in our twenties

"Why did you stop dating Tommy?" I ask Mom.

We are both laying on Mom's bed. Mom's head is raised and crooked on her pillows--her dark brown hair matted flat to the pillow, despite the fact that she had her hair "done" this week. Where all the curls have gone I'm not sure. I suspect Mulu and Lorna inadvertently brush them out in an effort to keep Mom's hair tidy. In contrast, I am sitting with my head propped up on pillows on the other end of Mom's bed--my curly locks are not flattened and instead roll across my eyes as I try to keep Mom's face in sight. Laying this way--head to foot and foot to head--is what I prefer as I can be at eye level and close to Mom. It's not yet dinner time, so we have a few minutes to ourselves. Brian from King 5 is not on--it's the weekend--so I also have Mom's undivided attention. Mom's bed feels comfy, compared to all the hours I sometimes sit right here on the edge of her bed, no support for my back and neck but close to Mom....within arm reach of her cheeks, actually, in case she weeps, an event which happens often these days.

The topic of Tommy comes up because I show Mom a photo taken when she is twenty. She's leaning into the camera and has the most delightful look of intrigue and sex--her lips are closed and lipsticked and almost in a smile and her body, with it's limbs jettisoning out of the borders of the picture frame, lends intimacy and allure. My mom, the straitlaced, play-by-the-rules kind of gal, is all sex appeal. I expect Mom to tell me it's Dad taking the picture, but actually, as I find out, it's Mom's other "friend," the one she dated in high school and also while my dad was in the early years of the war. Tommy, from West Seattle like Mom and my dad, was a constant companion of Mom's. At the senior prom, Mom couldn't decide which boy's invitation to accept--Tommy's or Dad's--and so she accepts both. On the night of the prom she lets Tommy deliver her corsage, pick her up and take her to the dance. She stays a while with him--dances several dances--and then, at some pre-appointed time, she tells Tommy she isn't well and she asks to be taken home. Dad then picks her up and she spends the rest of the prom night with him. My sister-in-law and I are fascinated with this story--it brings us to tears with laughter--sometimes Mom laughs too. How this worked logistically is still a mystery to us--I mean, how did Mom keep these operations secret from each other....wouldn't people have noticed that she went with two dates....wouldn't have someone reported this to the other, currently-absent date? West Seattle is a small place. But I can see that I will never know--Mom is reluctant to talk about it.

So, when I find out it's Tommy and not my father who is rowing with Mom, I find myself in need of asking more questions. The photo is so intimate, I want to know what was between Tommy and Mom.

"Why did you stop dating Tommy?" I ask her.

Mom doesn't say anything at first....in fact the silence goes on so long I am wondering if she has slipped back into her Alzheimer's stupor of non-comprehension.

"Mom," I repeat, "Why did you and Tommy break up?"

I'm assuming there was a breakup because Mom eventually married my father, after the war. I also know that Mom didn't think Tommy had the "pzazz" that she thought she needed, which in Mom's world translated into one of two things--she was worried he might be boring and/or that maybe he didn't have the gumption to "provide" for her and a future family. But what I have never heard about is how their relationship ended. Now my father, he was a different story--a real looker (note the navy picture and the rakish grin on his lips) and full of "vim, vip and vigor." He was going places and Mom, eventually, decided to be swept along with him for the ride. In the photo of them as a very young married couple just after the war, Mom looks eternally proper (gloves and bowed head and all)--my father something less than this. My father was never proper, pulling as he did to the edges of things, always testing where one thing ends and another begins. And Mom? How did she fair with her renegade husband--might Tommy have been a more comfortable "fit"?

"Well," Mom finally begins. "Well, we were in a car, his car."

"What kind of car Mom and when was this?"

"Well...well...I really don't know."

More silence.

"What did he say to you?"

"Well...something about...you know...that he didn't think I was ever going to..."

I say nothing and wait for her to say something more. When she doesn't, I add--

"Never going to what...be serious about him?"

"Yes," she nods, a little sheepishly it seems.

"Did you ever see him again?" I ask her?

More silence and then--"No...no, I didn't"

"What do you mean 'no'?" I ask her with surprise. I'm thinking this must have been a catastrophic discussion for them to have never talked again....but Mom assures me that they never had a fight, not then and not on any other occasion. So, the hurt must have run so deep on Tommy's part, I assume, that he didn't want to see her again. And my Mom, what did she feel?

