a lot of “looks.”
He also discovered crawling that spring. The more he crawled, the less he screamed. I sometimes wonder if the screaming was more about being bored and having to just lay around. Once he could get himself across a room, he was a lot happier. In fact, he didn’t stay in the crawling stage long because by nine months, he discovered you could pull yourself up and WALK! And everything I thought I had child-proofed, he proved me wrong!
But anyway, during the summer, his crawling skills coincided with the vacation trip we planned to Colonial Williamsburg and to Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina. Which meant hours strapped into a car seat right at the time he no longer wanted to sit still. Whereas before, a ride in the car could soothe him and he would sleep, now, you guessed it…more irate yelling. But, whatever.
That tube of toothpaste
The part of the trip to North Carolina came about strangely. We had pondered it after the therapist mentioned it as a good place for us to consider relocating to. But we hadn’t made any definite plans…until that tube of toothpaste I bought one weekend.
On the tube was a coupon. It was for a FREE WEEKEND at a new hotel in RTP. It was part of a grand-opening promotion. Given that, we figured, “Why not take them up on it?” So we made a side trip to RTP, North Carolina
It was a nice area. We’d never been to North Carolina before. Unlike the cloudy skies and compact geography of New England, here it was all sunny, wide-open vistas. True to the therapist’s description, the research park was packed with various computer, pharmaceutical, electronics, and research companies, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. There were also three major universities in the area – Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University – along with a few smaller ones. The three cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill kind of blended together into a decent-sized metropolitan area. And yet, the traffic seemed mild.
Ed went out one weekday morning to see how bad the morning rush hour was, and…he couldn’t find it. It is much different now for sure, but at that point, there was hardly any traffic in the mornings. A major point in its favor.
We were intrigued. But like all major changes, there was also a lot of resistance to making such a move. Or at least a lot of questions and uncertainties. So we put it on the back burner for the moment.
The “Mom competition?”
That fall, my son and I took a trip to Vermont with my friend. By now, I was pretty used to his VERY vocal “protests” at being strapped into his car seat. But she was not. At first, I think she thought I just wasn’t handling it right, and she was trying to solve the screaming problem. After a few hours, she gave up. I will admit that when his screaming gave her a headache by the time we got home, I was not totally sympathetic, as I was growing tired of being viewed as “not as good at this mothering thing as she was.”
Still, I viewed that more as a “kind of sibling competition,” one of those places in a friendship that just isn’t perfect, and I tried to ignore it. She had always been there through the worst times, and through my “transition” into a fully sexual being. And I had been there through a severe illness she had. She had been my very loyal supporter and protector. And even though there seemed to be a shift in our relationship after I became a mom, I just let it go. Until her comment.
The comment
Visiting one day, she made a passing comment that she would make sure to keep an eye on things and “*protect my son from me*.”
I was blown away…and had no idea why she said that. I didn’t say anything at the moment. But I pondered it and was determined to get that one clarified soon.
I knew that there was energy around the whole “Mom” thing. Aside from her comments to me and seeming “competition,” I knew she liked to be the “good mom” to all of her daughters’ friends. Anytime they would come by and complain about their moms, she would sit down and commiserate with them, almost trying to be their buddy. And I knew she’d had a fractured relationship with her own mom, who had treated her very meanly at times.
When she made that comment to me, I wondered if suddenly she saw me not as a friend but some kind of “adversary.” But as it turned out, I never had to deal with it because something else really fractured our friendship that fall.
The fracture
She was our son’s guardian. Despite this new competitive friction over “mothering prowess,” I’d never had a question about having her in that role. But about this time, long-simmering things in her marriage came to a head and really began to unravel.
Watching things get worse and more unpredictable, I saw two things very clearly: 1 – She needed to be free to do whatever she needed to get through a divorce and take care of herself. 2 – We couldn’t leave our son in a situation like that. His nature was such that he really needed structure and stability. If something happened to Ed and me, we couldn’t leave him in the turbulence that might accompany a drawn-out divorce.
So, in spite of my sorrow to make that change, I wanted to do the best for both my friend and our son. But when I spoke to her, that conversation did NOT go well, and she did not see it the way I did. Instead, she was deeply hurt and angry. I was upset and tried to explain. She was still a powerful friend for me. And if it were something that only affected me, I would never have pushed my opinion. But where my son was concerned, I made my choice and stuck to it.
Nothing was working
About the same time, I got very sick. I had contracted a respiratory infection from the Vermont trip. Not only could I not get over it, but I kept getting worse. No matter what antibiotic they gave me, I got sicker and sicker. By December, I went to the ER, and they hospitalized me for pneumonia in two lobes of my lung.
In the hospital, I was failing to respond to any treatment. And I was scared. I was a bacteriologist. I knew exactly how sick I was and that nothing was working. Would I live to see my son grow up?
Finally, the doctor decided to put me on a powerful IV antibiotic that actually burned my veins. But it started to work. It took a few days, but I finally started to turn a corner.
Through it all, my friend never once came to see me. And she offered no help to Ed. With me in the hospital, he was trying to juggle his insanely demanding job, take care of our son at night, visit me, and do all the daycare runs.
She did offer once, after I was home, to pick my son up from daycare. But as the day got later and the daycare closing time approached, I called her. She had forgotten and was out of town. So I ended up bundling up and going to get him myself.
The fateful question
Meanwhile, Ed was busy trying to find a better job situation. In early 1990, he flew to Atlanta to interview for a job. Aside from the fact that it was, at best, a lateral move, he was so sick on that trip that when he returned, he told me we weren’t moving to Atlanta if it was the last job on earth. Which turned out to be fate, maybe? We found out a bit later that the job he interviewed for was eliminated.
Instead, after several attempts and only finding temporary jobs with no relocation benefits, he finally saw one right in RTP. It was for a computer company working with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. And it had relocation benefits as well as a raise.
After doing one or two phone interviews, they flew him down for a day, then told him they would let him know.
And so, on that fateful day when the short phone conversation ended, and he posed that question, “Do we want the job?” it was now “Put-up-or-shut-up” time.
I remember we both stared at each other for a long moment. Connecticut was where we were both born and where we had lived our whole lives. We would be leaving behind everything we knew. And we didn’t have enough money to come back if this was a wrong decision. Also, we knew no one in North Carolina, so there was no support system.
But to be honest, we didn’t really have one in Connecticut either. It had become plain to Ed and me that our success or failure depended on our being a solid team and doing it ourselves. Add to it the fact that both the economy and the job market in Connecticut were getting worse.
After that long, pregnant pause, I remember saying to him, “Well…things aren’t getting any better up here. What have we got to lose?”
And so began the biggest risk of our lives. It would be a major trajectory change for all of us – not just professionally, but also for our marriage, parenthood, dealing with my parents, everything.
Looking back, I now know it was the best decision of our lives. But at that point, we only knew we were rolling the dice on a one-way trip, and we had to make it work.
Soul Mosaic 
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