She Shines

081, a photo by thordora on Flickr.

Dear Mother

They’re beautiful.

I see your ghost in them, your poised hands behind their heads, guiding. I see your steel in them, your voice, the eager trill of your bravery. Rosalyn picks her clothes with care as you did, Vivian carries your devil may care, skillfully harnessed behind motherhood and cancer, but there nonetheless like a whisper in your hair. I saw it then. I see it now, in her bones.

You miss them. I know that. In that bed, through those last days in the blue room by the front door, your futures melted into mist, dervishes in the sunlight that sighed through the window seat your love built for me. What’s it like when tomorrow slips from your fingers, buttered by grief? Did you know their names then, their voices? Did they hum for you long before they ever did for me?

I fucking miss you.

I shouldn’t. I should be grateful Dad convinced you to let go, that you were released before..before I was more aware, before the pain would have hurt me too, before you became less my mother and more that creature in the bed. That thing you became more each day, the cancer, the sick, the broken. The un-soothed.

But dammit I miss you. I miss you as a mother, someone to tell me to stop coddling Rosalyn’s lazy habits or to make both girls pick up their rooms. I miss you as a mother who would nod sagely when I complain about there never being enough time, and how they grow to fast and soon, they won’t even live here anymore and will have lovers I don’t agree with and opinions I cannot change.

I miss you as a woman too, a woman I have never had in my life, never allowed in. Someone who would have explained bras and periods and lust, someone who would have tossed me Midol and said “suck it up princess”. Someone who would have understood daughters, through the eyes of one. I am missing a wheel, skipping a generation. I have lost the middle part to the manual and am alone in figuring out what goes where and what to do with backtalk and deliberation.

I cannot parse this without you it seems and some days, I miss you so fierce I break into tears near Starbucks and swear I can smell your perfume.

You would be so fucking proud of me, of all of us. You would love them wouldn’t you. You do love them. You love them through me, because of me.

Mother, I miss you. I miss what we don’t have, I miss that I stay up late and wonder for you, try to figure out who I’d be if you were here and there was no need for a burning heart with your name on my shoulder. There are two of me out here, the me before, and the me I am. It’s curious to think you’re responsible for both, and we all sit wearily together somewhere, drinking milky tea as we buff our nails.

You would be 65 this year. You would be retiring, planning your advance, singing in the bathroom, cooking poppy-seed cake for the neighbors who just married. You would see love as I see it in your eyes on your wedding day. Pure, to be savored. Joyous.

Do you miss us too? Do we fill you with joy, somewhere, somehow?

I am now as you once were, a young mother, youngish I suppose, still green around the gills but hopeful, a dancer in particles, a movement in time, hands together, the dusty light of a living room at sunset. I don’t have your gravitas, or your faith, but I like to think I have your strength and your honor, and perhaps just a little of your grace.

I miss you like I miss the pieces of me which left that day, 22 years back, in a cold catholic room in an old Ontario town.

Dear Mother.

Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way.

Sometimes saying “I love you” just doesn’t feel like enough, that the truth of the emotion, the raw reality in my veins can’t pour out of me enough and I feel helpless, gasping and gaping like one of the kissing gouramis’ I’ve always been fascinated with, the mindless pucker and blow. But it’s like that, and more, an all encompassing surrender, the taut rightness of a bubble surrounding us, brimming.

I thought I had loved before. I’ve known love. But I’ve also known hurt and anger, cusses that burn the air around them, glares that could deny nationhood-I’ve known them all. I’ve known the love that ends, the love that fears, the love that wounds. They are recorded on and in my body, scars and colors across me, reminders I don’t really need if I think about it. It’s all here.

With him I know peace, and a singular focus. In his arms I murmur and become whole, better. I see a future, I see many futures, laid out with so much possibility it makes me want to cry. Such beauty in such a simple thing. With him, I love, and am loved. No questions, no fear. Just love.

