As I write this, I realize it has been twenty years since Mother died. Patricia Jane Holden. Pat. P.J.. P. Mother. My second mother, of course. She was, as you know all too well, only 62. But for me, the sadness of that weighs more heavily as time passes. I am 55. She was so young.
What a wealth of memories flow in. The yellow Cadillac, the wheelchair, the pearls, the smell of her cheeks. Erno Lazlo, Neutrogena, Youth Dew, and Maybelline compact powder. Swans in the backyard. Salmon loaf and endless dieting fads. What words to describe her? My God, she was strong and beautiful and difficult and fun and then what? Gone. Needlework and sewing. I sew because of her ... and I try to be ready because of her. She was always ready for me when I arrived. Dressed, pressed, polished. Do you remember it this way? She was always ready when we arrived?
In the year of so before she died, she cleaned out all her drawers and her closets, leaving everything pressed and folded neatly, hung in order. She dreamed of white hallways, passageways through Scandinavian white and blue rooms. Until at the end, she could rest in the guest room bed, in her white cotton nightgown, wait, sleep, rest, morphine for pain, sleep, and then gone.
She told a wonderful story about being in the Five&Dime in Connecticut, circling, looking, when a little girl, maybe five years old, approached her. She said the little girl watched her for sometime before mustering the courage to say, "You can't walk, can you?" Mother shook her head and softly smiled (I know exactly how it must have looked). Suddenly tears in the little girl's eyes, and, "Oh, no. You can't talk either?" Mother spoke, assured her she could talk and all is well again. The child's mom apologized. Mother reassured again.
She was remarkable. A seamstress. A reader. A church-goer early and then again late in life. A hostess. A stepmother. A grandmother. And yes, of course, a friend to me. A best friend to you.
Twenty years. Where has the time gone from this long ago to now? If I could see her again, what would I tell her? What stories of children, the grandchildren, of life and work and art and all? She was a rare thing...poised and carrying the burdens of her polio, of her loves and losses so quietly. It was only on her death bed that she told of the shadow pains - certain positions that would snap her into profound immobilizing pain. Closely followed by what she wanted for my life: a big life, full, and long. Travel. Go back to school. Read. Write. Paint. Laugh. She said, "You are among the happiest people I have ever know...." I didn't understand what she meant, or rather, I didn't see what she was telling me about her own disappointments.
After she died, her sister told me that when she recovered from polio, the doctors informed the family that the life expectancy for polio victims was short. Maybe twenty years. Aunt Sallie said that she was never expected to live much beyond forty and that for most, such predictions held true. She encouraged me not to grieve too long because she had been given another twenty years, good and happy years. She told me this as we sorted through her closets making piles for the Nearly New Shop. And it was then, that day, that the first bottle of Youth Dew, half empty, came to my house. One soft, green, cotton sweater - from the Limited? - came too, and it smelled of her - the remnant of her, that mix of perfume and powder. I kept the sweater for a long time, and wore it often, refusing to wash it, carrying the hope it would keep her near by. I still wear only Youth Dew.
I miss her. Even now. All these years later.
I sew because of her. And I cook because of her. And I wash my face with care and try to live up to the legacy of her. I play gin and solitaire because of her, scrabble, and word games. Mahjong, too. And I drink a little bourbon now and then too. I make Pavlova on New Years Eve because of her - although that is another story - and I ache for organized closets. I try to be ready, clean, soft, put together, smelling good, laughing easily, because of her. In her way, she taught me to carry sorrow lightly. After all, what did I know of suffering?
It would be wrong, unfair and inaccurate to say that every memory of her is this simple and joyful. She could be difficult, sometimes quick to judge, a bit moody. But this is no surprise - she was my stepmother after all and the burden of that role . . . I can only imagine. And of course, she was married to my father, after all, and he was his own brand of difficult . . . a blessing and a burden. But together they were a force - myth-makers, opinionated, truth-tellers, and she was his peacemaker. No easy task. She must have grown so weary of dinner parties that turned into battlegrounds. Of his need to be right and her need of him. She must have wondered when Robin and I would finally love her, thank her for the role she played in our salvation. She must have longed for a life where she could do more for herself - clean the top shelf of cabinets, reach the hat boxes, walk to the store. Always seated, always dependent on others, always expected to be welcoming and ready.
At the very end, she said, "It has been a wonderful ride." That word: ride - a ride, not a walk in the park, a ride in her chair. If I am lucky, I will say the same sort of thing to my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren - oh what a wonderful ride.
Sometime I catch myself saying, and knowing it is true, I am the luckiest woman in the world. Blessed beyond measure. Children and grandchildren. A partner who adores me - and better still - who I adore. (Should that be whom? Whom I adore? Mother would know). So many lives . . . as daughter, child, mother, Northerner, Southerner, straight, queer, outsider, insider, friend and acquaintance, and always landing on my feet - just barely, like those gymnasts at the Oylmpics, feet together and still standing. What a ride. There is so much grace in my life...and I wish I could show her.
Isn't this what heaven - or at least the dream of heaven - is for? The chance to see, again, to talk again, to show and to know again. I think she would be pleased, boiling a pot of water for a cup of tea, splitting Little Debbie Cookies to share.
If there is a heaven, one room looks like her kitchen in Bronxville. The table is set. Glasses of wine. A roast chicken stuffed with oranges and onion cooling on the table. I arrive and they are there - Mother and Dad. We sit down together and have an eternity of stories - plucking chicken from the bone with our fingers, tearing bits of bread. We tell all the stories again, with nothing but gratitude. I describe what they missed. They remind on what I have forgotten. We discover all that we never knew. Everyone we have ever known joins us sooner or later. And in that hour that lasts forever we know only love...only forgiveness...and gratitude.
I think this is all I want - to live in such a manner that there is always time at the table, room for one more story, always a place for memory, for history and for futures we can barely imagine. This is the legacy I want to leave - long hours of memory, punctuated by books, by music, by paintings, interrupted by annotations to our stories, new meanings, new parsing and glossing and then, new dreams, new hopes, a bright and true future that belongs not to me.
This is true: We do not own the legacy we leave. It is the last cumulative gift to the future, built and rebuilt, torn down and recast. It is the gift of hope, I suppose, rooted in memory, spun with sorrow, illuminated with joy.
I love you, Miss Kelly - and hope you will forgive the self-indulgence of this...just remembering what I can - so little of so much.
Yours, always
Amanda
