▸ Column · The Imperial era of a galaxy far, far away — a HoloNet advice column read aboard a Star Destroyer
DARTH VADER replies.
Replied to by Darth Vader, with a rebuttal from Luke Skywalker.
The letter
My husband's mother arrived on our moon a fortnight before the baby came — "just to help." Our daughter is eleven days old. In that span she has changed precisely one diaper to my two hundred. What she HAS done: reorganized my entire galley so the bottles are "within reach," vetoed every name we floated ("that's no name for someone of this house"), and — the part that keeps me awake in the dark — the instant the baby starts rooting, she scoops her up and carries her to the next room so I can "rest," though I am fighting to establish nursing and every missed feeding cue sets us back days. My husband, Dmitri, agrees with me in private and then goes utterly mute the moment she enters the room. So I am either the unhinged new mother who snapped at a grandmother, or the woman who endures her whole leave in silence. She is booked to stay six weeks. I do not know how to survive it without wrecking my marriage or my milk.
Darth Vader replies
I know a grip that calls itself love. Renata does not feel her own hand closing. She fears she is no longer needed, that the child will not be hers in any way that matters — so she seizes. The galley. The name. The infant the instant it stirs. I understand this hunger to hold better than any living thing breathing. I believed one person would be taken from me, and I closed my fist around a galaxy to prevent it. I lost her anyway. Control does not keep the loved thing. It crushes it.
But hear the difference. Your daughter, rooting, hungry — that is not a matter for diplomacy. That is yours. When she carries the child away, you will walk into that room and take her back. Not in cruelty. In plain fact: the child needs her mother. Say it once, and let it stand.
And your husband. He agrees in the dark and goes silent in the light. I know that silence intimately. There was a man who would not speak the truth before those he feared to wound, and his silence cost everyone he loved everything. Do not let Dmitri mistake his quiet for peace. It is not peace. It is abandonment with better manners.
— Darth Vader
Luke Skywalker weighs in
My father's right that the nursing isn't up for debate — take your daughter back, every time. But look who he's made the villain. Renata isn't an enemy. She's a grandmother terrified she's already finished, useless, that the baby will never be hers — so she grabs at the galley and the name because nobody handed her a real way to belong. Give her one. A job that's actually hers.
And Dmitri — my father calls his silence abandonment. I'd call it fear. Fear isn't the failure; I was scared stiff too, plenty of times. He can find his voice. Don't fight Renata alone, and don't write your husband off as a coward. Ask him to stand beside you — out loud, in the room. Most people can, once someone believes they will.
— Luke Skywalker
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