When Mom doesn't say anything more about Tommy, I switch to the other man she dated during this time--Bob. Mom has already told me something about Bob--the guy from Minnesota. He came west to the University of Washington on the US Army's ticket during 1943 and 1944. Mom dated Bob....but, according to Mom, she never considered marrying him--not really. He was just "fun to be with." When Bob proposed marriage and Mom rejected him, he left Washington and she never heard from him again. Mom refers to this as her "second" proposal, which suggests that Tommy's little talk "in his car" must have been a proposal of marriage, one that Mom similarly rejected. Three marriage proposals--astounding! But she says none of this.

All the while, Mom tells me, she is writing letters to my dad--generic letters because, as they both knew, Uncle Sam was reading every word. Sometime after the war ended and my father was discharged, Mom and my father get reacquainted. When I ask her--"How did Dad propose to you?"--she says--"I don't know...Not sure."

I can see the glint of tears forming in the lower rim of her eyes--a small crease of fluid that follows the curve of her lashes. There's something here that's bothering Mom, something more than just stories about her "beaus," as she calls them. I know its time to stop--no more questions. But really, how can anyone "not know" the events of one's own marriage proposal? But then again, this is my mom--her personal life has always been her personal life. Facts are few and far between. When Mom dies, these stories die with her. I will have to live with this. Mom has a right to her privacy.

But just when I change the topic and think to ask her about dinner--what she's ordered (pasta of some kind)--Mom starts to cry in earnest.

"My life...my life...doesn't look..."

"My life doesn't look...any...good," she sobs. 'Not good at all" Her crying is so loud that I have a hard time understanding what she's saying. Her statement is tender, vulnerable, full of grief...and I don't know what to say to her. Not sure what will calm her.

"Course your life looks good, I finally offer as reassurance. "You loved many many people...and many people have loved you." Mulu chimes in here from the other side of the room and says--"That's right, Gamoo. Think of all the people who love you." But the more that we try to talk her out of her doldrums, the louder she cries.

"You promised, Gamoo" Mulu says finally--"you promised not to cry anymore."

"I know," Mom says--I don't want to cry....this is my last cry. Really it is." And as she says this, we can see her try to turn off the faucet and halt the flood of weeping with a smile. And it's in her effort to do so that my mom says something unexpected--

"Where is Paul," my mom asks, "your father's suppose to be...helping...me."

This is the first time Mom has talked about my dad since the stroke, so his name takes me by surprise.

"What do you mean, Mom?" I ask her.

"You know...he was never here...couldn't sit still."

"What do you mean?"

Silence and then this--"We never...you know...talked..." And with this pronouncement Mom breaks into a fresh round of tears. Her eyes now are shiny red and puffed-up like a sea urchin that's been poked. She looks nothing like my mom. To myself I am thinking--how do people "not talk" after more than thirty years of marriage?

"Where are you?" she suddenly asks.

"Right here, Mom....open your eyes."

"Oh," she says, "oh...oh...there you are" as if I had magically rematerialized out of nowhere when really she'd just closed her eyes and in the "dark" had forgotten where she is and who she's with. We sit with this for a minute or two. Both of our eyes are open. None of us is saying anything. We sit this way for several minutes more until Mom's eyes close back down again, like window coverings--what we can't see can't bother us. I wonder if Mom's asleep. As I wait to find out, I notice that the sun has shifted, no longer bleeding heat through the Levelor blinds.

Just when I think she's out and I might have to leave without saying goodbye, I hear--

"Wa...wa....wa..." and then again "wa...wa....wa..."--hyperbolic wails meant to imitate herself crying just now. Mom's funny bone has returned--or as Lorna (Mom's during-the-week caregiver) refers to this--"the old laughing lady has returned."

"Just like a baby,b-a-b-y" Mom adds. "Crying just like a baby" And then she giggles and giggles some more. I am so relieved that her crying stint is over, for now, that I start to laugh too. Soon Mulu contributes her voice to our hilarity. One of the nurse's aids pokes his head into the room to check on us. All we can hear is the loud guffaw of our laughter and it's enough. I don't care what she says or doesn't, what secret she tells or what she keeps to herself. I just don't want to see her this sad any more.

