EMMA’S LAUGH

Kupershmit’s memoir explores her relationship to her elder daughter.

Shortly after her first daughter, Emma, was born, the author realized that something was unusual about her: “she opened her eyes, her gaze the glassy surface of a lake. It beckoned me to embrace and protect her, but it frightened me also.” Doctors conducted genetic testing and soon discerned that Emma had “a chromosomal anomaly.” As one physician told Kupershmit and her husband, Tolya, “we can assume that she will live with moderate to profound retardation.” The new parents were devastated, and after they left the hospital without their baby girl, who was being closely monitored, they wrestled with a huge decision: Could they properly and adequately raise a child who would demand a tremendous amount of care and attention? Distraught, they agreed that they couldn’t. After finding an adoptive family for Emma, they attempted to return to normalcy, but Kupershmit soon discovered that Tolya had been going to visit their daughter. The couple realized that they couldn’t live without her, after all. Soon, Emma was home again, and they adjusted to her needs; eventually, they had two more children, as well. Kupershmit’s prose is straightforward in style, and she tells her story chronologically with occasional backstory about her childhood in Soviet Ukraine, moving to the United States at 8, and starting to date Tolya when she was 16. But as her relationship deepens with Emma, so, too, does the writing become more tender: “Emma was the fulcrum upon which I teetered,” she writes toward the end of the memoir. “I saw then that Emma was teaching me how to be in this world, how to navigate through life. She was intrepid, she feared no one.” The author effectively shows how she learned lessons from raising Emma that allowed her to draw on a wellspring of love for other members of her family. She also relates how Emma’s health complications resulted in difficult challenges and hardships over the years.

An engaging work about how the tenacity of a young girl changes her parents’ lives.