|
When I have not thought about my mother in a little while, and someone or something brings her to my mind, I see her first as she looked when I was ten. She is walking down our street, wearing a checked coat, grasping a grocery bag or two. I stand in the living room window and watch, and when she is close enough for me to see her face, I bolt from the house and run to meet her. She smiles in greeting, and my heart swells. I may take a bag from her, or she may refuse my help. In either case, I tuck my hand in the crook of her elbow, and we walk the rest of the way together.
The image holds me fast because it represents the essence of our relationship: two together, overcoming all odds and obstacles life could present for a woman abandoned by her husband and raising her only child alone.
There are in my memory a handful of images that shine as bright.
Our house sits on a curve, so whenever I began the half-mile trek from the corner, I could already see the light in the window. Beyond that light, I knew, she would be working in the kitchen, or in later years, waiting in her big armchair for the sound of my step on the front porch.
Always there was that exchange of smiles, that instant of delight shared with this woman who has been my parent, my dear friend, my companion in life.
I remember her sturdy frame bent over a shovel or a rake in the yard. Her lot was not to tend fragile blossoms or burgeoning vegetables. She was the one who mowed and pruned and raked and hauled big bags of brightly colored leaves to the curbside. I watched her one summer take down six eight-foot-tall pine trees with a meat saw because it was small enough for her to handle.
In the early days, I held the leaf bags open for her to fill. Then we worked side by side. Much later, the task became mine, then was passed to a hired man. But she always liked to "survey her estate," as she said wryly, clipping a branch here, picking up a stray paper there, allowing me to slip a palm under her forearm for balance. Then she could do even that no longer.
And so the years passed for us: Christmases with trees that became smaller each year, then disappeared, leaving two angels in red velvet the task of heralding the season; birthdays with cakes that also dwindled in size, countered by cards whose sentiments grew more expansive and more bittersweet.
We once imagined that I would have a life quite apart from hers, a life filled with triumphs she could share. There were a few. If there were as many heartbreaks, it did not matter much; they were shared by her as well. We had thought that she would visit me in another house, another town, another world. We did not plan that I should grow middle-aged down the hall from her. But that is how it turned out, and I have no regrets. She gave me laughter and wisdom and boundless love.
She grew old, and often in the early morning, well before dawn, I would wake and peek in on her to be sure she was breathing, completing the circle of concern begun by her when I was born.
Sometimes we would sit together in the late evening, reading or watching a movie, and I would look up to see her engrossed in the story, or dozing quietly, and I would think, This is enough.
Now she has had to leave our home, and it has become for me only a house. I go where she is and sit beside her there. I look at her frail hand clasping mine as she sleeps, and I can say, finally, "This is not enough. Not for her."
"Two hearts that beat as one," she used to joke about us. "Cut one, the other will bleed." Yes, but in the end, one must go on without the other.
I like to think there is an afterlife, though I lack certainty and the comfort that would bring. Still, I think, so much love, so much energy must go somewhere. I like the stories people tell of passing through tunnels into white light and meeting loved ones on "the other side."
Life being what it is, I cannot even be sure my mother will go first. Perhaps, I will precede her, felled by the burden of anticipated loss.
Whatever happens, I hope the stories are true: that we will meet again. If we do, I know we will smile in greeting, just as we did a lifetime ago when I was small and she was young and hope was invincible. Our hearts will swell then, and we will walk the rest of the way together.
By Pam Robbins
Marilyn L. Ali
|