Since my mother died young [at 56, when I was 20], she holds a certain mystique in Figgy's eyes. Just the other day, I was showing her my mom's 1945 Fordham yearbook in our breakfast nook. I wish I knew your mom. What was she like? Figgy asked. I tell her she was funny, that she made me and my friends laugh when she drove us around. But I couldn't think of what else to pull out of my timeworn carpetbag. Now I'm going to paint beyond that.
Brush Strokes, Keystrokes: Mom
It's the 1970s. She's driving me and my friends--maybe Maureen, Eileen, Debbie--around Dumont in a little green Datsun with a stick shift on the floor. She's taking us somewhere, or driving us home. She has on a skirt, and a brown suede jacket with front pockets. She doesn't carry a handbag, not unless she's going to a wedding or the opera or something. No, for driving around, she just takes a slim green change purse, to hold her license and a spare key.
You're as nutty as a fruitcake, she says merrily when I say something funny. She likes similes. If I get tan at the beach, it's You're as brown as a berry.
But I don't really know her, not deep down. I'm a teen, she's an adult. We are from different places and times. What I do know is what she loves, and I grow to love those things, too. Like heady pink peonies. Pretty perfume bottles. Music boxes. A gold charm bracelet. Pearls. Birds seen out the back window. Talks on the phone with friends. Reading. Good desserts. The ocean. The Cape.
Without ever saying anything like, Alice, look, the ocean is a gift you can always have, always find, I get that just by being with her. We spend three weeks on Cape Cod the summer before she dies. Three weeks! We are both excited about it. Dad can only stay a week due to work. Mom and I sleep late, walk to the beach, to Mass on Sundays. She plays cards some evenings with Rite and Bob. I mostly watch, though she tries to teach me bridge. We get groceries, and go to the post office to check for mail--she told some friends the address for general delivery. She does get some mail, which pleases her hugely.
We read. She loves to read. Not to me, not even when I was little, but by herself. She subscribes to The New Yorker. Buys season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Wants to be sure I am comfortable getting in and out of her city, New York, on my own. She doesn't want me to be afraid of the bus. She tells how she cried driving over the George Washington Bridge when she and Dad moved to New Jersey.
She's not effusive, not to me. She doesn't praise me much. But when she does, I cherish it.
Do you have mascara on? she asks when I'm sitting in the kitchen.
No. Why?
Look at that. Your eyelashes look so dark. It looks like you have mascara on!
She has many sides. She doesn't seem to like it in high school when I run cross-country and track, breaking the all-boys mold with some other girl trailblazers. Yet, yet--she has a golden basketball charm in her jewelry box. She played basketball, but on an all-girls team.
She is truthful. She doesn't lie. I know she loves me, but she doesn't really say so. I know she loves me because she has breakfast with me every day of high school. She scrambles eggs, but I don't like those, so she has me make a drink in the blender with milk, a raw egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. She worries that I need more iron.
Her cheeks are rosy. Irish rosy. She wears a little black mascara, and lipstick. She has pretty legs. She speaks her mind. She's devoted to her parents. She tries to get everyone together--her three younger brothers, and their families.
We buy a white dress for my prom. A gown! She gets the idea to sew some sky-blue satin ribbon on the bodice. Just a little bit--very delicate. It looks quite pretty. My date gets me a wrist corsage with white flowers and light blue ribbon.
She's here, she's gone. She knows me, she leaves me.
If I were an artist, with a palette, instead of a writer, with a keyboard, I might be using the colors pink and brown and turquoise and gold. Sky-blue, too.
I'm tired of thinking of details. It's hard to dig and dig and dig.
Sometimes, we just want to leave the stones unturned.
Brush Strokes, Keystrokes: Mom
It's the 1970s. She's driving me and my friends--maybe Maureen, Eileen, Debbie--around Dumont in a little green Datsun with a stick shift on the floor. She's taking us somewhere, or driving us home. She has on a skirt, and a brown suede jacket with front pockets. She doesn't carry a handbag, not unless she's going to a wedding or the opera or something. No, for driving around, she just takes a slim green change purse, to hold her license and a spare key.
You're as nutty as a fruitcake, she says merrily when I say something funny. She likes similes. If I get tan at the beach, it's You're as brown as a berry.
