A Plea for Eros

from me.” 1 still remember the sight of my mother at the train station, the sound of her voice, the feeling of her body, and the smell of her perfume when Liv and I threw ourselves into her open arms.
    That trip and my mother’s arrival have remained as vivid for me as any event in my childhood. Uncle David and Aunt Harriet didn’t tell us that my mother was coming. She later told me that she had been against this plan, but there was little she could do to dissuade them from the idea of a surprise. Because we were in the dark, her appearance struck us both as a magical event, like a wish granted in a fairy tale. This enchanted quality was furthered by the fact that I had called out to my mother, without knowing I had done it, and she, endowed with what I regarded as supernatural penetration into the recesses of my soul, answered the call and appeared.
    Because our mothers are our first loves, because it is through them that we begin to find ourselves as separate beings in a new world, they have, for better or for worse, immense power. Liv and I were kindly treated by our relatives, and yet the visit remains in both of our minds as our first venture into a strange environment. I remember the alien bed-covers and the odd cereal bowls. I even remember the yellowing grass in the yard, as though it, too, had been touched by another reality. Through experience most adults lose that intense feeling of the unfamiliar—of being
not home.
Of course, had our mother been with us, Liv and I would not have felt the change so strongly. The truth is that the idea of home and the idea of our mother and father were inseparable.
    At seven I was more than old enough to have a grip on the real, to feel certain that I would see my parents again, and yet I longed for them. My parents were like the ground under my feet. Without them, I felt suspended and unsure of my steps. Anyone who has ever had a baby knows that an eight-month-old, for example, is
not
sure you will return, that leaving the room is enough to set off a wild protest. I remember that when my daughter had just learned to walk and I talked on the phone, she would suddenly become demanding. You don’t have to leave the room to leave a child. My desire to talk to somebody else was enough to create anxiety and irritation in her. When I was off the phone and completely available to her, she would often wander off, suddenly very busy and seemingly unaware of my presence. There’s the rub. A child’s true independence is the product of a strong, reassuring parental presence, and it is that presence that we take with us when we walk out the door for good.
    Although I work at home, I have left my daughter more often over the years than my mother left me. When Sophie was four, I went on a book tour in Germany for two and a half weeks. She stayed at home with her father and my mother, both of whom adore her, and they took very good care of her. When I returned, she clung to me but was decidedly cool to my mother. It doesn’t take a brilliant psychologist to know that it wasn’t my mother she was angry at but me for leaving her, and yet the replacement mother took the rap. Many stepparents have found themselves in the same position—as the targets of displaced anger. For two years after that, whenever I traveled, my daughter would look up at me and say, “You’re not going to Germany, are you, Mommy?”
Germany,
a country she would never have been able to find on a map, became the sign for her of missing me, and while I am glad I went away for my work, the unhappiness of my own child who was left in the care of people she loved and who loved her suggests that even what might be regarded as an ideal separation leaves a trace. When Sophie was nine, I traveled to Germany again for my second novel. By then the name of the country had lost its mournful connotations and she was only delighted to be with her grandmother during my absence and afterward. The nine-year-old was far better equipped emotionally to understand my departure than the four-year-old had been.
    It is well known that small children often take a parental absence personally, that they feel somehow responsible for a beloved parent being gone. All little children love their parents and at the same time resent their omnipotence, and if the parent disappears, they can’t help assuming that their aggressive feelings might have had something to do with it. And if they are feeling vulnerable about their greatest love,