Olivia has never known love without knowing loss…
A veritable if-then formula that ever was ….
If she loves somebody, then she will lose them too… to death, to fate, to calamitous events always beyond her control.
Her father, her mother, John, Peter…
Him she has lost more than once even if somehow he finds her way back to her, the one anomaly to the patterns of loss and devastation that rule her life by their oppressive order and method.
Which is why she doesn't know how to love her daughter without fearing that she will lose her someday.
Since the day she's been aware of her baby's existence…that fear has lived inside her never to be eliminated from her consciousness ever.
It's the reason why she struggles with the knowledge when Peter is asking her about what the doctor said. Why she hesitates to tell him…
His blinding happiness at receiving the news abates her trepidation but it can never completely make it go away.
For some time she thinks it'll be easier to give her child up, before she is wrenched away from her by something unforeseen.
But the fear is a mere by product of the intense love that bursts through her veins when she comes to know about her pregnancy.
And that love which is so much larger than the fear, makes her greedy, greedy to know her child, to hold her and have her and experience her and make memories with her.
Peter has taught her many things… the function of the Planck constant in quantum mechanics, how to read sheet music, how to curse in seven different languages…
He's taught her how to laugh till her insides hurt
But above all he's taught her that's it okay to want… And she wants; she wants this child so much. More than anything she's ever wanted.
When she holds her baby girl in her arms for the first time, its that want that wins out.
She's completely unprepared for the way she feels towards her daughter, the way her body and mind awaken with an instinctual longing that she never knew she was capable of. She wants to be the best mother she can be to this amazing human being she's brought into the world.
If only this world will let her…
And even though she can never make the time to research home remedies for colds or get into the great debate of regular vs. organic baby wipes, or participate in any of those saccharine rituals of yuppy mommyhood, she is a great mother in every way that matters, that really counts.
Even if she's bone tired and barely able to keep her eyes open after a long grueling day of casework, she'll make sure to ask all about her day and read to her at bedtime. She remembers to force some sort of limit to her all-consuming dedication to her work to devote the time that her child deserves to have from her.
And it helps that she has the most supportive partner on the planet who constantly amazes her with his ability to be so naturally good at fatherhood, so thoroughly engaged and involved in every matter that concerns their child.
Seriously, the man has an enthusiasm for parenting that would put a Park Slope mommy to shame, Olivia thinks.
Together they've always made a formidable team… in the field when there are killers to be caught or at dinnertime when Aristotelian persuasion is called upon to convince Etta to eat her vegetables.
And the strength of that partnership allows her to feel confident in her abilities to raise her daughter to the best of her capacity.
But the fear of loss is always ribbing at her efforts, that little voice of condensation that constantly tells her that everything she has stands on a house of cards that could be left devastated by the slightest of hostile winds.
She can provide for her daughter, keep her protected, nourished, nurtured and happy and she does all that, efficiently and exceptionally like she has done everything else in her life, giving it her everything.
And yet she cannot love her completely… not in the way she wants to, not in the way deep down she knows she does.
She envies Peter this … his love for their daughter is so effortless, so simple in its expressions, so unburdened by anything else other than the innate desire to give and receive in turn.
She really wishes he could teach her how to do that too. It can't be more difficult than quantum mechanics…
It gladdens her heart when she sees the two of them together… like conspirators forever in action in sync to the same tune. Their private kingdom of imagination and creativity, of humor, of the sheer joy and simplicity of living and being…
It's always been wide open to her. She has just never known how to enter it and stay there…
What brings father and daughter together is similarity, what bonds Olivia to her child is their shared difference.
It's the crux of their intense connection… the one that allows her to read her daughter like an open book without asking a single question. The one that allows her to know her pain and happiness like they were her own.
That they were made different… that they were more than human…that more would always be expected from them.
It's ironic how the part of her that she detests so much, the superhuman abilities that have always made her feel inadequate and less than… are also what have given her this incomparable closeness to her child.