Soon dinner comes--the nurse's aid brings in "Penne with Chicken and Caramelized Onions." I taste it, as always, to encourage Mom to eat. There's corn on the cob too, removed from the cob, and wild rice. Delicious! Mom's likes it to. With Mulu's help, Mom eats two-thirds of what's on the plate--this is a victory. I ask her if she's done and she says--"my baby tummy is all full full full."She says this in her small baby voice, something I've noticed her using more and more when she's in good humor. Full or not, she still has room for ice cream--always vanilla in the evening. Mulu slides spoon after spoon of it into Mom's mouth. I'm grateful for this--no matter the sugar, it's something Mom will never turn down. In Mom's precarious condition, any calories are an estimable good.

But when I get up to gather my carpet bag, empty Evian bottles and today's Seattle Times in order to leave, Mom gets tearful again. Her eyes have remained puffy from her earlier cry and, while I thought her tears had run their course, I can see new tears rivering her sheets, leaving translucent streaks in her otherwise pristine bedding; tomorrow she will be too tired for therapy, I think.

With her "good" hand she reaches towards me and whispers between sobs--

"You make me feel...you do..."

'What Mom?" I'm listening very carefully now because I don't want to miss any syllable of what she's saying. So I lean closer and closer still. Place my face so close to hers that I can see the smudges of her Revlon lipstick, how it bleeds into the accordion folds wrinkling the skin around her lips. And I can feel her breath gather on my cheeks and forehead--soft and slightly sour. It brushes there a minute before joining with the rest of the antiseptic air in her room at the Mirabella.

"Make you feel what?" I ask her again.

"Feel...like I have a family."

Her statement catches me, makes me stop thinking about other inconsequential things. The drive ahead of me, the dinner I am almost too hungry to eat, the darkness that has started descending way to early for my taste.

"Yes...I am your family," I say back to her quickly and firmly, because this is something I believe, like a religion. "And you're my family too, Mom."

She smiles at this and I reach to turn her face in my direction with the tips of my left hand, to make eye contact. I take the edge of one of her off-white sheets and wipe the inner corner of her right eye where tears have dammed up.

"It's good...good...good to have each other," she adds. And I say back to her--"Yes, lucky to have each other."

We stare at each other then, my eighty-five year old mother and her forty-nine year old daughter. And I think to myself--how long it has taken to come to this point, how long I have waited for words such as these.

"I'll never leave you," I say to her, and Mom nods "Yes" in acknowledgment.

But I know something else, as does Mom--Mom will be leaving me...and there's nothing I can do about it.

Later, driving home in my Miata, I have the driver's window rolled down all the way. The air's not cool, nor is it warm--it's just neutral as it floats free the ends of my hair, despite the barrette I have used to keep my hair in place. Strands occasionally snake around and catch on my lips, stick to my lipcolor like flypaper. I find myself still thinking about Mom's grief. What could she be so sad about? What could be so bad that it requires the pronouncement--"it doesn't look good"?

Mom is full of regret--about the decisions she made concerning my father, Tommy, Bob even...about many other things too, I suspect. And yet, is it really regret she feels? Doesn't regret require wishing things had turned out otherwise? If so, I doubt Mom wishes this--I don't think she wishes she had married Tommy or Bob. Instead, she just wants the consequences to be different, for the costs to have not been the same. She wants it all--the person she married without the people she hurt to get that. But life doesn't work that way. "My life doesn't look so good" keeps rolling through my mind, a statement full of judgment....shame even. Perhaps that's it--my mom feels shame for her life. After eighty-five years, shameful is how she sees herself.

So I wonder about my family, what other things we have allowed to shame us. We are a family of secrets. The addictions my second eldest brother faced/faces? The family-less state my oldest brother occasioned when he disappeared twenty-nine years ago? The marital dysfunction my mother worked to hide from my brothers and I (and the world at large)? The eldest son my mother knowingly pushed away? The father I did not love enough when I had the chance? "Sins," my mother would say, sins committed in our "youth." For my brothers and I, "sins" perpetrated in our twenties. All hidden in the name of shame and things we might not do again. O maybe we would? Where is the dignity in this? Where there is shame can there even be dignity? Aren't these the antithesis of each other?

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--