Another post that's coming as a surprise to me.
Yesterday, I somehow managed to get beyond all my awkward feelings around Mother's Day, not being a mother, whether I have ever really felt mothered, and so forth, and found my attention being drawn to my mother simply as a person. I never got to know her well. I hear friends in long telephone conversations with their daughters or mothers, and find it amazing. Mom and I certainly became closer when I accompanied her through the last eighteen months or so of her life, but we were so, so different. I wrote about her back on February 6, 2016 ("My Mom"), and if some of today's stories have also appeared in subsequent posts I apologize. I need whatever part of her is surfacing today.
She was a spunky young girl, based on photos of her in a childhood spent just north of New York City. She had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. She and her 10-to-12-year-old friends had a club, "The Naughty Eight", and they'd smoke cigarettes behind someone's garage. She refused to learn any of her mother's creative or cooking skills, and remained adamantly outside that circle all her life, except for a few tentative forays into watercolor painting. She was extremely smart, but not "intellectual" -- during World War II, she studied for two years at a junior college before eventually following her brother to Schenectady, where she worked briefly at Union College, then met and married my father.
Mom was full of contradictions. Spunky, yes. Organized. Potentially she could have been a leader or a modern-day career woman, yet her actual self-esteem could be abysmally low. With us, and apparently even in other settings later in life, she often apologized before giving her opinion ("This may be a stupid idea, but...") She claimed not to be a feminist, and was clearly uncomfortable with that language and terminology -- yet the day I scared off some Mormon missionaries by saying I was a "post-Christian feminist", she told me that if she had more time ahead of her, she'd be a post-Christian feminist too! She had always stood up for women in leadership positions in the church, and even all-but-ran a small church between rectors, and she briefly considered the Episcopal priesthood. But not long before she died, her original Catholicism came back, along with core fears and memories. Never mind, her memorial service reflected the best of the Anglican tradition, just as she had directed many months earlier.
She had had to very deeply bury all.her emotions when she married my dad, I think, and I (their eldest child) terrified her with my introspection, my creativity, my need to analyze. From early on, I was doing the kind of inner work that she couldn't bear. I think she was scared for me too -- she knew I would never skirt the surface of things, and that life would be hard for me to navigate. My brothers were just easier -- funnier, more successful, better at "playing the game".
There's so much more, but not today. However, with all my talk of my old life flying off the back of my boat into the frothy wake, what little nugget of my mom do I want to carry forward with me, close to my heart?
She had a wonderful, almost theatrical, speaking voice. She wasn't into holding, hugging, or touching (I come by this naturally, it seems!), but I have memories of her sitting on the bed with three-year-old me, almost cuddling, and reading A.A. Milne ("Christopher Robin had wheezles and sneezles, they bundled him into his bed...") and Dr. Seuss. These rhymes poured out of her like honey. Like music. No hesitation, no fear, a river of confident, beautiful sound that is still in my ears to this day. More than anything, this is what stays in my deepest center. Thank you, Mom.
