Chapter Forty-Eight #2
“You did! You really, really loved balls. Any kind. Soccer balls, tennis balls, spiky balls, golf balls, footballs. I made you a scrapbook with pictures of all the different types of balls, and you could name every one. Darwin had a dinosaur phase. Moby was into puzzles. You loved balls. When I was little, it was whales. The first one I can remember seeing was in the Bay of Fundy. I was probably three or four, and I was entranced.”
I remember this from the stories she used to tell. “A humpback, right?”
“That’s right.” She smiles. “We were out in my uncle’s boat. The way the whale leapt out of the water was like a ballet. I wanted to be that whale. I imagined living in the ocean with mermaids and dolphins and belugas.”
“Like in the bedtime story.”
She smiles wistfully. “Yes. And I never stopped loving whales. I did a school project on the whales that migrated through the bay when I was in the sixth grade.”
It sounds familiar, but it’s been more than two decades since I’ve heard this.
“When I was thirteen, I begged your grandparents to send me to a marine mammal summer camp run by the Canadian Whale Institute. I cried when they said yes. It’s where I learned about right whales, and how close to extinction they are.
It solidified my calling. The problem with right whales, as you know, is that they aren’t reproducing at a fast-enough rate to compensate for how many are killed each year by vessel strikes and fishing line entanglements.
I didn’t quite know how I wanted to help, but I knew I needed to. ” She pauses. “And then life happened.”
I listen to Mom tell me her version of that life.
How difficult it was to move to Ontario from the East Coast in the ninth grade.
How she dated my father against her better judgment.
She was the one to end their relationship before she went away to university, knowing she’d one day move back to the sea.
She had her sights set on the whales, and nothing was going to stand in her way.
She stayed friends with Dad, but she couldn’t get him off her mind, and after years of trying to deny her feelings, she gave in to them.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I was hopelessly in love with your father,” she tells me. “I knew I wanted to have a family with him, even though the timing was less than ideal.”
She was weeks away from starting a field internship with the New England Aquarium, where she’d be studying and tracking North Atlantic right whales.
“I thought I might be able to do that early in my pregnancy, but I had terrible nausea. I couldn’t even look at the sea without my stomach turning. The idea of stepping foot on a boat was repellent. I threw up constantly. I couldn’t keep any food down.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say softly.
“It’s called hyperemesis gravidarum. Extreme morning sickness, except mine lasted all day.
It felt like my body had betrayed me. I couldn’t do anything but lie in bed.
They didn’t say it, but my roommates were annoyed with all the puking.
And”—she turns to me—“I missed your dad. I missed my family. I needed my mom. When I left the East Coast, I knew I’d be going home for good.
I was being practical—your dad had a business and a steady income.
There were two sets of grandparents-to-be ready to help. ”
We watch a pair of rabbits hop across the field.
“I thought about whales a lot during those first few months after Darwin was born,” she says.
I smile. “Of course you did.”
“Right whales are exceptional mothers. They starve themselves to nurse their calves, and they nurse for up to two years, traveling thousands of miles with their baby, ensuring its protection and teaching it how to communicate and feed.”
I take her hand in mine, saying gently, “You do know you aren’t a whale, right?”
Her voice is tight. “But I tried. I tried to be a whale mother. I loved you all so, so much. But as the years passed, I started to become angry. Angry at myself for giving up a chance at a career. Angry with your father for letting me. It was a quiet sort of seething that ate away at me. That wasn’t who I wanted to be—for you or for myself.
So your father and I agreed that I should give it a shot. ”
Her eyes fill with tears. “I know you haven’t been able to forgive me. But I think I might have withered up if I’d stayed.”
“Why didn’t you and Dad sit us down and explain it together?”
“I couldn’t,” she says. “I just couldn’t. I knew the only way I’d go was if I walked out the door while you were sleeping.”
“I hated you,” I admit, my voice breaking as I blink back tears. “I hated how you gave us up for whales and then came home and baked cakes and never talked about them again.”
“You didn’t want me to.”
“I did. Of course I did. I felt like you weren’t the same anymore. I felt like I’d lost my mom all over again.”
She strokes my cheek.
“It’s the female right whales who are more likely to die from being hit by a boat,” she says.
“One theory is that it’s because the mother whales stay near the surface while their calves nurse, but that’s where they’re most vulnerable to marine traffic.
I wish I could have been strong like that.
I shouldn’t have gone,” she says, her voice breaking.
“I should have stayed near the surface with you. I should have protected you.”
I wrap my arms around my mother, wanting to protect her, too.
“What made you come back here?” I ask. “Why didn’t we move out east so you could work?”
She takes a moment to collect herself. “Your father would have. We’d talked about it.
A few days before I decided to come home, I watched a rescue crew try to free a whale from the thick line that was caught around her neck and back.
Her injuries were already deep, but the whale was fighting.
It’s difficult, dangerous work trying to free an entangled whale.
And as I watched that whale thrash around, I thought about how lucky I was.
” Her eyes are still glassy. “We’re all entangled in our own way, but I, at least, had chosen my bonds.
I was tethered to you, your brothers, and your father, and I had pulled as far on that line as I could have. I knew I needed to find my way back.
“But also,” she says, “I threw up every time I was on a boat.”
“What?” I choke on a laugh.
“I have no sea legs,” she confesses, looking out at the field. “I thought I’d develop them, but no. The number of times I vomited overboard was disgusting and embarrassing, but it also felt like a sign.”
I take in my mother, this woman who’s far more complicated than I’ve allowed her to be.
“I know I was horrible, but I was happy you came home.”
“Me too.”
“And what about Francesca?” I ask. “When was she last seen?”
Grief fills her eyes. “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you.” She takes my hands in hers. “Francesca died two years ago.”
This catches me off guard. I put a hand on my chest. “How?”
“It was a vessel strike.”
“A boating accident?”
My mom nods. “They found her body floating off the coast of Virginia. Her spine was dislocated. There were fractures to her vertebrae and lower back.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can manage.
“I didn’t think you’d want to know,” my mom says. “And it really was so sad. Before she was killed, she’d been spotted with a calf near Florida. The whale was too young to survive without her mother.”
“So they’re both dead?” I wipe away my tears.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t really hate her, you know?” I’d always assumed she was still out there, my sister whale.
My mom kisses my temple. “I know you didn’t.”
We sit there for a long time, staring out over the field. When the wind ripples through the grass, it moves just like the ocean.