My Fantasy Life with a Mother

My personal experience, which I do not claim to be a universal one, was that after my mother died when she was 28 and I was seven, life went on, and I came to accept the new normal fairly quickly.

It had not occurred to me that my life might have been different until one evening when I was about thirteen or fourteen, and spending the week-end with my maternal grandparents.  By that time, my younger brother and I had acquired a troubled (you don't want to know) stepmother and four step-siblings, two of whom lived with us in Ohio and two with their father in Florida, and I had already been in boarding school for two or three years.  My grandmother broke down ~ the one and only time I was ever witness to such an extraordinary event ~ and sobbed that our lives "would have been so different if your mother had lived."

What an astonishing thought!  How had I missed that idea?

For some inexplicable reason, I've been thinking about that alternative reality recently.  My husband says, "You can't know," but I have a whole narrative worked out that differs considerably from the real one.

I would have grown up in Florida, to which my parents were trying to move from Ohio.  I would have grown up TWO BLOCKS FROM THE BEACH, where they had built a house.

I might have still gone to boarding school (always my dad's dream, since that had been his experience), but not until high school, and with a sense of enthusiasm and adventure, rather than dread and despair.  And I would have done well, because I would have been excited and full of energy, and would have been receiving encouraging letters from my mom every couple of days.

I would have gone to Vanderbilt or another southern school, because my roots would have been in the south.  (In reality, my 12th grade religion teacher tried to get me to consider colleges down south.  He was from North Carolina, and considered us all far too parochial in our New England snobbishness at the ripe old ages of 17 and 18. He had a point.)

I would have majored in biology in college, because I love science and because I would have been so well supported emotionally in high school that  I would not have given up when I first stumbled in math, and I would not have abandoned all of the preparation needed for college-level science courses.  My MOTHER would have made sure that I did no such thing.

And then I would have gone to med school and become a brain surgeon, just as I had planned back when I was eleven.

So . . . I guess if my mother had lived, I would be Meredith Grey.

Of course, Meredith has mother issues, too. 

But if MY mother had lived . . .  I would be a surgeon in Jacksonville FL and she would be around, all the time.

It's a great fantasy.

My Fantasy Life with a Mother

My personal experience, which I do not claim to be a universal one, was that after my mother died when she was 28 and I was seven, life went on, and I came to accept the new normal fairly quickly.

It had not occurred to me that my life might have been different until one evening when I was about thirteen or fourteen, and spending the week-end with my maternal grandparents.  By that time, my younger brother and I had acquired a troubled (you don't want to know) stepmother and four step-siblings, two of whom lived with us in Ohio and two with their father in Florida, and I had already been in boarding school for two or three years.  My grandmother broke down ~ the one and only time I was ever witness to such an extraordinary event ~ and sobbed that our lives "would have been so different if your mother had lived."

What an astonishing thought!  How had I missed that idea?

For some inexplicable reason, I've been thinking about that alternative reality recently.  My husband says, "You can't know," but I have a whole reality worked out that differs considerably from the real one.

I would have grown up in Florida, to which my parents were trying to move from Ohio.  I would have grown up TWO BLOCKS FROM THE BEACH, where they had built a house.

I might have still gone to boarding school (always my dad's dream, since that had been his experience), but not until high school, and with a sense of enthusiasm and adventure, rather than dread and despair.  And I would have done well, because I would have been excited and full of energy, and would have been receiving encouraging letters from my mom every couple of days.

I would have gone to Vanderbilt or another southern school, because my roots would have been in the south.  (In reality, my 12th grade religion teacher tried to get me to consider colleges down south.  He was from North Carolina, and considered us all far too parochial in our New England snobbishness at the ripe old ages of 17 and 18. He had a point.)

I would have majored in biology in college, because I love science and because I would have been so well supported emotionally in high school that  I would not have given up when I first stumbled in math, and I would not have abandoned all of the preparation needed for college-level science courses.  My MOTHER would have made sure that I did no such thing.

And then I would have gone to med school and become a brain surgeon, just as I had planned back when I was eleven.

So . . . I guess if my mother had lived, I would be Meredith Grey.

Of course, Meredith has mother issues, too. 

But if MY mother had lived . . .  I would be a surgeon in Jacksonville FL and she would be around, all the time.

It's a great fantasy.

Mother's Day, Ocean Day

If she were still alive, my mother would be 83 for tomorrow's Mothers' Day. 

I try not to harbor illusions about what her presence now would mean for me.  My father and my mother-in-law both face serious surgical procedures in the next month.  A friend and her husband moved his (decade older) parents into skilled nursing care yesterday. Similar versions of the same story are ubiquitous in my circle of 60-something year old friends who have parents still living. I know that my vision of an active, engaged, and healthy mother are mostly fantasy.

Pure fantasy, actually, since my mother died at 28.  I have no memory of her voice, her posture, her gestures.  I have a few recollections of various incidents, most of them concerning the utterly nonmomentous stuff of which daily life is made.

My daughter and I have had a couple of conversations recently about favorite childhood memories.  (Hers seem to center on cats.  So, to tell the truth, do many of mine.)

But in one of my very favorites, my mother and I are in the car, running errands in Vero Beach, Florida, where she and my father have just built the home to which they hope to move us, permanently rather than for just a few months at a time, from Ohio. I am six and it's May, just about this time of year, and I am beside myself with excitement.  I am about to acquire my very own bedroom ~ the boys will share another one ~  and I am consulting with my mother about my decorating plans.  My goal is one of those touristy beach shops, and my prospective treasure includes fishing nets and seashells and buoys and all sorts of ocean-related fabrics and colors. 

