Beaver’s Pick
Laurel Doud

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

My stepdaughter was a freshman at an all-girls Catholic high school when she asked me for a song recommendation.

I had only been in her life for a year, but I knew how important this assignment was. The lyrics should embody something about herself, something, perhaps, she was striving or hoping for.

Farrah was painfully shy and socially awkward, though smart, sensitive, and good in school. She figured the other girls would choose songs by Britney Spears and Kelly Clarkson, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. She wanted something different, perhaps even something shocking.

The song “Drive”* by the alternative funk band, Incubus, came to mind. It would be surprising for someone like Farrah to choose this song and the lyrics were worthy, especially for her age group.

Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I, I can’t help but ask myself
How much I’ll let the fear take the wheel and steer…

But lately I’m
Beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel.

From that freshman year on, Farrah took those lyrics to heart and drove her own life.

She pushed herself into the most challenging experiences and grew to be this marvelously self-confident young woman with wonderful friends and a wonderful heart. In college, she studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt. After college, she spent two years teaching English in the Peace Corps on an island in Micronesia that was two-and-a-half miles long and a half-mile wide. She graduated from an accelerated nursing program at Johns Hopkins and did her labor and delivery internship in Uganda. After working in the largest labor and delivery hospital in the United States, she moved from Virginia back to California to be closer to family.

A year ago I put the Incubus CD on and when the track “Drive” came through the speakers, it made me nostalgic. I called Farrah and we laughed about it, but I told her how inspiring it was that she took control of the wheel of her life for these past eighteen years.

I’m beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found.

Then Farrah decided it was time to have a baby regardless of her relationship status. She picked a donor—for one reason he looked Egyptian—and got pregnant.

Last month I watched Farrah deliver her daughter, Samira, who was four months premature. Samira was well formed, but too small for the NICU. She was a fighter, though, and lived for seventy minutes before dying in her mother’s arms. Farrah compressed a lifetime of love into those seventy minutes.

It was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever witnessed.

In the hospital the next day, we talked about many things, practical and philosophical. We talked about what people were going to say, what we were saying ourselves. All those well-intentioned platitudes that would still sting. You’re young. You can try again. Maybe it was meant to be.

We also talked about how there are just some things we can’t drive in life; they’re out of our control. This was one of them.

When I recently finished a first draft of this essay, I asked Farrah whether she would like to read it.

Already? she texted.

Such an innocuous word, already, but it meant something profound. My ready was far different than her ready and I realized we were processing our grief on different timelines. While I was writing this to process mine, she was immersed in hers, and her Already? was a glimpse into her surprise that time was going faster for me than for her. It made me ashamed to realize I hadn’t thought about that.

The ending is weak, I texted back.

Yeah. Well, the ending in real life kinda sucks right now too. Can’t help you with that. Can I read it tomorrow?

Another word that resonated in my head. Tomorrow. I knew she was having a bad day and it would be tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that, before she might feel strong enough to read this. Just not today.

It also made me realize that tomorrow means so much more than the concept of future time. Tomorrow is a declaration of hope. What we didn’t get done today, what we failed at, what was too overwhelming for us to complete, we can find tomorrow.

Farrah may not be able to fathom this yet, so while she grieves at her own pace on her own level, there’s not so much that I can do but continue on mine and be there for her when tomorrow comes.

Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes, yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
I’ll be there.

*“Drive” by Brandon Boyd, Alex Katunich, Michael Einziger, Jose Pasillas, Chris Kilmore

Laurel Doud’s novel, This Body, was published by Little Brown, translated into German as Wie Das Leben So Spielt, and optioned to Hollywood where it disappeared into development hell. Bummer. Her short stories and creative non-fiction essays have been published in various online magazines and literary journals such as Air/Light, Into The Void, Goat’s Milk Magazine, Blue Mountain Center Commons and others. She lives in the Sierra Foothills of California and is an academic librarian at a local community college. Email: ldoud555[at]aol.com