Yes Please

  When I was pregnant with Abel, Archie and I used to take naps together. We spent part of that summer in Nantucket and every afternoon we would snuggle together as the breeze blew in. I was holding one baby on the inside and one on the outside. I count those naps as some of the happiest times in my life. I imagined a peaceful and quiet life with my two boys. I pictured kissing their heads as they obediently put themselves to bed, as in a John Irving novel. I was so stupid. Everything is loud now. My guys need to touch each other all the time. They wrestle and bump and yank. They play like lion cubs, rolling around until one of them decides to bite. They jump off couches and buzz around on scooters. They swing sticks and tell people “food goes into your stomach and turns into poop.” They love dinosaurs and superheroes and sounding like both. Everything is physical and visual and feelings are expressed by karate kicks.

  I love my boys so much I fear my heart will explode. I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It is scary, this love.

  I should point out here that I have a picture of them wearing underwear on their heads while simultaneously pooping. Archie is on the toilet and Abel is on a potty and they are facing each other and smiling like crazy people. I plan on using it for blackmail when they are teenagers and won’t let me hug them in public anymore.

  When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it. Then, if you’re lucky, you meet someone who gently gestures for you to follow her down a path that allows you to feel a little less gross about how many advantages you’ve had in life. I was lucky. I met Jane.

  Dr. Jane Aronson and I were at a fancy party thrown by Glamour magazine when we fell in love. We were both being given a Glamour Women of the Year Award. This type of award is really nice to win and also slightly embarrassing. It’s hard to be surrounded by women who stood up against a totalitarian regime and talk to them about my experiences writing sketches where a girl farts a lot. Before the party, I Googled Dr. Jane and read all about her great work transforming the lives of orphaned children all over the world. As I sat in my seat and stared at Rihanna’s gorgeous extraterrestrial face, I flipped through that evening’s program and learned that Jane had founded the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, which addresses the medical, social, and educational needs of children living in orphanages in over eleven countries. But it wasn’t until I heard Jane speak that the abstract idea of her work became real. She spoke plainly and openly about how every child in the world deserves the basic things in life: food, clothes, safety, shelter, and love. She was joined onstage by many orphans whose lives she had changed. She cried. I cried. We all cried. Then Bill Clinton introduced Maya Angelou and I thought to myself, “What the fuck am I doing here?”

  After the event there was a loud party filled with famous people. This is going to sound like a real douche-bag thing to say, but I have been to a lot of parties with famous people and they aren’t that great. Famous people are never as interesting as your friends. Parties with lots of famous people are usually crowded. I tend to feel plain and over- or underdressed. I get nervous. I don’t like crowds because I am small and fear being trampled. My ideal night out is a dinner party in my backyard with a group of like-minded friends whom I boss around in a gentle and loving way.

  Jane is bossy and socially uncomfortable in just the same way, and so naturally we started talking. Let me take a minute to say that I love bossy women. Some people hate the word, and I understand how “bossy” can seem like a shitty way to describe a woman with a determined point of view, but for me, a bossy woman is someone to search out and celebrate. A bossy woman is someone who cares and commits and is a natural leader. Also, even though I’m bossy, I like being told what to do by people who are smarter and more interesting than me. Jane asked me to host her next event. She spoke about her travels all over the world. I told her I would love to do that someday and she said, “Okay, then. We will.” I hosted an event for her that next year and we became friends. Then she took me to Haiti a year after, as she’d promised.

  At the end of 2012, I was in the middle of separating from my husband and preparing to host the Golden Globes for the first time. I felt completely sorry for myself while simultaneously believing I was hot shit. I spent a melancholy but sweet New Year’s Eve with my wonderful friends Jon and Jen and Meredith and Tom and Rachel and Marco. We went to see Sleep No More, an epic NYC masquerade ball. I watched a beautiful dance piece as the clock struck midnight and was mesmerized by a young dancer who looked like Natalie Portman. At one point she touched my shoulder and I wondered if I should have sex with girls for a while. I was all over the place. My life was an open suitcase and my clothes were strewn all over the street. I was happy to be wearing a mask that night because I didn’t have any idea who I was. Great things were happening in my career and my personal life had exploded. I was trapped in an awful spiral of insecure narcissism. I was nervous and excited to go to Haiti with Jane, if only for a change of scenery. When relationships end, it’s hard at first to stay in a setting you used to share. No one wants to be the cat scratching at the door that won’t open. And so, I boarded a plane bound for Haiti on New Year’s Day 2013.

  I was traveling with Jane and her colleague Noah Gonzalez, along with a few others. When asked if this was anyone’s first visit to a third-world country, a fourteen-year-old girl named Grace and I raised our hands. I made note of this. On the flight, Jane spoke casually about Haiti and its challenges. It was a country filled with young people. Sixty-five percent of the country was under twenty years old and many Haitians died from diseases like hypertension and asthma. There are over 700 orphanages in Haiti. There are over 430,000 orphans. On top of all of that, the earthquake. A country with a battered and bruised infrastructure had just suffered a devastating earthquake. It sounded like there was so much to fix. It sounded overwhelming. I sat on the plane and listened to music.

