Nancy Atherton: Aunt Dimity Digs In

For the Bubble Brigade, friends indeed

1.

I had two infants at home and I was drinking heavily: two pots of tea before noon and another pot before nap time. For some reason, I was having trouble sleeping.

It wasn’t the caffeine—as a nursing mom, I stuck to herbal tea—and it wasn’t the twins’ fault, either. After three grueling months of round-the-clock feeding, Will and Rob had discovered the joys of sleeping through the night—and given their parents a chance to rediscover those same joys. My husband and I now had a full six hours of blessed silence in which to recover from the rigors of the day.

But while Bill used those golden hours to full advantage, dropping off still fully clothed and usually on the sofa, I catnapped restlessly, listening with a mother’s ears for the softest cry, the tiniest cough or gurgle.

It wasn’t new-mother jitters alone that kept me awake all night. Will and Rob had been born too soon, in March instead of April, and they’d spent their first full week on earth entombed in incubators. At four months they were strong as bulls—with the lung power of pearl divers—but the fears attending those first uncertain days had never truly left me.

The world, which for the most part had treated me with kindness, now seemed a treacherous, threatening place in which every corner of every coffee table had been fashioned solely for the purpose of battering my boys’ brains out. It was up to Bill and me to protect our sons from lurking coffee tables, and we took our responsibilities very seriously.

We fled Bill’s family mansion back in noisy, bustling Boston and brought the boys to England, to a honey-colored cottage in a tranquil rural corner of the Cotswolds. The cottage had been left to me by my late mother’s closest friend, a woman named Dimity Westwood, and I could think of no more perfect place in which to raise a family.

Bill bicycled each day to Finch, the nearest village, to an office on the square where, via fax, modem, and telephone, he conducted business for his family’s law firm. He traveled to London once a month, and farther when necessary, but for the most part he was home for lunch and rarely late for dinner.

It wasn’t the food that drew him. Meals at home hadn’t amounted to much since the early days of my pregnancy, when I’d brought my culinary skills to bear on the creation of wholesome baby foods. Bill had grown accustomed to mealtimes spent taste testing samples of mystery mush.

William Willis, Jr.—my own sweet Bill—was the kind of husband every woman dreams of, the kind of father every child deserves. He changed diapers, gave baths, sang lullabies, and heroically rode out hormonal tidal waves of the postpartum variety that had me wobbling unpredictably between laughter and tears. He shared my absorption in our sons and seemed to understand my need to envelop them in a danger-free environment. He said nothing as I swaddled each piece of furniture in cotton batting, and didn’t utter a word of protest when I secured the kitchen cabinets with latches so complex that neither he nor I could open them for days.

But when Bill came into the master bedroom one evening in early July to find the boys watching from their bouncy chairs as I wrestled with the mattress on our football field-sized bed, he must have thought I’d well and truly lost it.

“Lori,” he said softly, standing in the bedroom doorway, “what are you doing?”

“ Taking the mattress off the frame,” I grunted, tugging ineffectually at a recalcitrant corner.

“Why?” Bill asked, very gently.

I rolled my eyes at him, as though the answer were self-evident. “What if Will and Rob crawl under the bed and it collapses on top of them? Much safer to have the mattress on the floor.”

Bill surveyed four dimpled knees and tiny waving hands that had yet to touch the carpet, and said, “I see.”

Something in his tone of voice made me pause. I stared down at the mattress, glanced over at the boys, then recoiled from the bedding, as though it had burst into flame. “Bill,” I whispered, shaken, “what am I doing?”

“It’s more what you’re not doing.” Bill took me by the hand and pulled me over to the armchair by the dresser. He nudged the mattress back into its frame, squatted for a moment to gobble Will’s belly and snuffle Rob’s chin, then sat on the footstool at my knee. “You’re not sleeping,” he elaborated. “You’re not eating right. You’re not getting enough fresh air and exercise.” He looked pointedly at the mattress. “It’s no wonder you’re going overboard.”

I whimpered. “B-but the boys—”

“The boys are fit as fleas,” Bill broke in. He swung around to make a face at his bright-eyed, drooling sons. “Look at them. Dr. Hawkings said he’s never seen pree mies rally so well.You’ve done a magnificent job, Lori.”

I smiled weakly. “ We’ve done a magnificent job.”

“I’ve done what I can,” Bill acknowledged, turning back to me, “but I’m not here all day, the way you are. Taking care of one child is enough to run a full-time mom ragged, and you’ve got two. Let’s face it, love—you’re outnumbered.”

I sank back in the chair and nodded miserably. “I have been more tired than usual lately.”

“And more strung out,” Bill asserted. “Now that we’ve gotten the boys up to speed and started on solid foods, it’s time for you to take a break.”

“ Leave my babies?” I gasped, horrified.

“Of course not,” Bill said hastily. “But I’ve talked things over with Dimity—”

“When?” I demanded. “When did you talk things over with Dimity?”

“Last week, when you padlocked the medicine cabinet and hid the key so the boys wouldn’t find it,” Bill replied. “Have you remembered where you hid it yet?”

“Er . . .”

“Never mind.” Bill pulled my feet into his lap and began kneading them gently. “ The point is that Dimity thinks it’d be a good idea to hire someone to help you with Rob and Will. And I agree.”

I blinked at him, incredulous. “You can’t be serious. I’d never let a stranger take care of my boys.”

“ Then she can help with the laundry and the cooking and all the other housework,” Bill said reasonably. “Anything to give you a breather. Lori,” he added, grasping my toes firmly, “Aunt Dimity says that you have to start taking care of yourself or you’ll be no good at all to our sons.”

Bill had spoken the magic words, and wisely refrained from saying more while he waited for them to take effect. He knew that I never quarreled with what Aunt Dimity said—rather, with what she wrote, since her conversation was confined to sentences written in a small blue leather-bound book, which we kept in the study. I’d been too busy to consult with Aunt Dimity since the boys had arrived, but she’d apparently been keeping watch over me—and worrying about what she saw.

Had I really given her cause for alarm? I closed my weary eyes and thought back over the past three months. A few scenes stood out with pristine clarity: Bill and his father changing diapers side by side during one of Willis, Sr.’s frequent visits; the boys’ first splashy bath in the padded bassinet; a hushed, golden morning with Bill rocking Rob while I nursed Will, both of us pajama-clad and drowsy and besotted by the bundles in our arms. Most of my memories were blurred, though, one day running into the next without shape or distinction, like a watercolor left out in the rain. It was not how I wanted to remember my sons’ childhood.

“Maybe you and Dimity are right,” I conceded at last. “Maybe I have been overdoing it.”