There have been many over the years; wives and girlfriends of my two valiant sons—beautiful and brilliant women—flamboyant artists, radical feminists, women with complicated tattoos over entire parts of their bodies, women who wrote postmodern poetry or carried vibrant theater careers. I have never been the jealous mother-in-law or the mother for whom no woman under the sun is ever good enough for her precious sons. Quite the contrary. I have raised feminist sons who fall for powerful talented women and I fall with them each and every blessed time. I would embrace them and bring them into my life like the daughters I never had. Then one day they either leave or my sons leave them—the eternal heartbreaks of love. I blindly and recklessly fall for each one of them hoping she is the one, that she will stay. I make plans for the future with them in mind; I see them having babies and me being a happy grandmother walking a new grandchild on the streets of my little town and people stopping to coo over the beautiful baby: “oh he looks just like your son,” “yes, but he has her eyes.” Or, “she has her fiery temperament,” “but she has your son’s smile.” Then one day the woman is gone like they’ve never existed. Or they leave a trace, a book of poetry they wrote, a painting or a sculpture they made that may still be hanging on a wall or sitting on a table in the living room. There are pictures on my phone—wedding pictures from each of the two sons’ weddings—one romantic and lyrical on a luscious Virginia estate, one a romantic elopement with the newlyweds walking out radiantly from a New York City Hall.
When they are gone, I absorb my son’s or daughter-in-law’s heartbreak and cry over their—and my own—heartbreak. It’s a double whammy heartbreak, worse than the ones I myself had suffered for love; it’s a heartbreak orgy. I want to keep in touch; I try to keep them in my life, but most disappear to new lives and I remain naively with the unanswered question of the century: “What do I do with this relationship that I nursed, with this love that I gave, with all the memories of the women that were real or potential daughters-in-law, would-be daughters, their phone numbers in my phone contacts? Where in my psyche and my magnificent collection of heartbreaks to place and keep them?”
There was the flamboyant artist one with long red curly hair, bubbly and lively, first long-term girlfriend of my older son; we had fun talking about fashion and French artists, I gifted her and my son a romantic trip to Paris. He stayed longer on an archeological dig, and when he returned, she and I both went to the airport to pick him up. His radiant tanned face, when he appeared at the arrival gate, is still alive in my mind along with the happiness that spread on both their faces when they saw each other. A year later she left him because of his addiction issues. I retroactively got mad at her for not telling me about it—he could have died, she could have helped him through the recovery and saved him two more years of secret agonies—but then, I understand her too. Had she been my actual daughter, what would I have done had she told me she was dating a person with a serious addiction? I keep splitting myself in two and many more parts trying to understand and embrace each side.
Then, there was the girlfriend who became his wife. This one for sure was “the one,” a radical feminist with a past similar to my son’s; she understands and supports him, learns Romanian for his sake and is adorable trying to speak it, changes hairstyles and fashions every month and I love her all the more for it. I pay for their rural little wedding—to hell with the tradition of “the parents of the bride” … blah, blah. She writes edgy poetry, does stunning photography of cattle auctions, reptile exhibits and gun shows in rural areas, my son supports every one of her artistic endeavors, she supports his, until she doesn’t, and she leaves him because she wants to become a “he.” I buy his book of poetry dedicated to my son as he goes through the transition, the volume of poetry “Hotel A. I read it in one sitting sobbing my eyes out after which I text him about the gorgeous heart-wrenching poetry. I hurt and break over the grief I imagine the two of them must feel for loving the person in the other but then getting stuck over a mistake of nature.
Then, there is wife number one of the younger son: the brilliant actress with whom I laugh until I piss my pants trying out accents and talking styles: the Italian New York style, the Russian mafia accent style, the affected French American style. We talk about everything; she is older and tries to get pregnant—and she does—but she miscarries, and we both cry in each other’s arms about the lost embryo. We give each other beautiful Christmas and birthday gifts; we get each other’s tastes perfectly. There is the luscious vacation on the French riviera with both sons and both wives at the time when wife number one is still a woman and wife-to-be number two has just gotten pregnant. I am the happiest mother on the planet swimming in the French Mediterranean under the torrid July sun with my two precious daughters-in-law and my golden sons. A photograph of all four of them happily laughing against a background of the wickedly blue Mediterranean is still quivering somewhere in my photo collection on my iPhone—the glorious radiant group of sons and daughters-in-law of several summers ago.
When the younger son leaves his wife because he realizes he made a mistake marrying so young—not ready for a family—during a torrid New York August week, I cry with the daughter in law over her heartbreak during the day and I talk and listen to my son and his dilemmas in the evening as he is staying in my Yotel hotel room until he finds a new place to live. In between the encounter with each of the “kids,” each hurting in a different way, I walk three miles to and from the New York Public Library to read testimonials of survivors from the Romanian Holocaust—atrocious stories of the trains of death and pogroms performed on the territory of my “blessed” native country. I stare at incomprehensible photographs of massacres from the pogrom of June 1941, and I find respite from the double-sided heartbreak of son and daughter-in-law a few miles away in Hell’s Kitchen, each in their own private hell. I do my research of the Jewish-Romanian pogroms assiduously and put things in perspective: sons, ex-wives and daughters-in-law are all alive and healthy, each with their own heartbreaks but fiercely alive.
I have no idea what to do with all the bleeding hearts, all the messiness of love and broken relationships except listen and offer lame consolations. Occasional guilt slashes through me in the free time between research on the Romanian Holocaust for my fourth novel and time spent with son and soon to be ex- daughter-in-law: that maybe it’s because of my own divorces and collection of past lovers that my sons are caught in these rollercoasters of love highs and love lows. I ask unanswerable, dumb questions like: “if you had to choose, which one would you rather: that your sons suffer heartbreak themselves or that they cause heartbreak?” There are pros and cons for each, and really, they both suck.
I try to learn some lessons from my incorrigible attachment to each daughter-in-law or girlfriend, like “I’m not going to get so involved from now on; I’m going to keep it cool; my heart can’t take any more heartbreaks,” “you guys are on your own.” But then the newest girlfriends appear on the horizon of my sons’ lives: beautiful, complicated, talented funny women that my sons fall for again, that they treat with care and tenderness, loving them even more than the previous ones. They are young and the world is still their “oyster.” They are not afraid to love again, to start over, heartbreaks be damned. And me, what’s a loving mother to do but embrace the newcomers and love them? Hope springs eternal; maybe these ones will stay for a longer while. Maybe forever is overrated and I just need to practice my own principles, like “one day at a time, one precious hour at a time, one lovely daughter-in-law at a time.”
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Domnica Radulescu is an American writer of Romanian origin. She is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Train to Trieste, Black Sea Twilight, and Country of Red Azaleas. Train to Trieste was published in thirteen languages and is the winner of the 2009 Library of Virginia Fiction Award.