Pictures of You (L)

I remember when we were whole and we kissed
to Pictures of You
you had a father
I had a mother
it all seemed so tragic
and epic and
moving

I remember when it was
so simple
as love

before our littlest
fell asleep in our bed
before our oldest
walked away
before
Pictures of You
wasn’t a night
when you were 45

looking down at you
and seeing the boy
I knew 25 years ago
who had a mother and a father
and not much else

I remember nights
that were music
and moments
when we didn’t know loss
when it was simply
Pictures of You

Pause (L)

My kids are getting older. We all know this, it happens every second, every minute, every year. It happens to the best of us, and it is the best thing that can happen. I’ve written about it in many ways, with longing and nostalgia, with fear, with fortitude and determination. Since my husband’s father died two weeks ago, something has stirred within me--taken everything in my soul and given it a tremor. Maybe that is partly the reason for my new way of seeing the aging of my children. Death can put things you’ve set on the back burner into a sudden boil, or in my case, a slow rising simmer.

My children are 13, 11, and 9. Which translated into my mother speak means, about to leave me, about to hit puberty (one step closer to leaving me), and will soon no longer sit on my lap. It’s hard to give words to what I’m feeling. I feel like the English language doesn’t provide them for me. I need interpretive dance or a language that better supports the nuances of feelings of a parent who had a shitty childhood and now wants to create a better one for their children. There is a sense now of immediacy for me, like this is it, this is the show. All the years before were a dress rehearsal.

Now, when I snap, when I fail to have a quality parenting day with my children, I have this global comprehension that this is a ship that has sailed, that I’ve not only just missed the opportunity to foster something that will shape them into happy, confidant creatures, but I have potentially created a traumatic memory that they will carry into adulthood. When they were three, well, I could have a bad day and feel like they would forget it, or I’d have years and years to balance out that bad day. Now, it feels like seconds.

This might sound like self berating, the kind of thing a friend would tell you, and you’d say, no, no, you’re being too hard on yourself. Everyone feels that way, or putting this kind of pressure on yourself can’t be good for you or for them. If what I’ve written has elicited these types of thoughts from you, it is because of the above mentioned shortcomings of the English language and/or because you cannot see my interpretive dance.

If, however, it has made you want to say, “You’re right, perhaps you should go onto some sort of anti-anxiety medication until they are out of the house because Joan Crawford called and she wants her job back,” or “Maybe you should quit your job, write a book, and clean your house before earwigs eat your children,” you might be getting what I am saying.

I am unfulfilled. People who are unfulfilled are less happy, less energetic. Taking up the challenge of learning swimming, following through on running, these are things that have helped. One of my wisest friends once told me that I need something that feeds me. Being unfulfilled was okay when I thought I was the only one who would suffer. But now when I see it through a parental lens of how this might be affecting my children and affecting them now...It has become a puzzle I feel I have to solve. Something that needs rectification. I used to think having children would make me happy. It has, it has given me more pleasure and meaning in my life than I could even imagine. But now it seems that having children is the thing that is driving me to discover HOW to be happy. I must admit, I feel better just writing this. And seriously, I have no wire hangers, but there are a lot earwigs about.

It's All Right

Last night in the shower, my mother’s legs flashed into my mind, vivid like I had just lifted a sheet from her bed to view them. Swollen with edema, giving a fine sheen to her skin, her many bruises in hologram like technicolor. I could almost touch them. Another flash. Her face, still, tilted, grey hair on her pillow, her former double chin sloping a new angle to join her face and neck into a single construct — eyes closed, then open, looking at me, brown, one eye smaller than the other, narrowed from 30 year old retinal damage. The flashes came unbidden, like machine gun fire waking up neurons in my brain that I’d soothed to sleep 3 years ago with life’s distractions. I didn’t want to stop them, there she was, so close, just outside of my shower, just there, a blink away, thrown so suddenly into my mind that it felt like a visitation. The spray hit my face as I wondered what her message could be. I closed my eyes, let the warm wet pour over me, face lifted for more. There I was a young girl on the carpet of my father’s study, this flash familiar less distinct, blurred in the framing, trying to tie my mother’s shoes on her puffy 35 year old feet. She has on panty hose for socks, slacks pulled up for the job of tying her leather wingtip shoes, black and tan, the laces a thin tight cord. I remember the smell of the leather, the size of her feet (so much smaller than I’ll ever see them again), the overwhelming worshipful love I feel for her. It’s the same era that I became obsessed with a fear of her dying. I would ride with her wherever she went, I would chase after her car when she tried to flee the swelling misery of our home, I would make her describe the spot where she would meet me in heaven.

Oh how sad that little girl would be to know that at 42 she would cling to flashes of a bruised swollen leg, a sleeping face of memorized peaks and valleys rising from a swarm of soft grey hair with flakes of dry skin resting on each strand, shading the black flecks of the woman she used to be, just so she could see her mother again. The 42 year old, she knows this is life and has friends who have also lost their parents. She knows the final years of her mother’s life, in bed, in pain. She knows the in between years of anger and distance. But that little girl, deep deep in the recesses of my mind, her worst fears are realized — she has lost her mommy. I let her grieve sometimes, as I tell it's all right.