  I wondered if I was just doing this as some kind of ego trip. Then I decided I didn’t care. Not enough is made of the fact that being of service makes you feel good. I think nonprofits should guarantee that giving your time and money makes your skin better and your ass smaller. Why not? There are so many people in the world with so little. Who cares why you decide to help?

  We navigated the busy Port-au-Prince airport, and I felt very white and very tired. I felt like I was in a movie where the divorcée tries to turn her life around. I felt like a cliché, and I was angry that my head was filled with what felt like such self-indulgent bullshit. We met our driver, a young and handsome Haitian man. I thought about trying to have sex with him but did the math and figured the rest of the week would be too awkward once he had gently turned me down. Then I fantasized about him changing his mind and knocking on my door late at night. Then I realized I was in Haiti and was not paying attention. He leaned over, smiled, and said, “Welcome to Haiti. You might love it or you might hate it, but you will never forget it.” I decided I would have sex with him if he so desired.

  My first impression was of total chaos. The streets of Port-au-Prince were filled with dust and trash and babies. There was so much to look at. Everyone was busy carrying something. A man had a tray of hamburgers on his head. Women were trucking their laundry through the streets as young children pulled heavy pots of water. The roads were twisted and full of debris. It looked like someone had picked up Haiti, held it upside down, and shaken it. It felt unmoored. I understood the feeling. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not some crazy white girl who is comparing her divorce to the problems of the Haitian people. All I am saying is it felt totally chaotic and therefore
familiar to my brain. We passed groups of handsome young boys hanging out on dirt bikes. I thought of the Sinéad O’Connor song “Black Boys on Mopeds.” Then I thought of Sinéad O’Connor ripping up the picture of the pope. Then I thought about writing jokes for famous people. Then I wondered if I should ask the Haitian driver to be my date at the Golden Globes. Then I snapped back to the present and remembered where I was.

  Style is obviously important in Haiti. A lot of people wore bright colors and neatly pressed shirts. The taxis and billboards were beautiful. Haiti is not afraid of color. And texture. And depth. The young people looked fierce and bored. They looked like pure energy. There was a true aesthetic but also a palpable darkness. I mean, let’s get real. Kids are slaves there. Kids are bought and sold and put to work. I saw Haitian boys with bodies the same sizes as Archie’s and Abel’s carrying huge jugs of water. In just a few minutes you could tell which kids had parents and which were on their own. I kept trying to connect the small children and the adults they were walking next to. I was looking for comfort. I was uncomfortable. You know that horrible feeling when you lose your kid for a minute in a mall and your heart pounds and your ears fill with blood? It was that feeling. When I drove the streets of Haiti it felt like many of the children I saw were lost and no one was looking for them. I kept peeking at Jane to see if she saw what I saw, but she was only concerned with what was ahead.

  We visited one of WWO’s toy libraries. They are rooms filled with donated toys that are organized according to developmental stage. All the toys were beautifully kept and displayed, and the room smelled like vinegar. We all sat in a circle and sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” I held an adorable little girl and kept instinctually looking to hand her off to her mother, until I realized she didn’t have one.

  We drove up to Kenscoff, which is a mountainous and much greener part of Haiti. It reminded me of Haiti’s rich and fancy cousin, the Dominican Republic, and how places so close could also be so far apart. We hiked up a hillside and I felt old. I sent e-mails to my assistant about the Golden Globes with subject headings like “Yes to the Fake Teeth.” We arrived at an open field filled with young Haitian WWO volunteers. They wore matching shirts and led the kids in what looked like improv games. They sang and danced as each kid was encouraged to commit to looking ridiculous. Some of the boys were playing soccer, and Jane tied her long-sleeved shirt around her waist and joined them. I realized there was no getting out of physical activity, so I sashayed over to the small amplifier and started to DJ. A dance party broke out. The kids laughed at me at first until they realized I am a world-class dancer with moves of steel. I was exhausted in ten minutes. Some other children were painting bricks. I imagine the bricks were going to be used for something, but no one told me what. Most of these children were used to living in the moment. Thinking about the future was a luxury. They took turns with their paintbrushes. There was no crying about sharing. There was no pushing or saying they were bored. Everyone was used to waiting.

  I met girls with names like Jenica and Suzenie. When I said their names out loud it felt like I had jewels in my mouth. One girl told me her nickname was Sexy. She couldn’t have been twelve, and I worried about who had given her that name. A weird sandstorm kicked up and the dust swirled like a magic trick. We all paused together to watch, and I took a mental picture and time-traveled to the future. I thought about my boys being teenagers and playing soccer and dancing and sharing.

