Like Kafka, I write in the present tense, remembering the past. He wrote to his father; I wrote to my mother. His parent was still alive at the time he wrote; my mother died over forty years ago. The Kafka narrator is bound by the conventions of his age and place (1883-1924, upper-middle-class Jewish intellectual family in Prague); my narrator is molded by a 20th-century middle-class childhood in rural Illinois, born to educated but not intellectual parents, culturally Protestant, but not evangelical.
This was our Christmas card when I was in first grade.
Dear Mother,
I think I understand why. I think I understand that after a miscarriage, after birthing a preemie who breathed raggedly and only for six days, after adopting a baby whose nature eventually overwhelmed nurture, by the time I came along, you didn’t trust your good fortune and therefore clung to me with a ferocious desperation. I believe that was why, it was around puberty, I believe, I started to feel smothered. The more you tried to hang on, the more I pulled away, and I'm sorry for my coolness towards you. I was your everything, and I responded with distance, first a thousand miles, then an ocean, and when I finally came back, I settled two thousand miles away.
I don’t doubt that I was loved beyond measure. Most people wouldn’t consider that a problem and it wasn’t, at first. At first, I couldn’t breathe without you, but later I couldn’t breathe with you.
I was four when Grandpa Miller’s appendix burst and peritonitis stole him from us. When you and Dad went out for the evening to go to his visitation, that was the first time I remember being left with a babysitter. You probably thought that I wasn’t old enough to see a corpse in an open coffin. “ Is anyone ever old enough for that”?
I do remember, however, that it was a very cold night. When you returned, I ran to you and wrapped my chubby arms around your knees, burying my face deeply into your sealskin coat, the coat you had bought for $99 back in the day when $99 was truly something. You must’ve valued yourself then to spend $99 on yourself during the depression. I always loved that story, and you had not yet become the mother I knew throughout most of my childhood, the woman who never put on her oxygen mask first. The woman who put me before anything when all I wanted was a role model with oodles of self-respect. I needed a role model of a woman who respected herself because I needed to learn to respect myself. But that night, the scent, the cool sleekness, the sensual softness of my face buried in your coat, the snowy chill took my breath away and made me never want to let you go.
I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral the next day either, and I’ve always faulted you for not letting me say goodbye. What were we afraid would happen if a four-year-old went to a funeral? Well, what did happen was that it took me a long time to say goodbye to Grandpa, and I was afraid you would disappear, too, one day and just never come home.
I was eight when I tried to stay overnight with Laura Stare. Her parents finally called you at 10 p.m. because I couldn’t stop crying, and you came and collected me, trundling me back to the safety of my yellow-chenille-covered lower bunk bed, Laddie sleeping at my feet, you and Dad just down the hall, all being right with my world.
You understood my young obsession with you was not completely healthy, so when I was ten, you volunteered to be a counselor at Camp Emmanuel. At least, I could pretend to be brave, going to summer camp and staying in a cabin with my peers, bravely sleeping by myself, knowing you were just over the hill in the main building with the other administrators. To this day, I remain grateful you allowed me to keep my pride.
Having earned a “normal” degree from what is now Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, my mother taught at a one-room school named “Blue Door” after the color of its portal. Here is Mother in 1934 with her pupils. She is the tallest one.
The summer I got my period was when I began to look at mothers differently. Driving from Illinois to the Texas Gulf with Aunt Sara and Uncle Paul, experiencing luxuries like seafood buffets at Howard Johnsons and a Piggly Wiggly filled with foods we didn’t grow on the farm, seeing women who wore clothes they didn’t sew themselves, whose hairstyles looked different than our Toni home permanents, well, they all made an impression.
Commenting on my newly discovered grooming skills, you thought you were complimenting me when you said, “You should be a hairdresser,” but all I heard was, “ Marry a local boy. You can live in Grandma’s old place, screen in the back porch, install a shampoo chair in one corner, put a baby bouncer in another corner, repurpose the bookshelf Dad made from the oak tree he planted as a kid, and replace books with Clairol boxes”. That’s when I began to feel as if I couldn’t breathe.
Thanks for allowing me to audition for and travel with the School Band of America. Would you have done that had you known how 30 days in six European countries would change a 16-year-old farm girl so profoundly that her heart would never return home? That was a turning point, after which our conversations existed on separate planes and became sparse, stilted, and forced, neither of us much interested in what the other had to say.
In one sense, I understood that you and Dad couldn’t have lived anywhere else; you loved the farm, but I inherited wanderlust from both sides of the family, the Millers and the Turneys. Perhaps you should not have told me the stories about Aunt Eliza, Aunt Sadie, and Uncle Arthur, who went to the mission fields in India back in the day when we didn’t call it colonialism. Perhaps you should not have told me the story about your cousin who traveled throughout the Wild West playing wooden and ivory percussion instruments, thus earning the name “Bones” Turney. Perhaps you should not have admired my slightly older cousins who went to schools beyond Champaign and Bloomington and later moved to Rochester, Amherst, Arlington, and Charlotte.
In many ways, you and I aren’t so different. “The effect you had on me was the effect you could not help having.” Like you and Dad, I am known for hospitality and generosity, my ability to entertain and tell stories, so don’t think you lost me completely. I hope, somehow, you know that, ultimately, you didn’t lose me at all, but I understand that you probably didn’t know that the night you went to sleep and never woke up, so I’m telling you now: “Mother, I love you.”
Janice
Beautiful letter to your mother! I don't think we can help but pull away from our moms. They give us so much and a lot of it is the strength to see and do other things.
*and then they make us feel guilty for ever leaving them* (Ok, I'm just joking here) (probably it's my Jewish upbringing bringing up the guilt). You've given me so much to think about!
I hope, somehow, you know that, ultimately, you didn’t lose me at all, but I understand that you probably didn’t know that the night you went to sleep and never woke up, so I’m telling you now: “Mother, I love you.”
Very moving, Janice!