It is not the day of her passing, though my mother is much on my mind. She is here, as I pad around the house to the ticking of the wall clock that brings me back to mornings in her kitchen.
Today, I write from a chair I rarely use. It is most often the handy receptacle for an overflow of laundry which eventually I fold, or a stack of paperwork that I ultimately file away. From this place where I sit, my view seems different, my vision, kinder.
To the right through French doors I can see our worn deck where a tiny heat-burned maple continues its slow, steady regrowth. To the left I can see my stove, the sink, the cluttered countertop, the living room beyond. Through slatted blinds, light is pouring into the house.
From where I sit, I see the cherry music stand lovingly crafted by my mother’s father some fifty years ago. It is placed next to the sofa which makes no sense, but it is – to me – the presence of my grandfather, his love of carpentry, his joy in making music, his boisterous appetite for life.
From where I sit, I see a porcelain plate that was my grandmother’s. It is French, an antique, and a bit ornate. On it, two cherubs wrestle with a lion. It is – to me – the presence of my grandmother, her love of gracious entertaining, her affinity for French décor, her elegance in everything she touched.
From where I sit, I see a small ceramic tea bowl that languished on a shelf in my mother’s pine paneled kitchen. I have no knowledge of the origin of the bowl; perhaps it was a gift, perhaps an object in one of her collections. Her house was unsettling in its excess, suffocating, really. There were so many mirrors, yet so little space for reflection.
There is more of my mother here: a hutch that holds her wedding china, a portrait that has been passed down for three generations. And of course, there are my sons – her likeness, in the elder’s tendency to debate, as well as the younger’s passion for music and art.
It is only now that I realize: two cherubs struggling – or playing – with a lion. Am I the lion? Is my mother – in me – the struggle? Why have I never noticed the lion before this morning?
I sit in the stillness of this changing view, the honoring of those who have come and gone, the melancholy of abandoned vows, the hopefulness of selective recollections that enable us to look ahead. I hear the ticking of the wall clock, the passage of time in my muscle and bone, the voice of a mother who loved Mahler and studying Japanese, biographies and foreign films, Chinese vegetables and cornbread baked in a heavy mold.
I am aware of my hunger. I am pondering what has passed and what may come. I accept that we can never truly know our parents, and perhaps that is the way it should be. I gaze at the plate and the bowl, focused on the power of the vessel – its ability to nourish or to empty, to safeguard secrets or to spill them, to absorb its contents into the skin of its skeleton, to crack beyond repair and cease to perform its job as intended.
I wonder which stories will be sung to the next generation, what images will be held up as light or instead, tethered to scarring. I wonder if my mother knew I loved her.
The memories that inhabit the things, that’s why we keep the things. Sometimes we need to change our normal position to gain a new point of view. Sometimes we need to hold on to bits and pieces of the past, and let go the rest. What memories will our kids take away? It’s hard to say. Late in life, when it’s too late to get the answers, I wonder more and more about what really went on in the brains of people like my mother. I’ll never know now, so I scrapbook (digitally – not the mess of paper for me) as my method of recording the past and present for my kids and grandkids. The past as I know it, the present as I see it.
“The past as I know it, the present as I see it.” Lovely.
Just sitting in a different spot changes things so much. Literally and metaphorically.
Yes, it does. It changes the past and the present certainly. And as those perceptions shift, the future may change as well.
Such a thoughtful post. And it is so interesting to me what Carol said about what we choose to hold onto and what we choose to let go. I’m going to be pondering this throughout the day, I know. This is the kind of post that is going to stay with me. Part of why I love visiting you is that you challenge me, shake me and encourage me to think differently about life. Thank you for that.
This is too scientific, and will completely spoil the moment, but I heard theory to the effect that we re-write a memory each time we recall it, kind of like saving a document after opening it. But our emotions at the time of recall get written into the memory a bit. That’s the theory, (as I recall it :-)) anyway. You can throw something from the discard pile off the chair at me, now.
For me, I think the passing of time distills things. Yes, I might sometimes pull a memory right out into the daylight and see how it looks from today’s perspective, but most of the time, I look at the ‘why’, now. Even in my more recent traumatic past, sure, I can dig up the hurt if I want, but there’s also a sort of layer, like an atmospheric stratum, sitting over the whole memory, that rounds it out and gives the experience context and meaning. Oof, that’s a very nebulous description of something, isn’t it? I mean the ‘why’ can shape what I continue to think about, long after an event. And I think maybe our kids do the same, in their turn. I’ve had the privilege of being kind of done raising one of mine, and she will tell me what she thought, and thinks, of what she’s learned, from the things we’ve been through. Is that what you missed being able to do with your mother?
Not going to throw things at you, Di. (Not laundry, anyway… ;)) Actually, I like the way you put this. I agree that we rewrite our memories, even if only slightly, in each context, as we age, from different locales and experience. Layered, yes. I think it’s inevitable, poetic, and maybe necessary to soften those memories that would otherwise sting.
One of the reasons to take snapshots – visually or verbally – is to capture something closer to the “reality” of an event or emotion, or more precisely, to one of the many perceived realities. Much like Carol’s digital scrapbooking.
As for my mother, it would take a hefty volume to cover that, as with many women perhaps, who struggle with the legacy of their mother-daughter relationship. One of the gifts, however, my mother’s mother, with whom the bond was – and remains – strong and exemplary.
As children, we know (or hope) our parents love us and we adore them. As teenagers, we see our parents as another responsible adult helping (or pushing) us toward the right direction. As an adult, we realize how much our parents (if they were good) sacrificed for us and feel even more gratitude for their actions.
When they die, we wonder who they really were.
I know my mom, she and I have a much more adult relationship. We will talk about her problems and my problems. But, still, I am her daughter. She is much more comfortable, understandably, calling one of her girl friends than calling me. In that way, I don’t really know my mom. But I do love her. Dearly. And I think she knows that.
I think, like everything else, generational relationships change over time. I know very little about my grandparents and only learning bits and pieces about my mom as she ages and let’s down her facades. Theirs were not transparent generations. Both men and women gave the face society wanted to see, not necessarily their true one. I feel that my relationship with my kids is different. I think I’m more open/transparent with them, although there are times I know I put up a front when I don’t want to share something I know will hurt them…or something I don’t think they are ready to know.
I listened to an amazing message yesterday at church. It involved the concept of how knowing where you came from impacts how you live your life forward. Obviously written from a spiritual perspective, it got me thinking that it may be true that, when we learn more about our past, it impacts how we act and perceive the present and future…and how we conduct ourselves in the shadow of those that have gone before us.
What a beautiful, heartfelt and poignant reflection, BLW.
An eloquent, provocative post. I know I pick and choose the things I wish to acknowledge about my own mother. I can put myself in different perspectives and understand those things I try not to dwell on, mostly I focus on all the good and love her as fully as I can. The mother/daughter relationship is the most complex, emotionally volatile and identifying relationship we will probably ever know. We see a person that we refuse to become and characteristics we wish we didn’t have, things we are proud to be, and traits we dreams of having. Another intriguing post.