Mom

This is a story about mom and her affect on me.

My mom doesn’t know that I’m writing and publishing a story about her.  In fact, if she did know that I planned to publish this story then she would probably forbid the story ever being told, for she is fiercely protective of her privacy. She holds onto her privacy like a person adrift in the Pacific Ocean would latch onto a life preserver, keeping it very close to the chest.

She has warned me on multiple occasions of the consequences that come with putting your business out in the public sphere. I understand her wariness and concern. The risks that come with putting yourself out there can far exceed the rewards.  So many people have been irrevocably harmed after the intimate details of their lives have been publicized.

For years, the urge to write about mom had been like that of a small hunger pang, consistent and steady enough to some garner notice, but small enough to render it to the background of my thoughts. And so I had been able depress the urge to tell her story.

Then my father spent an entire year dying, the brunt and consequences of his death falling hardest upon her shoulders. I was there to watch her deal with all of the issues that sprung up from this tragic time. She had been caught up in a storm that came from nowhere, and while caught in the storm’s eye, the demands of everyone were pulling her in every which way until she was almost torn into many flimsy pieces. Thankfully, this experience hadn’t killed her, and she has recovered from the experience.  But she literally had come close to dying. And in the aftermath of my father’s funeral, I realized that if momma had suddenly died one day, without me having been able to put into words what she meant to me, then I would have not been able forgive myself in the subsequent years. So I decided that I would write this story for her, while keeping the protection of mom’s privacy always at the forefront of my mind.

 Mom likes to tell me that she loves me, usually over the phone when she is about to hang up from a call. Each time that she says “I love you” I roll my eyes and have to suppress a groan because I know that I’ll have to respond in kind.   I hate having to say the words. Over the years I’ve found them to be words that are often empty, and they can be spoken by people with bad intentions. They can used by charlatans to bamboozle, enslave, and inveigle victims who genuinely believe that the expression of feeling through those words should be meaningful. Those words have been expressed to me by people who were not my mom. The people who have expressed those words might have thought they meant it at the time that they’d uttered them, but the words have rarely been followed up with meaningful action. And so now I have an aversion to those words when they are being spoken.

I know that mom’s words are never empty, for they always bleed with her genuine emotions when she says them.  And even though I can hardly stand having to say those words-I have to cough them out-I do reply with those words because I know that it will make mom happy. I  reply to her with the words “I love you too”, words that seem to scratch my throat as they make their way towards my lips, because mom has always backed up her words with actions. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about jewels lately. Not because I want to buy them, although they are beautiful, highly sought after, and carry with them a lot of meaning.  I would prefer not to have to spend a couple of months-worth of my salary on the purchase of jewels. So thinking about jewels is about the closest that I’ve come to owning them in the literal since. 

I think about jewels because the best metaphors to describe my mom’s love.  Before I came up with the jewel metaphor I thought about pearls as the appropriate representation for mom’s love. But equating mom’s expressions of love to pearls would suggest that those expressions are as rare as the jewel itself. And mom’s expressions of affections for me and other members of my family are not rare. What about sand pebbles? No.  Sand pebbles may be plentiful, but they all tend to look the same. 

 The jewel metaphor is perfect though, at least for me.  There are billions of them that can be found in the water and on land. Jewels are not exactly rare, but they routinely inspire awe in their admirers. They are comprised of different shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. They are all distinct and unique, all of them brilliant Assertions of the will of the all-powerful creator, just like mom’s love.         

But which is the most beautiful jewel? Which assertions of love set themselves apart from the others? That is a difficult question to answer. Does mom’s visit to my hospital bed trump mom’s preparation of a hot meal for me every single day?  I don’t know. They both stand out in their own way.  These jewels manifest themselves as memories, some of which I had not a chance to visit for years until I thought about writing this story.    

 There was the day before I was supposed to leave for college. Mom had been under the impression that we had more time to spend together before my eventual departure.  She was walking towards the front door, duffel bag in hand, ready to take on another night shift at work when I stopped her from the living room couch. I was going to be on the plane to Boston when she arrived home from work the next day.  So it was imperative that I say my goodbye before she left home for the night.

 “Momma”, I said.  She stopped herself upon hearing my voice, turning to me.

 I took a breath to compose myself. “Tonight is my last night. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

That seemed to hit her like blow to the stomach from a bat, shocking her into silence. She dropped her duffel bag on the floor, turned to face the screen door of our house, and stared out through the screen and into the neighborhood’s expanse. The whole house went silent at that moment. We all knew that mom was very sensitive and emotional, but she had always been able to speak to these emotions while they were coursing through her. We’d never seen her respond to how she was feeling with silence and separation. She looked so utterly alone for the first time.

The she began to sniffle some, and her inhalations and exhalations of breaths became shaky and prolonged.  I walked over to where to she stood, put my hands on her shoulders, and stared off into expanse with her.  She was so small. Tears were rolling down her checks, curdling her eye liner and streaking her make-up.

  “It’s all right momma,” I said, tears streaming down my face.  “College is what we wanted, right?

   She nodded.

   “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Yes, I know. You will be careful?”

   “I promise that I will.