The closeness that she's forced to severe at times when her own emotional volatility is in danger of overwhelming her daughter's mind, to spare her the heavy burdens that she carries, the inconsolable guilt and shame she feels every time she fails to save an innocent person's life or a case gets somebody killed.
But she all of people should know something about persistence. No matter how hard she tries to distance herself in order to protect her, her daughter simply refuses to be untethered from her.
She will find her… no matter where she hides physically and metaphorically.
"You're sad." She'll tell her, clambering onto her lap and putting her little hands on her face, looking at her with all too knowing eyes, mirroring her own despair with the injustices of this world, communicating to her an assurance that no child should be responsible for delivering.
Let me in…I can help you. I can be there for you
"It's okay mommy. I am here now." She'll curl up against her chest and simply stay there, as if trying to absorb all of Olivia's pain into her tiny little form.
"I am not sad honey." She'll tell her futilely, hugging her back, rocking her slowly as they sit in silence, words being redundant as it were between them.
She doesn't know how, but Olivia always feels her pain go away after a while.
It's supposed to work the other way around. I am the one who's supposed to be there for you. She thinks to herself pulling her daughter closer into her embrace, absently kissing her hair.
Most days, between her family and her job, her life doesn't give her that much time for reflexivity.
And yet… the roots of her anxieties will catch her unaware at times.
You're an imposter… the derisive voice will tell her when she looks into the mirror sometimes.
That happy woman is not you… you were never meant to have any of this. Your perfect house and your perfect family… it's all just a fluke. Don't you see that? You don't deserve the love of someone as wonderful as Peter, you don't deserve to have a beautiful, bright and healthy child.
In the end you're only going to cause the both of them pain or worse…
Bad things happen to the people you love… that's why you were alone for so long, because that's how you will spend the rest of your life…
They'll leave you one day… they always do.
"I know you're very beautiful… but could you stop staring at your own reflection quite so much. Way to be in love with yourself Dunham..." Her husband will chide her playfully, putting his arms around her, still wet from his shower, kissing her neck, smelling like aftershave and cologne and himself.
And she can do little else but fold over into his embrace and hold him tightly, run her hands over his bare chest and reassure herself of the solidness of his being.
That her life wasn't a delusion after all...
"What's wrong?" He'll ask her…
"Nothing." She'll lie.
Nothing yet… the voice will add.
"I don't remember the house being this silent in years…" Peter tells her one night as they sit curled up under a blanket on the porch seat, watching the stars, treating themselves to some rare time of quiet and relaxation after working a particularly long and difficult case.
"That's because the tiny person who makes all the noise is asleep right now." Olivia mumbles, lazily tracing the arm encircling her with her fingertips.
"She's not so tiny anymore is she…?" He remarks.
"Not if the credit card bills are anything to go by… I had to take her shopping last week because she outgrew her jeans again. That's the third pair in five months." Olivia shifts slightly, moving closer into his embrace. "I swear, we're going to go bankrupt this way."
"That's because you're the one who insists on buying all those expensive clothes for her at retail outlets, you could just not do that and get her stuff from Walmart or something you know." Peter points out.
"Get her stuff from Walmart?" She almost snorts. "Do you even know your daughter? She won't even step into a store if it's not all shiny and glossy enough for her. "
"Yeah...and I am the one who apparently can't say no to her." He smirks knowingly.
"You can't say no to her if your life depended on it." She counters. "Face it…she's had you wrapped around her little finger since she the day she was born and then some."
Knowing the truth of that statement he wisely chooses to remain silent.
"I'll take the growth spurts any day over the diaper changes and the midnight feedings though…. I can't even remember how we managed to survive through all of that and not drop dead from exhaustion. " Olivia muses loudly.
"We've lived through worse… and that would be understating."
"Hmm..."
"You know what would be awesome?" He asks absently, a minute later
"For you to get up and bring the both of us a glass of wine?" She smiles hopefully at him, feeling almost boneless in his embrace.
