Happy Birthday, Ma
It's spring break, my last spring break as a student. Graduation is in two months. I will, at that time, have the degree of Master of Fine Arts conferred upon me. I came home with a boatload of work to do so that I can make it to graduation--a book to finish writing, a paper to plan for a feminist pedagogy class, a redesign of the remainder of the composition class I'm teaching.
I have other, nonacademic work to do, too. Seeds to start so that they'll be ready to plant when the ground warms and all danger of frost has passed (check). Tax forms to prepare (not yet). And a visit to my mother.
Today would have been Ma's 85th birthday. I checked the calendar more than a month ago, just as I did last year when she was still alive--to plan my visit to her. Last year, she was still alive, and I was recovering from surgery. I wasn't cleared to drive on her birthday, but Sage drove me. I was thinking earlier--what did I buy for her? And then I remembered. Books. I had stopped buying nightgowns and sweatsuits unless she specifically asked for them. Books, though, she enjoyed. When she was alone, when she could still be alone, she would perch her reading glasses on her nose (the same reading glasses she'd been wearing since the 1980s), settle into her chair, and read aloud. It kept her sharp, I told myself. Something to work her mind like the images scrolling by on the television couldn't. No way to passively read a book.
Today, I can drive, but I won't. The plan was to go and purchase an artificial flower arrangement and some accessories to make it into a birthday bouquet (something simple; something I could do in the car), go to the cemetery, which may or may not permit real flowers (I will check, but it would be silly to put them there today with more snow, more freezing weather on its way), and visit her there. Dad, too. He's there with her.
I haven't been there since the day she was buried. We've always said it that way in my family: so&so is buried in ________ Cemetery. Buried. Like treasure? Like a secret? Like a civilization and a way of life that may or may not be discovered in some future generation?
But I'm not going. I knew it as soon as my feet found the floor this morning. The pain that's been creeping into my "good" foot for days now, which may or may not be another manifestation of arthritis (which has already appeared in the ankle of that foot from where I broke it at 18; and on the instep, where I broke another bone right before Jade's first birthday; and is now throbbing at the heel, which I can't remember if I've ever injured, but it's possible). I knew it when I looked out the window and before I checked the weather report, that says more rain, which will turn to snow, and, don't you know, it's still winter. For a little while longer.
I knew it without words as the solid knot of guilt settled in my stomach. It's irrational guilt. Ma, and Dad, too--neither are there under the ground not far from the police barracks, just south of the interstate. Some symbol of them is interred there. Buried. We bury them and place a marker on top of the spot to anchor them to us, to say: They lived. Here lies a part of ourselves. Here, we can come to remember, to pay homage to our own existence. Without them, we would not be. But Ma, and Dad, too--they're not there.
As I make peace with my decision to stay at home, inside and out of the elements, to work and nurse my new pain, introduce it to all the other pains that will subsume it, rarely letting it have the spotlight of my conscious awareness, I reach for the old, pilled blue sweatshirt that somehow, though it's been washed several times since she gave it to me (She outgrew it--that's what she'd tell me, "Here, take this. I outgrew it."), still smells like her as I pull it down over my head. I could go today and visit the part of her that's buried and gone, or I could stay here, think of her, and visit with the part that still lives in me.
Happy Birthday, Ma. I have a feeling you'd get a real kick out of turning 85.
Till later...
I have other, nonacademic work to do, too. Seeds to start so that they'll be ready to plant when the ground warms and all danger of frost has passed (check). Tax forms to prepare (not yet). And a visit to my mother.
Today would have been Ma's 85th birthday. I checked the calendar more than a month ago, just as I did last year when she was still alive--to plan my visit to her. Last year, she was still alive, and I was recovering from surgery. I wasn't cleared to drive on her birthday, but Sage drove me. I was thinking earlier--what did I buy for her? And then I remembered. Books. I had stopped buying nightgowns and sweatsuits unless she specifically asked for them. Books, though, she enjoyed. When she was alone, when she could still be alone, she would perch her reading glasses on her nose (the same reading glasses she'd been wearing since the 1980s), settle into her chair, and read aloud. It kept her sharp, I told myself. Something to work her mind like the images scrolling by on the television couldn't. No way to passively read a book.
Today, I can drive, but I won't. The plan was to go and purchase an artificial flower arrangement and some accessories to make it into a birthday bouquet (something simple; something I could do in the car), go to the cemetery, which may or may not permit real flowers (I will check, but it would be silly to put them there today with more snow, more freezing weather on its way), and visit her there. Dad, too. He's there with her.
I haven't been there since the day she was buried. We've always said it that way in my family: so&so is buried in ________ Cemetery. Buried. Like treasure? Like a secret? Like a civilization and a way of life that may or may not be discovered in some future generation?
But I'm not going. I knew it as soon as my feet found the floor this morning. The pain that's been creeping into my "good" foot for days now, which may or may not be another manifestation of arthritis (which has already appeared in the ankle of that foot from where I broke it at 18; and on the instep, where I broke another bone right before Jade's first birthday; and is now throbbing at the heel, which I can't remember if I've ever injured, but it's possible). I knew it when I looked out the window and before I checked the weather report, that says more rain, which will turn to snow, and, don't you know, it's still winter. For a little while longer.
I knew it without words as the solid knot of guilt settled in my stomach. It's irrational guilt. Ma, and Dad, too--neither are there under the ground not far from the police barracks, just south of the interstate. Some symbol of them is interred there. Buried. We bury them and place a marker on top of the spot to anchor them to us, to say: They lived. Here lies a part of ourselves. Here, we can come to remember, to pay homage to our own existence. Without them, we would not be. But Ma, and Dad, too--they're not there.
As I make peace with my decision to stay at home, inside and out of the elements, to work and nurse my new pain, introduce it to all the other pains that will subsume it, rarely letting it have the spotlight of my conscious awareness, I reach for the old, pilled blue sweatshirt that somehow, though it's been washed several times since she gave it to me (She outgrew it--that's what she'd tell me, "Here, take this. I outgrew it."), still smells like her as I pull it down over my head. I could go today and visit the part of her that's buried and gone, or I could stay here, think of her, and visit with the part that still lives in me.
Happy Birthday, Ma. I have a feeling you'd get a real kick out of turning 85.
Till later...
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