Somebody had kicked off her shoes, leaving a small clump of dried dirt on the carpet. Not my shoes, not my house, not my dirt, but I panicked, momentarily. Ann would have died, but she had already done that. Even so, I did my best to clean it up.
When a friend's mother passes away, it stirs up all sorts of unexpected emotions -- like an irrepressible urge to clean a microscopic section of carpet. An empathic fear of losing the person who knew you before you were knowable, who taught you when you didn't realize you were being taught, who continued to shape you even when you thought -- insisted, really -- you could do just fine shaping yourself. The person who could, with a glance, make you feel safe, sure that you could do anything. The same person who could, with a glance, make you quiver with fear, certain you could never do anything right.
As friends, we see each others mothers through different lenses. Yes, we are far more familiar with the tales of well-intentioned emotional abuse than we are with the mundane daily touch, or the thousands of times she peeked into our room while we were sleeping, adjusted covers that didn't need adjusting, or the hours of silent worry because she wanted our lives to be free of all that is not perfect. But from the outside, we are often more able to see the unseeable good stuff, see the humor in their oft repeated incomparable wisdom. My personal favorite from my own mom: The best exercise is pushing yourself away from the table. I didn't always find it as funny as my friends do, but I've certainly retained it far longer than anything I learned in school.
My friend's mother died last weekend, long after the doctors thought she would after her diagnosis. I had gotten to the point of believing she was truly superhuman, that she would never go. When I saw her recently, she was as smart and funny and deliciously sarcastic as she had always been. And meticulously turned out, though she had become painfully thin. She had made her daughters promise to not let the hairs on her chin go un-plucked, even at the end.
At the cemetery, I half expected her to start barking out instructions to the guys who were taking too long to get her settled. I'm sure she was hoping we'd all take our shoes off once we got back to her house; the ground was so muddy. To my friend, Ann, mom, has always been larger than life, a force to be reckoned with. I get it.
Back at Ann's house, I was struck by her ordinariness. The unfinished crossword puzzle on her toilet tank. The lotions and potions she had not put away before she left, thinking she'd be back. The piles of papers on her nightstand, the assorted items in her cabinets that had long expired. I zeroed in on one of the cookbooks on her shelf full of cookbooks. The Pillsbury baking cookbook. Even from across the room, there was something about it that took me back, way back -- even though my own mom never baked. I pulled it out, flipped through the yellowed pages, looked at the copyright date -- 1959. The year I was born, right around the time my friend's mother became a mother. I am claiming that book as my own, an ordinary reminder of the extraordinary Ann.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Mother's Day, from a Daughter's Eyes
When I was eight years old, I went to a little store across the street from my school (at least I think that's where it was) and I bought my mother the most beautiful house dress. It cost eight dollars. Mother's Day was a few days away.
In Brooklyn, in the sixties, moms wore house dresses when they came home. At least my mom did. Some, as I recall, also wore nylon knee highs rolled down to their ankles (why, I could not say) and hairnets. My mom was a cut above; no rolled knee highs, no hairnets, just a clip to hold the wispy front flips of her hair in place. My guess is there was enough spray to take care of that, but you can never be too careful.
Only my close friends knew the house dress version of my mom. To this day, that side of her remains a closely held secret. A half century since I bought her that Mother's Day present, the stylish woman everybody knows slips into a house dress the moment she comes home. A house dress and the clip. Mom.
The clip, I'm fairly certain, is the same one, but no house dress has ever come close to the beautiful, hot pink, wrap-around, above the knee little number with the colorful appliqué of something on the pocket and the black and white trim along the edges. I loved that house dress. So did my mom; she wore it until it was so threadbare it practically disappeared.
When I was eight, I still had no idea that mother-daughter relationships were complicated. What I did know was that even if I had purchased the ugliest house dress in the store, my mom would have worn it to death. And, as stylish and picky as she was, she would have thought it was beautiful. It was something I tended to forget over the years, when we fought, when I was sure she was my arch enemy, when I forgot she was the president of my fan club, much less even a member.
I celebrated my first Mother's Day just a few weeks after my first child was born -- I have the picture of me holding her in front of the Small Mammals House at the Lincoln Park Zoo to prove it. I remember thinking, back then, that Mother's Day was an earned holiday, eclipsing even my birthday in importance, though all I had done to earn it, so far, was endure a relatively pleasant pregnancy, an excruciating birth (immediately forgotten), and a few sleepless nights. I would never have imagined, that day, that the small girl mammal in my arms would one day snarl at me, maybe even question my devotion.
It has taken me a long time to realize that my mother, my true mother, is the one who wore that house dress until it pretty much disappeared. And, three grown kids into my stint, I realize I am always, above all else, the young woman holding on tight to the small miracle who gave me the first inkling of who I was meant to be.
In Brooklyn, in the sixties, moms wore house dresses when they came home. At least my mom did. Some, as I recall, also wore nylon knee highs rolled down to their ankles (why, I could not say) and hairnets. My mom was a cut above; no rolled knee highs, no hairnets, just a clip to hold the wispy front flips of her hair in place. My guess is there was enough spray to take care of that, but you can never be too careful.
Only my close friends knew the house dress version of my mom. To this day, that side of her remains a closely held secret. A half century since I bought her that Mother's Day present, the stylish woman everybody knows slips into a house dress the moment she comes home. A house dress and the clip. Mom.
The clip, I'm fairly certain, is the same one, but no house dress has ever come close to the beautiful, hot pink, wrap-around, above the knee little number with the colorful appliqué of something on the pocket and the black and white trim along the edges. I loved that house dress. So did my mom; she wore it until it was so threadbare it practically disappeared.
When I was eight, I still had no idea that mother-daughter relationships were complicated. What I did know was that even if I had purchased the ugliest house dress in the store, my mom would have worn it to death. And, as stylish and picky as she was, she would have thought it was beautiful. It was something I tended to forget over the years, when we fought, when I was sure she was my arch enemy, when I forgot she was the president of my fan club, much less even a member.
I celebrated my first Mother's Day just a few weeks after my first child was born -- I have the picture of me holding her in front of the Small Mammals House at the Lincoln Park Zoo to prove it. I remember thinking, back then, that Mother's Day was an earned holiday, eclipsing even my birthday in importance, though all I had done to earn it, so far, was endure a relatively pleasant pregnancy, an excruciating birth (immediately forgotten), and a few sleepless nights. I would never have imagined, that day, that the small girl mammal in my arms would one day snarl at me, maybe even question my devotion.
It has taken me a long time to realize that my mother, my true mother, is the one who wore that house dress until it pretty much disappeared. And, three grown kids into my stint, I realize I am always, above all else, the young woman holding on tight to the small miracle who gave me the first inkling of who I was meant to be.
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