Just Mom, Dad, and Me
“ . . . AND PLEASE HELP Mommy and Daddy to have another baby. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
I remember saying those words night after night by the side of my bed in our New York City apartment, the only child of two incompatible personalities, the only link that held their marriage together for twenty-four years. The other baby never came, although my mother became pregnant six other times. Six souls out of reach.
I remained an only child, and that fact defines who I am much more than I ever admitted. Funny too, since I have an older half-sister from my father’s previous marriage and six stepsiblings from my stepfather. But I remain an only child. My psyche is that of a loner, seeking solitude and strangely comfortable in the presence of much older people. I am the only child born to Ariel Bybee and John McBaine, raised in a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment from 1977 until I left for college in 1995.
My mother was an opera singer who was prominent in the Church in the 1980s. Because of her accomplished career, she often gave firesides to Church crowds. A popular encore, after her opera arias and art songs came to a close, was bringing me up to the podium to sing “Teach Me to Walk in the Light” from the Primary songbook. As a six- or seven-year-old, I dutifully sang the first verse—the child’s verse—into the imposing microphone before me. Staring at the accordion wall at the back of the chapel and feeling my mother standing close behind me, I’d wait for my mom to start the second verse, the parent’s verse. And I’d wait. And the accompanist at the piano would pause uncomfortably. Because inevitably, my mom, who had sung for presidents and crowds of thousands, would break into tears while I sang, unable to come in at her own entrance. Time and time again I would shuffle on the stool behind the podium and roll my eyes as she reached for a Kleenex.
As embarrassing as these moments were for me, I secretly anticipated them each time we sang together. Only the power of her love for me could break her professional demeanor. “My five-in-one,” my mom would explain tearfully to the audience as she collected herself and prepared to sing the second verse. She had wanted five children but never tired of telling me I was everything she had wanted all rolled into one. I was her pearl that grew from the grating of a bad marriage and disappointing pregnancies. I was the legacy, the Samuel to my mom’s Hannah, the summation of her hopes and dreams. I grew up knowing I was that special.
As I grew older, I often accompanied my mom on the piano in her concerts and on her albums. I began to treasure her as a mother as much as she did me as a child. Although I’ve never been as close to my father, he lavished on me similar devotion. After my parents divorced, I was his frequent date to dinners and operas and we would laugh about how often I was mistaken for “the younger woman” rather than the daughter. My father, inactive in the Church but fabulously educated and sophisticated, generously doted on me by sending me to private schools and organizing elaborate travels. There were never any annoying little siblings who were still too young to go on these adventures. No one to divert my parents’ undivided attention. No skimping on college because there wasn’t the budget to send multiple kids to Ivy League schools. It was just me, me, me.
A few years ago a dear friend of mine asked me if I would recommend being an only child. She already had a toddler son but suffered from severe depression and considered not having any more children. As a member of the Church herself, she had never known anyone who was an only child and she was concerned about the stigma that might carry within Church culture. “Oh, your son won’t have any trouble with it!” I promised her. “He’ll love it. You can send him to fancy schools, travel with him easily. Plus, he’ll always be comfortable around adults and will most likely be uncommonly mature for his age.” I also mentioned other benefits that I find true in myself: that he would be able to entertain himself easily, might become an avid reader like I did with all my alone time, and might develop a profound relationship with Heavenly Father and the scriptures because of the lack of distractions in a sibling-free home.
“But the stigma of having only one child may land on you, not on your son,” I also warned. “My mother certainly felt judged at times, as if she were an inferior mother for ‘only’ having one child. Undoubtedly you will have to confront that insensitivity too if you make this choice.”
With that caveat, my friend paused to consider the lavish life I had described for her son. After a moment she asked, “But don’t you ever wish you had any siblings?”
Ah, that. As a child I had prayed for a sibling thinking it would calm the turbulence of my parents’ troubled marriage. Still, I honestly answered no, never in my life had I ever felt the lack of a close, full-blooded sibling. My parents separated when I was twelve and my mother was and is my best friend, my spiritual sister, the one I talk to daily and prefer hanging out with over anyone else. I have several close girlfriends, and when I married I felt I gained a whole other family with a husband who became my confidante. I never felt like I was missing out on any sibling connections.
Until now. In August 2006, my mom, now remarried to her childhood sweetheart and with a flourishing academic career, was diagnosed with a rare and fatal blood disease. The past year her condition has only deteriorated. Within two months of her diagnosis, my dad, now living alone in San Francisco, was diagnosed with melanoma and had a chunk of skin the size of a baseball removed from his scalp. It has now metastasized throughout his body; he’s refused chemotherapy, and he waits to die. And bam, almost overnight I became the executor of wills, the shoulder to cry on, and the spiritual comforter for two dying and divorced parents.
I feel like I’m waiting to be hit by a car. I try to work out in my head what it will be like without my parents in this world, and sometimes I think the waiting is worse than the impact. I’m thirty years old. I shouldn’t have to deal with this. And for the first time in my life, I wish I had siblings.
It’s not that I need siblings to help me with the burden of dying parents. After all, the years of their separation and divorce were in some ways even more stressful on me, and I was younger then and not as strong. No, I wish I had siblings for later—for after my parents are gone and it’s just me, alone in this world, with no one connecting me to the two passionate personalities who raised me. I wish there was someone who could laugh with me when I say, “Remember that funny wallpaper Dad hung up in the living room and how it started peeling a week later?” Or, “Remember that hotel in Florence with the stray cats?” Superficial things, maybe, but then there’s, “Remember those days during the divorce when Mom couldn’t even get out of bed?” What do I do with those memories when there’s no one left to ground me to my past?
Recently, my three-year-old daughter has taken to reciting an eerily familiar phrase in her nightly prayers. She doesn’t understand yet about asking for things, so her prayers are a litany of “thanks,” including, “Thank you that Mommy and Daddy can have a baby brother.” She has a one-year-old sister, and has somehow gotten the idea that a baby brother will be so much better than the pestering, tailgating little sister she has now. The baby brother won’t grab her dolls or want to try on her clothes. I don’t know if she really understands what she’s asking for (or thanking Heavenly Father for), but someday I’ll get to tell her how blessed she is to have someone in this world who shares her blood, her spiritual lineage, and a common point of reference. I look forward to the day when my older daughter looks at my younger daughter and no longer sees an annoying copycat. Instead, she’ll see someone who shares her roots.
Born and raised in Manhattan, Neylan McBaine studied solo piano at the Juilliard School and then at Yale University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English literature. She currently lives in Boston with her husband and two daughters (with a third on the way). Her writing has been published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Newsweek, and Busted Halo, among others. She is the author of How to be a Twenty-first Century Pioneer Woman (forthcoming).
