The Age of Innocence

In yesterday's New York Times, in the Book Review, there was page-long essay about Edith Wharton's 1920 novel, The Age of Innocence. (Link to the essay.) And memories came flooding back, not so much about the novel itself (about which I have far too few memories!) but about what was going on in our lives when that novel entered our story.

It was the summer of 1972. Joyce was pregnant. We were both nearing the end of our coursework for our Ph.D.s at Kent State, and Joyce (was it for a class? for edification?) was reading Wharton's novel.

And then, in mid-morning, July 16, son Steve decided it was time to arrive.

We were ready (we thought). We'd taken a Red Cross course in "natural childbirth"; we'd packed a bag; we'd bought the crib and the clothes and the toys and the mobile; etc.

And off we went that morning to Akron City Hospital (where Joyce, too, had been born). Among the things Joyce took with her: The Age of Innocence.

Her delivery was a rough one--and the rules then stipulated that I had to leave the room once they administered a sedative. So all I could do was go out in the waiting room ... and wait. Her screams accompanied me down the hallway.

I don't remember how much longer before Steve arrived (we hadn't known the gender of our child until Arrival). But then ... there he was. In her arms. Where--literally and metaphorically--he has remained ever since.

Things got complicated. Steve got an infection and was transferred to Children's Hospital, to the neonatal ICU. The second time I saw my son, he was there, in that unit, with an IV in his scalp, and his doctor was telling us: "Sepsis is the great killer of children."

I refused to believe it would happen. Not our child!

And it didn't--though it had no relationship, I'm sure, to my refusal.

Joyce, meanwhile, had become ill herself, and for about a week I was driving back and forth between City Hospital and Children's, visiting my wife, my son.

She didn't read much of Wharton during all of this--though, I know, she finished the book later on.

We no longer have the copy she read (it was a Modern Library edition--just like the one in the pic atop this post)--we replaced lots of books when we joined the Library of America and began receiving titles from major American writers--including Wharton, of course.

Life went on--though never, really, in the same way (as all you parents out there understand).

Now our son is married (they had their 20th anniversary last summer); they have two sons, 14 and 10.

And the age of our innocence has seemed impossibly far, far away.

Until yesterday morning, sitting in Panera with Joyce, having coffee and a bagel, reading the Times, finding the essay ...