Further Thoughts on Second Child

This evening I was on Lily's bed with Annika and Scout as Lily was getting and putting on her pajamas. She'd wanted us to come in with her, and I'd agreed: It's actually pretty funny to watch Lily get dressed. She's picked up on the concepts of "matching" and "fancy" and "casual" and chooses everything from underpants to socks to nightgowns with meticulous attention to detail. I'm a little embarrassed to say that she's better at assembling outfits than I am. I'm too safe--she has flair. Maybe she gets that from Alison.

She finally decided, after considering and discarding several alternatives, on a footed sleeper, and the three of us watched as she put it on, narrating her actions, pleased to have an audience. When she was done, she came over to the bed and stage-whispered "Boo!" at Annika, who unexpectedly chortled. Lily and I raised our eyebrows at each other.

"Go behind the bed and hide," I suggested, "And then run around and say it again. Let's see what she does." Lily did so, and when she hid I said dramatically, "Where is Lily? Where on earth could she be?" As planned, Lily ran around and shouted "Boo," flinging her arms as though to add, "Ta Da!" Annika cracked up. Really, she laughed harder than I've ever seen her, as though she was watching Richard Pryor live, which reminds me of a time when my cousin Brandon and I watched a Richard Pryor special on TV when you would have thought we were too young to get it and found ourselves rolling on the floor, tears streaming from our eyes.

But that's, clearly, another story for another time. Lily was so thrilled by this reaction--not what she usually gets from more distracted, harder-to-please family members (ahem)--that she did it again and again. I played my (minor) role each time, and each time, unfailingly, Annika burst into laughter at the moment of the big "Boo." Watching them, absentmindedly pantomiming chagrin at the "missing" Lily, I started thinking about a question an old and kindred-spirit friend had asked me over coffee earlier in the afternoon. This friend is a writer too, a tremendously successful one, and we were talking about the challenges of writing with kids. I told her that I thought one was actually manageable, once you got the hang of it. She told me about a mutual acquaintance, like my friend also a tremendously successful writer, who had told her she was only having one child for exactly this reason. And then, the obvious question, although for some reason I hadn't been expecting it. Why, she asked, did I have two?

I couldn't really answer her. I tried, said something about siblings and only children and allies and a bunch of stuff that I do, pretty much believe in principle, but as I was saying it I realized that for many reasons it would have been easier for me--for me to do the kind of work I want to do--to have had just one child. And yet, although I had researched only children enough to learn that contrary to popular belief they are almost always unusually well-adjusted, confident, successful and yes, happy, even more so than their siblinged counterparts on average, I had always known in the back of my head that in spite of all logic I wanted a second child, wanted, yes I can admit it now, a sister for Lily.

And then, not over coffee but sitting on the bed, holding Annika, watching Lily, grinning at the exchange without even realizing I was doing so, I understood something. Lily was so enthralled by this unadulterated audience, the purity of being watched and appreciated in this way, that it affected her very performance. She became more herself, somehow; she was acting, reacting, to Annika's laughter, response. And isn't this true of youngest children in general, by definition: they are the oldest child's first audience. They watch, and laugh, or react in less happy ways sometimes, but they watch from as early as they humanly can because there is nothing more compelling to watch than this bigger person you orbit around who is not a baby but can do everything you want to do and is still little like you.

I don't mean to suggest anything about adult siblings. Nobody is an audience for very long, after all. But it reminded me, made me think for the millionth time, of how I have been shaped by my first audience, the person I have loved most and with the most difficulty all of my life. I remember reading to Alison, in her bed, in our sleeping bags in her closet, and changing my voice for the parts. I remember trying to sell her on my ideas--nothing was fun without her. If I pitched it and it didn't sell, it died in the water. What was a puppet show, a school, a cruise ship, a mail system by myself? Not fun, that's for sure.

I think there's so much here that I want to say that I keep losing the thread. The original point was that watching Lily make Annika laugh, Annika laughing like that at Lily, I felt the first real, emotional surge of joy for them both, that they would have that, that apparently they already do. It has taken me awhile to know what that is--although apparently I still can't define it. But it's unlike any other relationship they will ever have, and although it may give them heartache along with the laughter, I maintain they are incredibly lucky to have it.