Everyday Life With Elsa

By Elizabeth Cone

In high school, Michelle and Naida and I plan our lives. We sit on sleeping bags in a circle on the shag carpet in Naida's family room and we plan, and laugh, and eat m&ms, and watch movies, and hug our pillows to our chest while we laugh some more. We'll meet ten years after graduation in Paris, we decide. By then, Naida will be an actress. I will be the most important writer of my generation. Michelle will be a doctor who saves lives and researches miracle cures. We will not change our names when we get married, we resolve. We'll have have two, six, and three children, respectively, and go back to work when the babies are each a year old.

Somehow, now, we are eighteen years, three bachelors' degrees, four graduate degrees, assorted boyfriends, one husband, and dozens of jobs and addresses away from who we used to be, but we are still friends. We haven't been to Paris -- at least I haven't -- but sometimes we meet in our old hometown, where we grew up, when everyone comes home for a holiday.

Michelle tells us about writing her dissertation in the basement of her apartment building in Kansas while she listened to tornado sirens. In turn, I talk about Maggie the Cat, and her sluggish thyroid, and I say that I think I have found a research topic that connects my short career in politics to my life as a teacher and a writer. Naida and her husband are hanging sheetrock in their new house. She's finished her thesis, and has a new job at an architecture firm. Naida tells us she is pregnant, and we rejoice.

We talk, still, about graduate school, and movies, and careers, and childcare, and changing our names when we get married. We talk about what we will do when -- when school is done; when we get the job; the degree; the raise; the house. When we meet someone; when we get to Paris.

It feels like we are waiting to start, or waiting to get there. But we are not.

I go to Naida's parents' house in January when she visits, and meet her daughter, Elsa, for the second time. The first time, Elsa is just two months old -- still, to me, a wonderful novelty. We sit at the kitchen table, sip tea, and talk about jobs, classes, houses, and families. Elsa is learning to walk, and she pushes a toy lawnmower across the floor. When she gets tired, she sits on her mother's lap, and drinks from her bottle, all while tugging on Naida's hair.

Suddenly, as I watch, everything shifts, and Elsa is not just a baby, an idea, a feminist statement, a decision to stay home or continue a career. She is Elsa. She is her own person, separate and distinct from Naida, from her husband Dan, from all of our theories about name changes, marriage and children, and going back to work. She is Elsa, and Naida lives with her, loves her, teaches her things -- every day.

Michelle finishes writing and begins a year of post-doctoral study. And I teach and write, and engage in the occasional political exploit. And we have everyday lives, and we're living them now.