The Balcony

2020 

The nurses whispered about a strange flu in China as they gave our first baby his first bath. I was not watching the news that day, but I was soon glued to it along with the rest of the world. My first memories of motherhood are hazy and dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, fearful. Was this postpartum depression or circumstance? I may never know. To work off the anxiety, we walked – all the time and everywhere, my son bundled too warmly, our life together feeling like an endless cul-de-sac of wonder and isolation, joy and fear. I was lonely and the walking kept me sane. Walking, and talking to my grandma, Anne. 

With nothing current to talk about, I found myself asking for more of her stories. Anne did not love trips down memory lane. At eighty-seven, she bore a hard-won perseverance and preferred life in the present. During Covid, she was mostly annoyed that she couldn’t go into the gym.  It was frustrating at times, her knack for finding the positive. Would we be laughing about our experience of Covid someday (still too soon to tell)?  

But perhaps because she was lonely too, she indulged my questions more. I became fascinated with her own period of quarantine as a young mother (how self-centered I’ve felt as a granddaughter at times, that I didn’t ask about the phases of her life until they were happening to me. I’d never pictured her with a baby!)   

Like many things, her quarantine seemed so much harder than mine. At least I have my baby with me, I’d think when things felt scary. She’d been separated from hers. 

On this topic of quarantine, as a postpartum first-time mother walking endless loops for hours around town, I refused the brush off. I needed more. I needed to know how she survived it. 

I pressed her – “How did you do it? Wasn’t that year just so hard?” 

I kept it up, until one day she gave a thoughtful pause, and I heard her smile through the phone. 

“It was very hard,” she said, “but we’d had the balcony.” 

1958 

Anne’s knuckles were white as she gripped the balcony. Having been in and out of the hospital all her life, she was stronger than the average patient.  Her tuberculosis had returned in pregnancy with her second child. At twenty-five years old, she was sent away from her young family for a year in quarantine.  

Anne felt at peace tonight as she did most nights – experienced, she was able to endure long periods of waiting, endless seeming stretches of time.  But she grew anxious waiting for her family’s weekly visit to her balcony. She was trying to catch the moment they appeared; this had become a game she played with herself. In a few moments they would illuminate at the top of the stairs that led to the parking garage. Her eyes scanned the moonlit courtyard below, flittering around the perimeter and back again, but it remained empty except for a single bench. Her husband’s shoes would appear first – worn, she'd noticed even from here – and then her daughter's miniature saddle shoes: these had formed a lump in Anne’s throat the first visit.  

The game started to pass the time, the wait on Sunday nights agonizing even for her. But the past three visits, she swore she had felt her children before she saw them: was this a trick of her mind? Proof of a relaxing of her sanity? Or had her separation from her children unnatural as it was seeped into her body, her brain in a primal way, some yet undiscovered survival mechanism of humanity? It felt to her – as if it were real – that her love bent time in that fraction before she saw the shoes. It fascinated her. 

She’d been whisked off immediately following the baby’s birth. Despite her heavily sedated state – hard drugs being everyone’s birth plan back then – she had reached for her son involuntarily and touched him briefly on his head before they were forced apart. It had been brutal – there was no other word. But Anne existed in the world before the word ‘trauma’ had entered the social lexicon. She had carried on, picking up the pieces, healing, surviving. She was patient – no iPhone to whittle away the time with! She always exuded good humor with the nurses. 

“It wouldn’t have been so bad,” she had shared shyly with an empathetic nurse, “if it weren’t for the baby.” She was going to miss his first year of life, she’d known this during her pregnancy. The guilt was crushing. And then the guilt that she hadn’t thought enough about her daughter Patti, only thirteen months old when baby John was born. She’d gasped seeing her toddler in full view that first visit next to John. How she had grown! She seemed to Anne, clutching her husband’s hand below her on the lawn, like a perfect little lady. 

Tired from standing, she took the lone seat on her balcony. The air was warm and heavy for spring. It felt like rain. She hoped it would hold off until her family left and said a silent prayer for this. The room behind her was quiet and peaceful. She hadn’t wanted for anything during this quarantine besides her family. Her mother had even replaced the ugly hospital curtains with soft blue ones. They shifted gently in the breeze now, and Anne thought she was very fortunate for the curtains and for her mother. 

Her heartbeat picked up, and Anne had the sensation of waking from a dream. She stood, eyes frantic now. And suddenly they were here, in living color walking towards her balcony. Her husband Buddy had not seen her yet and she saw that he looked tired: was he frowning? Their eyes met, and he beamed at her. His arms were full of the baby now. Look at how he’s grown! Anne wanted to say, wishing that nice nurse was here to see the baby and to comment on him. It was silent and the baby was sleeping, which Anne understood from Buddy’s gesture. They wouldn’t be able to talk, which was fine. Anne had been nervous the last visit that her neighbors could hear them.  

Buddy crouched down to Patti, whispering to her and pointing up. Patti beamed and waved at her mother, and Anne felt her heartbeat travel to her fingertips, as if her love for her daughter could emanate from them like rays. Patti lost interest promptly and began picking up rocks from the gravel. Buddy stood holding the baby, his gaze on her and tears were streaming down her face now, she couldn’t help it. Stupid woman! she said to herself. Pull yourself together.  

He took the baby in his arms and lifted him straight to the balcony. Anne brushed away her tears trying to clear her vision. She had a precious few moments to study his features: this would have to tide her over another week. The baby was in full view to her now, his face illuminated perfectly in the moonlight. If time suspended, it framed this moment for her and only her, forever. After a few moments Buddy’s arms grew tired, and he pulled the baby to his chest, kissing him gently on the head. His eyes met hers and silently wished her goodnight. He took their daughter’s hand. And as quickly as her little family had appeared, they were gone. 

2025 

In September 2024, I lost my grandma at ninety years old. I miss talking to her so much - some days it catches me anew that we won’t talk again. She added a pandemic to the list of things she’d survived over her lifetime: tuberculosis, breast cancer, a life-threatening car accident, the death of her partner of nearly sixty years, the inconceivable tragedy of losing a son. She survived all of this, but she didn’t just survive, she lived, insisting each day on positivity and happiness. Even when life challenged her, her mindset was always gratitude. My grandma was one of the rare people who understood life was a precious gift and treated it so. Her challenges and how she faced them became life lessons for those of us who were lucky enough to know her. 

I miss her every day. What I have is what remains of her in me: perseverance, and the choice to be grateful. I think about this at night when the house is quiet.  

I sit out on my balcony.