The Scroll

This had been a sad surprise about parenthood. Parents walking around with their babies seemed to really have them—completely encircling them in their arms or clasping one dear little hand while crossing the street. This, clearly, was a full meal of love and intimacy. If you were willing to pay the price you would get a total love not possible with anyone else.

Yes and no. The problem began right at the start, with one of us entirely inside the other, a state that seemed close but was fundamentally distant. I couldn’t even press my ear up against my own pregnant belly to hear them, only other people could. And the born baby was so soft and smooth and cute that it was frustrating, and too small to really cuddle with. I was often trying to put different parts of them in my mouth, as they did with me, but there was no way to consummate the love of your child.

With a partner you had the story of how you met, choosing each other out of everyone in the world, and the years together were chaptered with joint decisions—no one could could ever say it was all a dream; both parties were accountable. Not so with a child. For the child it was a dream. And the unpunctuated days into years moved much more quickly (for the parent), so all one could do was free-fall through the chaos, madly making sandwiches and washing hair and hope that there would be some ritual, some time for reflection, at the end. Perhaps at their high school graduation the child would turn and say, “Phewf. I’m awake now, so I can speak about it—that was a trip, wasn’t it?! What an insane number of sandwiches you suddenly had to make, having rarely ever made one before! And look at my body! Let me actually take off all my clothes and show it to you so you can get a good look before I go off into my life and never show it to you again.” And they would take off everything, ceremonially, and I would admire and smell each part, touching anything they suggested I touch—a muscle, a sheen of hair—but respectfully just admiring the rest, down to the alarmingly long toenails.

Or if this was too invasive (I mean, what teenager was going to want that) then maybe just a scroll that we could both sign, acknowledging that this had really happened and that while one of us had had no choice in the matter and the other of us had been sort of exhausted the whole time, it had, all of it, really happened. My own parents definitely wanted a scroll. I was much too vague about my childhood—at times I almost seemed to deny it had ever occurred or that it had meant anything at all. Or else I claimed it too completely, recoloring it in a way that bordered on complete fabrication. Which was actually worse—better to just leave it alone, a hallucination that I could not fully recall, an unconsummated love affair that was forever too much or too little, only being the right amount in fleeting moments, like when Sam and I took a bath together in the dark, both us finally in the warmth of the watery womb. God, I missed them.

— Miranda July, All Fours (2024)