I once had a question on an ethics exam which asked, “if your father and the man who had the cure for cancer were both drowning in the lake and you could only save one, who would it be?” I chose my father – he paid for my swimming lessons. This, however, has become a particularly loaded question for me in recent years as my mother died of cancer after hers and my father’s divorce. Answering now would be like choosing who I want to live with post separation.
My husband, blessed with a very healthy hubris, doesn’t understand why this question is even an ethical quandary at all. According to him, he would just save both his father and the cancer curer. It is no matter that he doesn’t even know how to swim. Given his self-identified talent for multitasking rescue, I posed to him a modernized, particularly self-interested, version of the question: “If I and his iPhone both fell on to the subway tracks and he could only save one of us from the oncoming train, which would it be?” My husband chose his iPhone without hesitation. This, to my mind, means that Steve Jobs is now personally responsible for picking up my husband’s underwear off the floor and putting them in the wash.
While righteously indignant at first, I couldn’t really bemoan my husband’s loyalty to his toy. I have been known to prioritize my cat over my husband, and, as my husband is quick to point out, she has far fewer applications. Weeks before moving in together my husband flatly said that either he or my cat were moving into our new apartment, not both. I chose the cat without hesitation, but wished him well in his future endeavours. I realize that choosing my sleepy Burmilla over my partner may seem outrageous to some, but in fairness, you haven’t met my cat. She’s adorable.
I was recently reminded of these Sophie’s Choices while reading Ayelet Waldman’s infamous essay “Motherlove,” where she boldly declares to love her husband more than her three children, who, she writes, are “satellites, beloved but tangential.” Sanctimonious mothers everywhere debated whether Harvard lawyer Waldman, who gave up her brilliant career to raise her children, was a “bad mother.” Despite the venomous outcry, I don’t think Waldman is a bad mother at all. I think her premise is so poignantly realistic it catches my breath. Waldman isn’t really advocating for a hierarchy of affection; what she is really advancing is a measure of balance and proportionality between all that we hold dear. There is no reason why we need to quantify and distribute our love in marked boxes, or polarize our love into hypothetical extremes. Tenderness, of any kind, is just not mutually exclusive. That can sometimes get lost as we find a way to make our jobs, our families and our lives, work.
My husband’s first answer, while unintentionally caring, is exactly right. It’s not an ethical quandary at all. What I have learned from my father’s remarriage, though painful at first, is that you just can’t have too many people who love you. And as my siblings and step-siblings continue to multiply at a biblical pace I am also reminded that you can never have too many people to love. While it may be difficult and tiring to devote the time and attention to all those in my life, I am thankful for the challenge. I adore each new niece and each new nephew, just as I adore the new puppy that my husband and I brought home together. I hold close each new, special person, who comes into my life along the way, by whatever means, and adds a measure of shared joy and companionship. And if they, my husband, my cat, my puppy, my father, and the man who had the cure for cancer, were all drowning in the lake or had fallen in front of a barrelling subway, I would just save them all. Each and every one of them. I wouldn’t even hesitate. But I may be inclined to throw back my husband’s iPhone, he is just on that thing way too much.







