Baby Olivia
Aleks and I are sitting in the Kraków airport in the early morning waiting for my flight to be called. My summer vacation to her family’s home has come to an end. A young mother sits down near us with her baby and a friend. They are speaking Polish, and she begins breastfeeding her baby. The flight is called. Aleks and I get up to stand in line, and I smile at the baby girl. How can I not? We start playing peekaboo and in Polish, Aleks asks the mother the baby’s name—Olivia. “My best friend is named Olivia,” I say in English. We realize none of us are native Polish speakers, and switch to speaking English. We begin the perfunctory, “Where are you headed?” conversation. Mariya, Olivia’s mother, is flying by herself to New York to continue her study of music, with a connection in Amsterdam. Strangely enough, I am on the same journey. Olivia is ten months old, and she recently was hospitalized for two weeks with a brain infection. Poor thing. Her father is at home in Ukraine. Ukraine, which has so recently been torn apart by Russia. They came to Poland just before the war began. Mariya was there to study music on scholarship. Her husband, Olivia’s father, was not so lucky. He stayed behind, as a commander in the Ukrainian army. How scary, I thought, to see war so closely. I give her my regards and hope that he will be able to meet them in New York soon. Mariya discloses to Aleks and me that she knows nobody in the states. She will be living in a one bedroom apartment, sharing it with an older Polish woman in East Harlem. We lie and tell her it’s a great area—what else are we to do? She has nowhere else to go. We can only hope for the best for them. Aleks leaves and says goodbye to Mariya and Olivia (“Maybe I’ll see you in New York!” she says, without sincerity, but not to be cruel either.) Aleks and I say goodbye next, and I begin to head through security. I think to myself what a lovely interaction that was, how strange, and that I hope our paths cross again. As I board our tiny flight from Kraków to the Netherlands, I realize Olivia and her mother are in the seat next to mine. We talk, and I take pictures for them to send back home, and I hold baby Olivia to give her mother a break. She is snuggly and soft in her pajamas. I realize suddenly that I have likely held her longer than her own father ever has. I want to cry now. We talk, and Mariya begins to express how worried she is about finding childcare for Olivia, as she cannot afford much. I tell her I’m an experienced child caregiver, that I am about to be commuting to Queens two days a week and can come to Harlem on those days. She begins to cry. “How perfect this is, it is like fate,” she says through tears of relief. We agree that I will nanny Olivia for whatever she can afford. I insist upon it. We exchange information, and I put her in touch with my only Ukrainian friend in New York, Anna. We land in Amsterdam and are like a force, the three of us. We protect each other in this foreign place. I help Mariya with her monstrosity of a stroller, and she ushers me to sit with them in the airport when a man is caught watching me sleep. The flight to New York is long, and I hold Olivia for some of it to give Mariya the chance to eat. I enjoy every second of it. She is such a happy baby despite it all. When we deplane in New York, I leave with promises to be in touch and hope that they arrive at their new home safely.
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That fall, Olivia and I spend a lot of time together. It’s us and her clunky stroller and plethora of medications in Harlem against the world. We walk and I talk, and we play. She sleeps, we sit, and we dance. We walk to Randall’s Island, enjoy the sunshine and what fresh air we can get. I watch her big blue eyes take it all in. One day, it is raining hard but we need to go out—there isn’t enough room for us in their seventeenth story one bedroom apartment. I am soaked from head to toe after my commute from Queen, and Mariya insists that I change into some of her dry clothes. All she has that will fit me is a plain tan linen dress. I put it on, and Olivia and I march past the doorman, to the Mexican place down the road. It’s just us there, as they have just opened for the day. While I wait for my food, we dance like no one is watching. I spin us in circles with her on my hip, and she laughs and so do I. We spin so much that I am dizzy and the world is spinning. It spins so far that I forget, briefly. Forget that her dad is thousands of miles away, fighting a war for their country. Forget that my own dad is only a few miles away and forget what he has done. For the duration of a few songs that play in a language I can barely understand, we are okay. We aren’t alone, we have enough money. It is just us and our laughter, and I know she can’t even understand me as I’m the only exposure to English she has, but we are happy. The food eventually comes. She eventually goes home, I eventually stop coming to see her. We don’t talk, we move. I see them on the local news, and I smile. Their story is one of strength and resilience. I think of Mariya and baby Olivia and the time we spent together. I hope that wherever they are, they are happy.
Sarah Isabelle Tamagny is a junior at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey, pursuing a dual degree in English and Deaf Education. This is her first time being published, but her other works can be found on her Substack, @saruhist. When she’s not writing or reading, she can be found knitting in the company of her two closest friends–her senior cats, Tiger and Frankie.
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