![]() One summer we spent a week at a holiday village in Germany-Meir, Leah, and I. Who does she belong to? If I tried talking to her, would she even give me the time of day?” “I look at you and think, Who is this girl?” he said. Perhaps I was wary of the drawn-out hours of darkness in Groningen, or couldn’t find another way to convince myself of my good faith. When I planned the trip, all I wanted was to see my daughter with my own eyes, and, once I had, I would immediately make my way back to Amsterdam and wait for my return flight to Israel. I would have liked to hear about more families like ours, mine and Meir’s and Leah’s, about mistakes that are so easily made and yet somehow beyond forgiveness. This is the before life, and something bad is about to happen. A family in a car, the father at the wheel, the mother striking in a captivatingly careless way, the two children jazzed up in the back, everyone talking at once. Meir crossed into his fifties, we moved to a bigger apartment, arrived at the sweet spot of our careers, slept soundly, kept up with our four-year-old, five-year-old, six-year-old Leah, lacked for nothing. I was angry at him for months, until the whole thing fell by the wayside. When she was four, I wanted another baby. I’m going to eat you, I’d tell her, I’m going to gobble you up! Then Leah would laugh, and I’d tickle her to elicit more of those roaring giggles. Sometimes, looking at her or sniffing her, I’d start salivating, feel a sudden urge to sink my teeth into her. She tried.Įverything about this baby-the drool dribbling down her chin and pooling at her neck, her urine-soaked diapers, the sticky discharge from her eyes and nose when she was sick-everything about Leah was good. And there’s the rub, the problem with love. The woman didn’t reveal much more about her daughters, but I understood that what she meant to say by this is that she loved them and, at the same time, didn’t know how to love them. Her young daughters have never walked down a street on their own. When she grew up and got married, she had two daughters. And because I was watching my daughter and her family without their knowledge, I was vulnerable to witnessing what wasn’t mine to witness I was running the spectator’s risk.Ī woman in an Anne Enright novel I once read was from Dublin and had eleven siblings. The household looked wholesome, everything about it meant to evoke the innocence of raw materials. And there were books everywhere, even in the kitchen. Though the living-room fireplace wasn’t lit, it wrapped the house in warmth. Her husband, Johan, stood in the kitchen with his back to me, toiling over dinner, while Leah passed between the rooms, crucified by the window frame, disappearing from one room and reappearing in another, bending reality as if she could walk through walls. Leah’s daughters, Lotte and Sanne, were sitting at the dimly lit dining-room table and yet seemed to be in constant motion. I stood there, not for long, just a few minutes. I whispered her name, “Leah, Leah,” just to make sense of what I was seeing. That was not how I remembered my daughter-I was stunned by the power of her presence. I was astonished by the ease with which the family moved about. ![]() This time I ventured closer, hesitating for a few moments before I crossed the street. I waited for darkness to fall and lights to flicker on inside houses. Had I been asked, I would have been at a loss to explain my presence. ![]() They were alone in the living room, too close within my reach. Girls with the kind of light, thin hair that spills between your fingers like flour. ![]() ![]() They were entirely absorbed in themselves, in their small concerns. The girls took no interest in the goings on outside. The slightest turn of their heads and they would have seen me. The windows in the suburban neighborhoods of Groningen hang large and low-I was embarrassed by how effortlessly I’d got what I’d come for, frightened by how easily they could be gobbled up by my gaze. The first time I saw my granddaughters, I was standing across the street, didn’t dare go any closer. ![]()
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