A Mother's Spirit
By Arin Gencer
This is Carmen, Grace said. I was sitting in her sister Kathy's kitchen when she arrived with their mother. Kathy had invited me to lunch. We'd met the previous weekend at a St. Petersburg church.
"Hi, Grandma," said Nina, another church member, her affection evident.
I stood to show respect, smile ready on my face. I held out my hand to Carmen and squeezed hers.
"It's nice to meet you," I said. She smiled as she grasped my hand. Her daughters helped guide their mother to her seat at the table.
She won't really understand you, dear, Kathy said. She's confused.
Confused? I looked at Kathy, then back at her mother as she sat down heavily in a chair with the gentle assistance of her daughters. A small smile came to her lips as Nina bent down to kiss her soft cheek. She seemed fine.
Their mother couldn't remember these were her daughters.
"She only knows us as caretakers," Kathy said. Women who watch over her. Who give her medication, make sure she's eating right, tuck her in at night. Women who sometimes might get on her nerves as they insist she take one more bite of food or drink her grape juice. Women who make her laugh when they suggest she go alone on the August cruise they've planned—to which she utters an adamant "No."
Kathy and Grace had plenty of time to accept their mother's condition, even come to terms with it. But I couldn't. I couldn't understand how they dealt with the fact that their mother was no longer a force to be reckoned with. A woman they described to me as never keeping her displeasure or her views to herself now sat mostly silent, in a world of her own, with only the occasional chuckle escaping—sometimes for what appeared to be no reason at all.
I know West Indian mothers. Whether they are from Jamaica, as Carmen and her daughters are, or from Trinidad, as my mother and aunts are, you don't mess with them. They command respect. If you want to backtalk, there's a bamboo stick with your name on it in the islands; here in the States, there's probably a belt, or at the very least, a slap, coming your way.
Like the time I was 6, standing in front of my mother with my hands on my hips, defiant. You're rude, I said, uttering a word she had often shot in my direction, thinking it was appropriate. I can't even remember what I had asked for. But I do remember her response. She was holding a hose, watering the grass on the side of our Plano, Texas, house. She looked up at me, warning written all over her face.
"What did you say?" my mother asked. I paused, suddenly not so confident anymore. She didn't need to go on, because even then I already knew. I had forgotten who I was. I had forgotten she was my mother. But she reminded me, and fast. She didn't squirt me with the hose. But I did spend the rest of the day inside, banned from playing.
"Save that for your friends," she said, a phrase I would come to know well throughout years of issuing clever retorts, thinking I'd show her—only to have her show me. I am your mother, she'd say. We are not friends.
Sometimes it hurt to hear her say that. But I knew what she meant. It didn't matter how old I was, or thought I was: She'd always be older and, more importantly, in charge. My mother was not like those mothers on talk shows, who claimed they treated their daughters as equals.
Despite the line my mother drew throughout my childhood, she has become more than a disciplinarian over the years. My mother is the first person I think to call when I have good or bad news. She's the one I watch movies with when I come home for the holidays, even though she complains I'm keeping her up too late because she has to get up at 6:30 a.m. to get my brother ready for school. She's the one I read books to because I know she won't have time to read them herself—or won't get to them as fast as I'd like so we can talk and laugh about them. And she's the one I sit up with until two or three in the morning, catching up on everything that's happened while I was away at school or traveling. (She's also the one I argue with most bitterly, but that's another story.)
I can't imagine her reverting to a childlike state and losing that strong, commanding presence. And I don't want to.
Once my Aunt Elaine, a married woman in her 60s with three grown children, a grandmother to more than just her own grandchildren, told me she had gotten up that morning missing her mother, who had passed away a few years before. I was surprised, uncertain of what to say. The thought that the pain never goes away, that you are never too old to want your mother—or father—was something I had not given much thought.
But sitting with Carmen, seeing her laugh as Grace nudged her affectionately and watching her daughters worry that one side of her mouth was drooping as she ate, another thought forced its way into my mind: What if this were my mother? What if it weren't a question of losing her physical presence, but her essence?
How would it feel to have my mother be the weaker one, the one who needs care? How would it feel to look in her eyes and see nothing, no flash of anger or twinkle of laughter? What would it be like to try explaining the woman she was, even as she sits right at the table with us? I can't imagine that the occasional moment of lucidity would be enough for me, knowing the mother who laughs with me now at Mr. Collins' antics in "Pride and Prejudice."
I can't imagine her not turning those sharp eyes on me whenever I've let my impatience surface, giving her short answers as if she were just another one of my friends I'm frustrated with.
I want her to remind me she's my mother. I don't want to have to remember for us both.
When I made the decision to go to college more than 800 miles away from home, my parents asked me if I was sure I wanted to go that far. To me, the distance wasn't an issue. They had come from much farther, I said. Why couldn't I do the same?
Throughout that first semester in Atlanta, I never regretted my decision. I was happy at school and too busy to miss home. Then I came home to Houston for a four-week winter break. I enjoyed the time spent at home with my family, with my mother. I enjoyed sitting in front of the TV with her, laughing at the fact that my father had fallen asleep again only 15 minutes into the movie we had rented.
The day of my flight back to Atlanta, I had a permanent lump in my throat. I sat at the table eating a fajita leftover from the night before. I couldn't stop thinking about how I was going to get on a plane and leave.
"Arin's crying," my brother announced, tactful as always. I tried to explain I was fine, just sad about going. My mother was a model of composure. She didn't cry.
We drove to the airport, sat together at my gate until I had to board the plane. I hugged my brother, my father. I hugged my mother. Again, tears streamed down my face. I knew she wouldn't cry. I really didn't expect her to; her tears don't flow quite as easily as mine, which refuse to be reigned in. I am the only one who cries when I leave. She never does. But every time I look back as I walk into the gangway, she stands there, waving and smiling.
"You're the one who wanted to go so far away," she said when I joked about transferring to Rice, a school I purposely had not applied to because I couldn't stand living in Houston. It's only 45 minutes away, I said. Wouldn't that be great? I could come home more often.
No, she said, you need to stay where you are. She was adamant, her voice firm. I was surprised. I thought she liked having me at home.
I know she misses me. She shows it when she gets on my case for not coming home a day early for Thanksgiving because I don't want to miss class. She shows it when she asks me to run errands with her even when she knows I don't feel like going out. She may not be as emotional as I can be, but she shows it in her own way.
By joking about Rice I had slipped again, forgetting she was my mother, not a friend. I was supposed to move away from her, not find ways to be geographically closer. I was supposed to stand on my own, looking to her less and less. Her firmness makes this easier to do. Because she's right. She is my mother, not just a friend. And that is what makes it even harder to let go.
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