I
think it started with the teen years. I would have on my best torn/shredded jeans and be on the way out of the house and Mom would look me over and ask in a critical tone, “Is that what you’re wearing?” Yes. “Outside of this house?” Yes. “In public?” Yes. “For people to see?” Yes. I knew the drill, but still I would bite. Why, Mom? Do you not LIKE my outfit? “No, it’s fine,” she said... “It’s fine,” she SAID. She MEANT: “If you go out of this house dressed that way and people see you they will naturally assume you’re on welfare and just out of prison and blame me personally for it, because you know they will... It’s always the MOTHER’S FAULT..., well, let me tell you that I will just DIE of embarrassment and I don’t need to tell you how many slow deaths that kind of agony feels like.” I would happily bound out the door and into my day. Yet somehow, in the next day I’d find my best torn/shredded jeans staring back at me when I lifted the garbage can lid to drop in a new sack of trash. It was always a mystery and I could never figure out exactly how my jeans got there.
After high school I went through a period of indecision and searching. I was greatly lacking direction or motivation. I was also in dire need of a reality check. I was certain that I would be making tons of money soon with my dark and adolescent poetry, that I was on the verge of being discovered for my great talents and brilliance and that I would never have to resort to the likes of the desperate masses who did things like working real jobs. So, I would ponder and reflect and be a great thinker. So, with no job and no plan, I stayed adrift on my listless journey of finding my voice and finding myself for awhile. It was an aimless period. It was a grace period. Of about three days.
“All right! I’ve had it.” Mom yelled at me as she slapped my feet right off the coffee table, threw my Twinkie in the trash and turned off MTV. (It was all in one continuous fluid motion like a great karate movie or a scene right out of Billy Jack. Mom was MAD.) “These are your choices,” she informed me as she dropped a stack of employment applications, a community college catalog and an admissions application in my lap. Wow, this was scary. Mom had been busy. She had done her homework, the legwork and she even had thrown (right straight at me HARD) a PACK of pens. (Black ink, for applications.) She paced and I sat up straight and listened; horrified by this new, aggressive side of her I’d never seen. She laid down the law. She was the marshall and I was the outlaw captured in this God-forsaken town and she had me. “I will not (It’s how she spoke when I was in really big trouble and she was yelling so loudly all her lung capacity was used up in about five to seven words) have you sitting on your lazy BUTT! All day! Every day! Like you have been! Doing NOTHING ALL DAY! And if you! Are going to! Sit around here! Waiting to get published! You can just leave!” I was sure she was breathing fire. “You can get a job! Like a responsible person! Or you can go to school... FULL TIME! But you’re going to do SOMETHING. ALL DAY! DO you understand ME?”
Okay, that’s what she SAID. What she MEANT was “Sweetheart I love you. I want you to do better for yourself than I did. I don’t want you to have to struggle and swallow your pride and have to work two or three jobs just to make it. You have been given a gift in this world. You’re talented, smart, funny. Please don’t throw all of that away. Please don’t disregard opportunities you have that I didn’t have. Just in case the world’s not as quick to notice your greatness as I am, I want you to be able to pay your bills in the meantime and to get that piece of paper. I will love you with or without a college degree but the world has different standards and you need that paper to have choices. It will be like a key that opens many doors. I didn’t get the key or the choices and ended up with whatever doors were left open. Doors that I’d have never chosen on my own, had I been given another choice.” (So... I have two associate degrees and twelve hours left on my bachelors.)
“Did you take your vitamins? What are you having for lunch? Is it low fat? Low cholesterol?” she asked me on the phone. And I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom! How many years have I been two to you?” She sighed. We were both disgusted. “Well, I can’t make you eat right, Donna. And you’re a big girl and if you don’t care about your health, it’s none of my business,” she SAID.
She MEANT, “No matter how old you get, you’ll always be my baby. And I will always love you, so much that if you became unhealthy and something happened to you, it would just kill me. I wouldn’t have you talk to or be friends with or remind about vitamins and truly, it would break my heart.”
“Hi Mom. How was your day, today?” I ask her as I kiss her on the cheek.
“Fine,” she says, “We didn’t really do anything.”
“Well, that’s my favorite day!” I offer, trying to cheer her up (and maybe me). And after a few quiet moments of handholding, I ask her, “Are you eating well? They must be treating you well... You look wonderful! So pretty.” I SAID. I MEANT: “How did this happen to you? You’re so frail. And so tired. And I miss you so much everyday. One day you’ll be gone and I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. Seeing you this way completely breaks my heart. Will you ever know how much I love you?”
I crawl into the bed with her and snuggle up. I hold her small, fragile body close. And I brush away her tears as she cries. And then I brush away my tears as I cry. And I tell her in soft, whispering, reassuring tones, “Shhhhh... no more tears. There’s nothing to cry about.” But she cries and she says, “You’re my littlest angel. I love you so much.” And I say, “And, I’m here now so there’s no need to cry! Everything’s okay. And she settles into my embrace and says she’s tired. I kiss her on the forehead as she drifts off into her dreams. And we both say exactly “what we mean. She says, “You’re my angel. I love you... and I say, “You’re mine and I love you, too.”
- Donna Lee