Sunday, May 14, 2017

MOTHER'S DAY 2017

It’s not easy for someone like me to sit down and write something about Mom. I mean, think about it: “Mother.” That’s the kind of prompt that has writers like Hemingway and Gertrude Stein grabbing bottles of absinthe and penning 400-page volumes stuffed full of words like “remembrance” and “lavender-scented.” I’ve been thinking about it all morning long, always vaguely aware of the thunder of distant hoofbeats, plagued by the Four Horsemen of Literature (which coincidentally also happen to be the Four Horsemen of Madness): Memory, Gratitude, Regret and Love. Before I knew it I had a 400-page volume of my own going inside my head.
So I decided to simplify, to pare it down to just one thing. One memory, one moment.
We were living on Buckingham Road at the time. I’m not sure exactly how old I was, but I was still in grade school so I figure I was about 9 or so. I was asleep, in my room at the top of the stairs. I was dreaming about popcorn. Masses of popcorn being popped all around me, just sort of materializing from thin air. I woke up, and I realized why I had been having such an odd dream: I could still hear that sound, that strange, rapid-fire popping noise. It was coming from downstairs. I got out of bed, opened my bedroom door and went down to see what it was.
And there was Mom. She was sitting at the dining room table, which we normally only used on Easter and Thanksgiving and when Dad was writing out the bills every month. She had a stack of white paper, a Chesterfield burning in the ashtray, and she was pounding away at the old Remington typewriter which Dad must have pulled out from the crawlspace for her. She was writing, and I could tell right away that she was totally in the “zone.”
That’s it. That’s the memory.
So why do you suppose that this particular memory, which isn’t even so much a memory as a moment in time, almost a tableau, stands out in my mind; why has it stayed with me over my entire lifetime; and why, when I think about my mother, do I remember her typing a room full of popcorn when I was 9 years old? Because I knew even then that what I was seeing was my Mom, happy. And not the kind of happiness that depends on another person, not the happiness of a wedding day or a firstborn. It was the happiness that is felt by someone who is doing something that only they can do, someone who is saying something that only they can say, even if it’s only for an hour or two between folding the laundry and another doctor’s appointment.
I don’t even think my mom knew I was standing there that day. But of all the lessons in life that my mother taught me, I learned at least two of them in those few brief moments. One of them was “tell your story.” No matter what it is, no matter even who wants to hear it- make your husband dig out the Remington and then start typing until you’ve reached “The End.”
The other lesson was that sometimes the best present we can give to anyone is actually our own happiness.
Thanks, Mom. I hope in some way that I am returning the gift.