  In Kenscoff we ate dinner and heard stories from WWO supervisors. Melissa was a soft-spoken blonde who knew perfect Creole and worked in West Africa with the Peace Corps. Her funny partner, Wendy, came from Michigan by way of Uganda and Kenya. Wendy spoke with what I would call a “world accent,” and she and Melissa told the story of meeting during the Haitian earthquake. Falling in love among the aftershocks . . . it sounded so romantic, and I wondered if Anderson Cooper had ever fallen in love during an earthquake. Then, for the hundredth time that week, I wished I were a lesbian. Melissa and Wendy told us a story about a woman in Haiti who used to dress up like a nun and collect donations for her “orphanage.” She was not a sister of God, and the place she ran sounded like a jail. Melissa cozied up to her until she was finally allowed access inside. The children there were malnourished and dying. Some had rat bites. Girls were being sold into prostitution. WWO brought in toys and youth volunteers. They surreptitiously counted the children as they sang songs with them. They estimated there were at least sixty-five kids in danger in that horrible place. Melissa and Wendy spoke to anyone who listened about the terrible conditions, until the police and UNICEF intervened. The woman threatened them with voodoo, which is no joke in Haiti. Wendy and Melissa scrambled to find placement for all the kids, and on the day they were taken out of that nightmare there were WWO workers waiting in a line so each child had a lap to sit on. That evil woman went to jail. In just one month after he was rescued from her care, one little guy named Shashu went from being a nonverbal boy with a distended belly to being a butterball who loved to sing.

  People are very bad and very good.

  A little love goes a long way.

  The hardest day in Haiti for me was when we visited a few orphanages. Some of these places were doing the best they could. Others had a long way to go. Jane’s colleague Noah and I saw babies living in cribs that looked like cages. A little boy named Woosley jumped into Noah’s arms and wouldn’t let go. He was desperate for attachment, and men were especially scarce. Woosley held on to Noah like a bramble. We were filled with anxiety because we knew we would have to say good-bye. Noah had to drop him back off at his crowded room, and Woosley hung on and started to get upset. He finally got down and faced a corner as he cried. It was the loneliest thing I have ever seen. A teacher went to him, but it barely comforted him.

  Those kids needed so much holding. Kisses and hugs and clothes and parents. They needed everything. The enormity of what they needed was so intense. We ended up talking in the street with Jane, and crying. Jane was agitated and passionate. She talked about all the work left to do and all the small changes that can improve children’s lives. I was once again moved by her ability to steer into the curve. Jane was a big-wave rider. She didn’t make the mistake that most of us make, which is to close our eyes and hope the waves will go away or miss us or hit someone else. She dove in, headfirst. That night, I read the deeply calm and at times sneakily funny Pema Chödrön, one my favorite writers: “There are no promises. Look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. What truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.” Pema reminded me to practice tonglen, which is this meditation breathing exercise where you breathe in all the pain and breathe out nothing but love. It felt like the opposite of what I had been doing for a year. I felt one tiny molecule in the bottom of my heart feel better. I heard dogs fucking outside my window and wondered if I should try to find my Haitian driver. I e-mailed Tina about her Mandy Patinkin bit.

  On our last night we went to the Hotel Montana, which had started rebuilding after the earthquake. One of the owners, Gerthe, spoke of how she had survived and her sister Nadine had been pulled out of the rubble. I later read in the Washington Post that her sister was trapped for days and found by a beagle that caught her scent. The rescuers brought over her son, who called to her and said, “I think that is my mother down there.” She was pulled out days later. In the same article, Gerthe says that Nadine had been kidnapped in Haiti a few years ago and held for fifteen days. “You have no idea what it takes to survive here,” Gerthe said. I knew she had a very good idea.

  Gerthe also talked about travel. She talked about living in Jamaica. She joked about her husband and her haircut, because she is more than the earthquake. A person’s tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren’t one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own. Melissa and Wendy and Jane and I joked about the Golden Globes and gave each othe
r fake awards. I gave Melissa “Best Person in Charge.” She gave me “Most Famous and Most Normal.” This meant and means a great deal.

  Later that night we talked about animals. Wendy shared a story about how her daughter was caught in a stampede of elephants and lived to tell about it because she ran left instead of right. And because she knew one simple fact: elephants leave the way they come in. This reminded me of something I read, that your divorce will be like your marriage. We all agreed that elephants win for coolest animal, and I showed off by reciting my elephant facts. Elephants have long pregnancies and purr like cats to communicate. They cry, pray, and laugh. They grieve. They have greeting ceremonies when one of them has been away for a long time.

  I thought of this when I got back to my boys, the elephants and the greeting ceremonies. I told them about how one day we might ride an elephant and they climbed on each other to act it out, switching parts halfway through. I gave them a bath and put lotion on their skin. I realized how lucky my life is. And theirs. I lay in bed and thought about time and pain, and how many different people live under the same big, beautiful moon.

  the robots will kill us all:

  a conclusion

  IN 1997, I PROUDLY DECLARED I WOULD NEVER OWN A CELL PHONE. I was on a New York City street corner and I was young, poor, and knee-deep in free time. A bunch of us were standing around smoking. A cigarette was my cell phone back then, a tiny social unit that helped me fill the day. Suddenly, we noticed Lou Reed walking our way. He strutted toward us like a grouchy mayor in a leather jacket. A Lou Reed sighting was like the first robin in spring; seeing him meant your life was opening up and you finally lived in New York City. He passed by us and we all exhaled. One of my friends took out his cell phone and pretended to call the National Enquirer. It was one of those “flip phones,” a tiny pocket-sized clamshell that looked like a lady razor or a makeup compact. I held it and felt its weight.