There are days where it terrifies me, how plain I feel before him, how exposed. We’re standing in my front yard under the newborn sun of April and I almost whisper “I want a home with you.” and realize I DO! I want that with him-perhaps not this home, perhaps not right now but I see it as clearly as I feel his arms envelop me. I want to wake to his arms each morning, I want to hear him tell me I’m gorgeous every afternoon before dinner, I want to have a silly argument about who’s cooking every day.

I want to be the person he comes home to. I want to be his home.

***

I am full with this. I am distracted and heavy with love, settled in my place, blinded by my reflection in his eyes. I never expected to fall in love, not now, not going on 34 with two kids and a mortgage but fuck me if I didn’t wake up and realize that somewhere, in August on a hot highway or October through the dusky leaves I have fallen utterly and completely in love and it’s more incredible than I ever imagined. It is simple this love. You live your life believing that love is complicated and difficult but it really isn’t. It’s a hand on a knee on a drive through the country. It’s a whoopie pie from hours away. It’s a voice telling you to sit down, let me bring you supper.

It’s knowing he’s got your back, and believes, completely, in you. It’s a glance at the mall, and the knowledge that you really don’t have to say it out loud.

It’s a quiet voice, whispering we.

***

He makes me feel gloriously, effortlessly, like me.

***

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

(Neruda, of course. I never liked him before now. Huh.)

Daily Care

I make plans for daycare. We wander over, we check it out. The daughter of a friend, a little sprite of a girl I’ve known since she was  days old, sprints toward me and hugs me tightly. She used to be afraid, anxious and quiet. She grins up at me as she’s wrapped around my butt, and the smile pulls at her face. I look to the woman who runs the center and she smiles softly, tells me “she’s one of our favorites around here” and I can tell she really means it.

I’ve always been slightly terrified of child care, worried that children will either shrivel up into small tiny Watchers or become engulfed in the who’s it/what’s it of any social group, tethered by stuff and shoes and the lack of it. I’ve stared at it, wondering when parents got the chance to know their children. Is it possible when you really only see them on the weekend, or for a few hours here and there through the week? Do they carry your rules and morals with them?

Do they carry your voice?

But here we are. We walked through the back field, Vivian marvelling at the diving boards, Rosalyn gasping at the jungle gym, their mother quietly noting the older well kept neighbourhood. We circled the grey-brown building, yanked at the heavy door.

They have bingo on Monday’s. The old caretaker, gentle and joking, immediately reminded us all of my father. Suddenly, daycare felt more like home than we expected.

***

My children have never known institutional care. They are in school, and at 6 and 7.5, have only ever had family or friends to care for them. For the past few years, my father has filled this role, and frankly, it’s not working.

Grandpas and rules? They don’t mix. Dinner is not Lucky Charms. School clothes are not pajamas. Granted, these aren’t things that are going to scar a child for life, but they aren’t my expectation for their rearing. But how do I demand, whn I am never there? How to I enforce when I cannot be there to do so?

And to be honest, I want my house back. I want a silent building when everyone is away, I want no humming, I want the right to leave my fucking dishes on the counter if I damn well please. I pay the mortgage. I keep the heat on. But finding your balance when the live in help that’s saving you hundreds a month is your father?

Fucking hell it sucks. It’s like high school but with even more confusion, and damn it I’m kinda glad to see him go and know that I’ll have a few hours a day at home, between shifts, where NO ONE will be humming, singing, dropping things, smoking or otherwise just “BE THERE”

My children get outings to museums and water parks. I get the seemingly forbidden knowledge of a quiet house I can clean up in peace while listening to Made out of Babies. Loudly, with no complaints or whining.

So sure, I’ll be broke. Sure, I will rarely see my kids. But I will have at least some of the silence I have been so sorely craving these past few months.

***

I’ve never done care, and so I ask-what should I be ready for? Tantrums? Crying? Being thought “boring” because I don’t do the fun things they do there? Extra acting out because they don’t see me? We’re getting to the age where Mom isn’t cool, but we aren’t quite there. Vivian teeters on the brink of it, scared and looking back, but ready. Ros would crawl back IN the womb if possible.

So I’m nervous for them. I’ve been so lucky to do this with only friends and family. But I think it’s time.