That room will never make it past my imagination, just as my mother and youngest brother will not make it past that year.

I will be fine without the room.  But what I will miss, which I do not realize until thirty years later, when I have a daughter of my own, will be the conversations.  The ones about me: school, friends, boys, sports, music, college, legal career, husband, house, children, loss, cancer, ministry.  The ones about her ~ and I don't even know what they would have been.  That move to the beach? More children?  Work?  A return to college?  Her friends?  Her extended family (all gone now)?   Travel?  Health?

I like to think that she and my dad would have driven up here yesterday to spend an extended week-end with us and the kids, because Mother's Day would be a happy kind of holiday.  (Something else I have missed: a mother who would have treasured my children as I do, and shown up frequently just to hang out with them.)  I imagine that she would be standing in the sunroom window, looking out at the back yard, and saying, "Robbie, I wish that you would learn to garden.  It would be so relaxing for you, and your yard would not look like an abandoned lot wishing for a lawnmower.  Would you like me to stay a few days and put some flowers in for you while you're at work next week?"

And I would say, "Momma, yes, that would be great, but could you make some kind of thing with the driftwood and shells out there, so it could look like we live on the ocean?"

Unless, of course, things had worked out as planned, in which case we really would live on the ocean.

Lose a mother, and you lose a whole entire way of life.  Ocean, and almost everything else.

Loss, 7.66

Target. I am leaving for a weeklong training tomorrow.  I need cat litter, some snacks, some Advil.

I see a flowing summer dress and jacket that would look great on my girl ~ if she likes it ~  so I toss them into the cart.  One of maybe my top ten things, picking up gifts for her.  She doesn't always appreciate my taste, but I do it anyway.  Sometimes it works out.

I walk past the displays of summer stuff.  Brightly-colored noodles and beach towels, picnic chairs and coolers. 

We used to have the best times in the summer.  I loved summer SO much.  My daughter said the other day that among her best childhood memories are the days that a group of us, moms and kids, lazed away at a lake south of here.  Moms hauling out food and talking for hours on end, kids splashing off floating whales and turtles and racing to the playground during swim breaks, everyone trudging up to the parking lot as darkness finally fell. 

I look at the noodles and beach towels. 

I want my boy back.

Busy Week, Busy Season

This week has been packed beyond reason, and as a consequence we are spending a quiet evening at home instead of heading out to a gathering of friends. I realized a couple of days ago that the extra Lenten services and planning have added the equivalent of a full work day to each week, so I have good reason to feel a bit stressed.  My consistent response to almost every question or suggestion for the past two weeks has been, "Talk to me after Easter."

This one has been a regular week, filled with small meetings and conversations, a stack of telephone calls, classes to teach, people to visit, and services and sermons to plan.  And then there were the extras:

On Monday night, a friend and I presented an evening retreat on Ignatian spirituality for an ecumenical group.  We had a small (fewer than 20) but enthusiastic audience, with several people from various arenas of our lives showing up.  It's been ten years since I made the Spiritual Exercises, and at least a year since I've given them to someone else.  For me, the evening turned into a much-needed reminder of that powerful experience of prayer.

Tuesday night, our church council gathered for what should have been a short monthly meeting but, due to one prickly issue, wasn't. Another item for the "after Easter" list of matters requiring my attention as an interim pastor.

Wednesday we held our final mid-week Lenten service, this one focused on healing. I had little to do with that one ~ it's an annual tradition and one of our members, a nurse by profession, did the preaching.  We anointed and folks lit candles for a gentle, relaxing time of worship.

I'm not sure that I remember much of Thursday. Last night my daughter and I went out to see Hello, My Name Is Doris.  There are two other films I really wanted to see, but I did not have it in me to spend a Friday evening on either heartbreak or serious political matters, so we steered clear of those. 

This morning was devoted to a First Communion class for three lovely ten-year-olds, and then my daughter and I went for a walk together and began to plan a North Carolina backpacking trip for September.  I came home and looked up trail information and checked out backpacking gear, and felt much cheered by the prospect of a week in the woods. 

"After Easter" I am going to spend some concentrated time re-thinking all of these demands on my life.  I love everything that I am called to do, but I don't want to be this busy ever again. 

Noticing

I have been noticing my home lately.  A lot.  The little things that I find beautiful, the reasons that brought us here.  The molding and arches in the living and dining room, for instance.

Thirty-two years ago, that's when we came, in the dead of winter.  At the time, much of the house had been recently re-done.  A new kitchen, new paper and paint everywhere, a new heating system (which was to prove a costly nightmare, but: whatever).  The French doors gleamed, the glass sparkled, and the brass hinges shone.

I was newly pregnant with our boys and desperately ill on the sixteen-degree day on which we moved in.  My husband set up the bed and I crawled in;  perhaps, I thought, never to be heard from again.

Bu the house eventually filled with light and laughter: three children and their friends, and a succession of dogs, cats, birds, and one guinea pig.  Woodwork and linoleum took a beating, floors got scuffed, rugs got peed on.  Family life.  A lot of things broke ~ the house is now nearly 100 years old ~ and some of them got fixed. 

After our son died, no one cared about home maintenance anymore. We were focused on survival, and the house became pretty dilapidated. We did some work on the outside, but the inside continued to crumble.

We are beginning, finally, to develop plans and estimates for an overhaul of the third floor.  It has been well-occupied by teenagers and young adults for the past 35 years, meaning that it needs . . .  everything.  I suppose that's why I'm more alert to my surroundings in general, what with trying to re-imagine bedrooms and bath.  That and the knowledge that we will most certainly move sometime in the next decade. 

So, I'm paying attention.  It really is a beautiful home.