Recalling her Easter Sunday debut in 1986 

By Ed Goldman

I realize today isn’t also Easter but I’m blameless. Easter just happens to be one of the world’s more mobile holidays. This year, for example, it won’t show up until April 17, two days after our federal income taxes would have been due. But since that’s the same day as Good Friday, I’m guessing that the IRS deadline will be somewhat in flux.

(And wouldn’t it be nice if Flux were a small town near Communicado, a few blocks from Cognito and down the road from one called Wedlock? Ergo: You could tell people whom you didn’t wish to see that you’d be in Flux, in Communicado or in Cognito and, to really shock them, you could claim you planned to be borne out of Wedlock later that week. But I digress.)

My daughter’s arrival was delayed by her Mom’s 27 hours of labor and, prior to that, her nearly eight years of indecision about even wanting to be a mom. Her own mother, who lived into her 90s on a diet of daily greens and bitterness, had told her daughter from very early on that she’d been an “accident.” As Jane grew into adulthood, I’m not sure she ever stopped internalizing that most blasphemous of declarations. In fact, I’d eventually learn that this—coupled with her mother’s growling insensitivity—was why Jane was so hesitant to ever become a parent. She told me she was afraid she’d turn out to be her mother.

But after our daughter was born, Jane was the mirror and psychic opposite of her dyspeptic parent. Kind, affectionate and playful, her warmth and artistry attracted Jessica’s friends to our successive homes because they always knew they’d get fed (that was my job) and do a take-away crafts project (Jane’s).

For various reasons—including a miscarriage several years before and another one a year after Jessica’s debut—our daughter grew up as an only child. She reassured us that she preferred things that way, especially when she’d return from an “overnight” at another family’s home and having watched siblings, and sometimes parents, bicker non-stop. 

But I wonder. 

If she’d had a brother or sister when her Mom fell ill—Jessica was only 12 years old—she’d at least have had a confidante and peer during the subsequent nine years of Jane’s stoical struggle. And when Jane died—Jessica was now two months shy of her 21st birthday—she’d have been able to grieve with a brother or sister rather than watch her father, in order, go numb, suicidal, addled, and then into a series of ill-chosen and ill-fated relationships until 14 months ago, when I fell heart over heels with the woman I coyly refer to as my OSSA (oh-so-significant-other) in these columns.

My daughter was married on 9/10/11 in the backyard of the budget-busting home her Mom and I had bought in 1997. Situated in a section of East Sacramento dubbed the “Fab’ 40s” by some people who go around dubbing things (we have to find and stop them), it had five bedrooms, three-and-a-half bathrooms, four stories and 4,800 square feet. 

But Jessica never much liked it. She always missed our former home, a 1,400-square-foot house we’d bought from Jean Runyon, the late public relations executive known and beloved throughout California. It was compact, cozy and her parents’ room was just a few feet from hers.  Jessica had spent her first almost-11 years there.