But I don't really know her, not deep down. I'm a teen, she's an adult. We are from different places and times. What I do know is what she loves, and I grow to love those things, too. Like heady pink peonies. Pretty perfume bottles. Music boxes. A gold charm bracelet. Pearls. Birds seen out the back window. Talks on the phone with friends. Reading. Good desserts. The ocean. The Cape.
Without ever saying anything like, Alice, look, the ocean is a gift you can always have, always find, I get that just by being with her. We spend three weeks on Cape Cod the summer before she dies. Three weeks! We are both excited about it. Dad can only stay a week due to work. Mom and I sleep late, walk to the beach, to Mass on Sundays. She plays cards some evenings with Rite and Bob. I mostly watch, though she tries to teach me bridge. We get groceries, and go to the post office to check for mail--she told some friends the address for general delivery. She does get some mail, which pleases her hugely.
We read. She loves to read. Not to me, not even when I was little, but by herself. She subscribes to The New Yorker. Buys season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Wants to be sure I am comfortable getting in and out of her city, New York, on my own. She doesn't want me to be afraid of the bus. She tells how she cried driving over the George Washington Bridge when she and Dad moved to New Jersey.
She's not effusive, not to me. She doesn't praise me much. But when she does, I cherish it.
Do you have mascara on? she asks when I'm sitting in the kitchen.
No. Why?
Look at that. Your eyelashes look so dark. It looks like you have mascara on!
She has many sides. She doesn't seem to like it in high school when I run cross-country and track, breaking the all-boys mold with some other girl trailblazers. Yet, yet--she has a golden basketball charm in her jewelry box. She played basketball, but on an all-girls team.
She is truthful. She doesn't lie. I know she loves me, but she doesn't really say so. I know she loves me because she has breakfast with me every day of high school. She scrambles eggs, but I don't like those, so she has me make a drink in the blender with milk, a raw egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. She worries that I need more iron.
Her cheeks are rosy. Irish rosy. She wears a little black mascara, and lipstick. She has pretty legs. She speaks her mind. She's devoted to her parents. She tries to get everyone together--her three younger brothers, and their families.
We buy a white dress for my prom. A gown! She gets the idea to sew some sky-blue satin ribbon on the bodice. Just a little bit--very delicate. It looks quite pretty. My date gets me a wrist corsage with white flowers and light blue ribbon.
She's here, she's gone. She knows me, she leaves me.
If I were an artist, with a palette, instead of a writer, with a keyboard, I might be using the colors pink and brown and turquoise and gold. Sky-blue, too.
I'm tired of thinking of details. It's hard to dig and dig and dig.
Sometimes, we just want to leave the stones unturned.
Posts
This is lovely, Alice, but sad, too. It's like a dream, this portrait, in focus one moment and then fuzzy the next.
ReplyDeleteIt speaks universally to me. I have not lost my mother, she is still here, but sometime I wonder who she really is, what she thinks, what she thought. Do we ever know our parents, really, this entry makes me wonder? Will our daughters ever really know us, even though we're both leaving them reams and reams of words to dissect and analyze one day. Will they be as curious, steeped in their generation of such public worlds and selves?
I like this glimpse of your mother, it's just a glimpse, really, as if I sat next to her on the beach or in a restaurant and overheard a bit of a conversation. It's a bit tantalizing, a fragment, a slice.
I hope you'll give us more glimpses moving forward, keep unturning those stones. Doesn't have to happen all in one night.
This is so beautiful, Alice, about your mother, my aunt. It must have been emotional for you, just thinking about her and digging up the vivid details, but well worth it. I think we know our parents differently as we grow up, they change, we change, and in the end we remember what we need to remember. Maybe in your next post about her, you can include a picture, perhaps scanned from her college yearbook. Love, Linda
ReplyDelete*Tears*
ReplyDeleteAlice, she sounds a lot like someone else I know. You have captured this much of her very beautifully!
Hi Kim.....one thing I often wonder is how well I would know my mother now if she were still alive.....i do feel that i really do know my father....but that's him, he is honest and candid and we share a lot of thoughts with each other...i don't know if my daughter really knows me at all, either, you know? Lin, i scanned the photo! thanks for getting me to do it. i am glad you liked the post. And Eileen, thank you. love alice
ReplyDelete