Before I chose the college that I would attend, mom had actively campaigned for me to choose a college that was really close to home.  I chose to attend a college that was 2000 miles away because I was anxious to see the world that existed beyond the borders of the city that I grew up in. She hated the fact that I was going to be so far away from her. But in these few moments she’d expressed visceral lamentation for my departure from home, while also offering her final consent.

There was that day in 2004- after exhausting all of my options- that I finally called home from that payphone in that Maryland bus station. This was after I had been trying to escape the demons that had been haunting me for the last year.  They clung to me like shadows, those demons, never allowing me a moment’s reprieve no matter where I went.

All of the energy had been rung out of me, like water from a dish rag at the time of the call.  I’d been traveling without rest for months and months on buses, planes, and trains; searching fruitlessly for that place that could afford me some peace the demons that haunted me.  

Dad picked up the phone. “Hello”, he said.

“Hello”, I said, timidly.  “It’s me”.

Dad dropped the line, as he was too emotional and upset with me to speak. The ensuing silence was of the excruciating kind.  My heart dropped further into an abyss with each second of silence that passed. I held my breath. For the first time in my life I wondered if mom and dad might give up on me. Still, I still held on to the receiver with the hope that remained despite my cascading heart, the most important decision that I’d ever made in my life.   There was that yawning silence, but death had not come in the form of the dial tone. And then someone picked up the other end of the line, connecting me to the beginning of the rest of my life. I let out the breath that I was holding. Of course it was mom, sounding relieved. “I’m so happy to be hearing from you,” she said. And with that I realized that all of that traveling and searching had been a colossal waste of my time. I belonged to the place that I’d run away from: home.

My dad told me about the story of the mom and the car, a story that still stretches the limits of my belief to this day. This story took place while I was a prepubescent during the 1980’s. During that time our family owned a 1971 Toyota Corolla, a car that had been on its last legs for the last few years.  I don’t how he had able to do it, but dad had been able to squeeze about ten years of life from that car that was beyond the date of expiration. It was basically a square hunk of metal with four wheels attached; an exhaust factory that cut its own hole in the ozone layer over the years of its life.  The smell of the suffocating smoke that it emitted has been etched into my memory.

Anyway, after the Toyota malfunctioned for the umpteenth time, dad had to spend a whole Saturday afternoon underneath the hood of the car trying to diagnosis the cause of the problem.  Momma was with him, hovering a few feet away from the site of the wreckage, just as she always  done when dad was engaged in car repairs. Suddenly, the jack upon which the front of the car had been propped above the driveway collapsed beneath the car’s weight. The car fell down upon my dad’s chest, trapping him beneath its undercarriage.

“Mother!” dad said, grunting,  the weight of the car crushing his chest.

Mom immediately leapt into action. Without one contrary thought, she ran over to the front of the car. She placed her bare hands underneath the base of that Toyota and heaved with all of her might, adrenaline coursing through her veins.  She heaved and heaved until the car rose a few inches, giving my dad just enough room to slip out from underneath.

My mom was barely 5 feet tall, and weighed about 130lbs at the time of this event. Even with the aid of adrenaline and fear, how was she able to life 2000 pounds worth of metal without any help? Perhaps she had been touched by something that was beyond the parameters of conventional explanation and understanding. 

These jewels were given to me by mom in the decades preceding the writing of this essay. I’d kept them tucked away in a treasure chest that had been hidden from view until just now; along with all of the other jewels that mom has given to me over the years.  The treasure chest is overflowing with these memories, some of them having been spilled out and forgotten due to the passage of time. Still, the chest remains full with the jewels that remain, the more recent additions sparkling in their newness and the old ones coated with the dust that has accumulated over the years. These memories have made me secure in the fact that I’ll always be a rich in a way many people take for granted.

The passage of time has also taken its toll on mom.  Every day she struggles with the aches and pains that can make life less enjoyable.  Still, mom has refused to let the aches and pains incapacitate, for she is able to work and live through them. And they haven’t taken away her capacity to pass on more jewels.

I wish that I had the means to pay her back in the way that would make momma happy: granting her a comfortable retirement and rearing my children, and her grandchildren.  Of course I would give those pearls to her if I had the financial means and the motivation. But financial health and motivation are aspects that are missing from my life at the moment.  All I can do right now is to provide companionship until I have the means to offer her more. I’ll answer the phone whenever she calls; I’ll attend church with her and pray. I’ll do everything thing that I can to be enough for now. Is it enough though?  Momma continues to work the night shift at her job with a body that is coming close to being broken; and I continue to feel somewhat inadequate because I am unable to ease her pains. 

Momma won’t allow me to feel inadequate. No.  Advertently and inadvertently, she finds a way to aggrandize my presence and importance. My sense of esteem rises in response to her affirmation of my indispensability.   This is partly due to the fact that she is a foot shorter, one hundred pounds lighter, and considerably older than I am- which makes me more inclined to assume the role of her protector.  But mom makes me feel like a giant in so many other ways.        

In the wake of dad’s passing three years previous, the days have become mundane. Our lives have become as stable as we could hope. We are running in place right now, with aspirations to start moving forward in the near future. But even on the most mundane of days, mom finds a new reason to give me another jewel to keep, making a mundane day a memorable one.