"I am not getting up for the apocalypse right now." He shakes his head at her, bringing a hand to brush a strand of her hair from her face. "I was thinking how it might be kinda fun to do all that again."
"What?" She asks confused, feeling a strange uneasiness rise inside her when she sees the contemplative yet hopeful expression on his face.
"Maybe we could have another baby..." He tells her, grazing her cheek gently with his fingertips.
Olivia tenses at the statement, hoping her face doesn't give her away. "Why would we want to do that now?" She jokes, trying hard to not let him show what she's actually thinking.
"Well we make the most beautiful babies together for one... " He says softly, kissing her on the lips. " And the process is certainly a lot of fun." His eyes twinkle with suggestion.
" Yeah… and then after that comes nine months of morning sickness, nausea and enough physical pain to make you want to shoot something. You seem to have forgotten all that." She tells his dryly.
"But then we get to bring home something cute and adorable and perfect in every way and everything's great." He tells her unfazed by her negative spin on things.
"You and I seem to remember the events surrounding our daughter's birth very differently." Olivia says yawning, turning her head sideways and burrowing into his chest, as she closes her eyes.
He chuckles, fingers threading into her hair, as he kisses her head. "I never realized till now how much of a bad influence I've been on you."
"Why is that?" She asks feeling the soothing motions of his fingers in her hair, lulling her to sleep.
"You've gotten really good at avoiding giving straight answers." He tells her.
Perceptive as ever, he'd hit upon the truth and before she can muster any defense, he tells her gently. "It's just a thought Liv…It doesn't mean we have to decide anything right now."
"I know…" She mumbles against his chest.
But you don't. She thinks to herself. He didn't know the constant doubts she dealt with, the fears that have been eating away at parts of her for so long, to the point of having worn holes in her self.
She remembers that night at the hospital after Etta was born, how she had felt as she had watched her daughter sleep in her arms after she had fed her, just her and her child, enveloped in a bliss that possibly couldn't be real, as she breathed in the scent of her.
How the tears had then come…unexpected and frustrating, pouring down her cheeks in silent torrents, wracking her already sore body in a terror so vicious and mind numbing that she couldn't breathe.
She had seen the glimmer then… that golden candescence that she had seen Peter surrounded by that night after Jacksonville, the one had almost scared her away from their relationship that night in Brooklyn, the aura that had literally made him translucent when she had seen him walk into the machine.
It was fainter…a steady, almost beatific glow and not the vibrant flicker that Peter emanated…but it made her feel the same way it had all those other times she had seen it.
That this happiness didn't belong to her…
That she was too damaged to experience love…
That death was the only fate that awaited anyone who ever got too close to her…
Years of a childhood spent hiding from her stepfather and his violence had taught Olivia to cry in silence, without making a sound. To be loud was to simply invite more beatings.
And so she had wept all night in silence with her child in her arms… trying hard not to feel so scared. Pleading, begging this universe to let her be just this once.
Please don't take her away from me…please let me not lose her too.
And to think about going through that again… no matter how often she thought about it in idle moments of daydreaming when images of another little girl with brown hair and the same beautiful blue eyes she loved so much would pop up in her head.
Olivia isn't sure if she would survive it.
"Do you want to go to bed sweetheart?" Peter's asking her as she nestles further into his embrace, moving impossible close to him, her hands fisting into the softness of his sweater.
He was the only person she had ever given herself completely to, the one person whom she could turn to for absolution from the darkness that entraps her no matter how far she runs from it.
Someday she will tell him… tell him about her fears. The ones she knows deep down he already knows all too well.
And she'll let him help her, heal her… teach her to find satisfaction in the present and not worry about the future.
But for now, in that moment, in his embrace…Olivia can simply believe that she has beaten the if-then certainty of her life for once.
Tomorrow can wait.
"Let's just stay here tonight." She tells him, letting sleep overcome her.