MY MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY: SEPT. 17, 1925

Today is my mother's birthday. I have always remembered my mother's birthday. I realized this morning that I have both the first and last photographs I ever took of her. The first one is of her ironing and she told me not to take it. I was in elementary school. Third grade? Fourth?  I don't remember which. I do remember she spanked me for ignoring what she told me and snapping the picture with my Brownie Hawkeye. In another photograph from that same period, she stands in the same doorway, clearly posing for me. She is wearing a sweater and pearls. The last photograph I took of her was on the day of our final real conversation in the spring of 2003. By then her ability to speak was failing her and we were running out of things to say. She died less than three years later. The first and last photographs were painful, each in its own way.

She died April 6, 2006, when she was 80. I was born when she was 19 years old. I was more than 60 years old when she died. So, we knew each other for a long time. We had some good years together and we had some not-so-good years after that. The not-so-good years probably outnumbered the good ones. We disappointed each other, let each other down, and eventually did not really know each other. Love was part of it. She was a hard person to love because she would not allow herself to be loved. She kept those who should have been closest to her at arm's length. For much of my life, I was like her and it nearly killed me. The only reason I outlived her is that I realized I could not go on living that way. For a long time I thought I was saving myself from my mother but I wasn't. After I understood that, I finally saved myself by allowing myself to be loved and go on being loved. I was in my 40s when that happened and it has not stopped. My mother would not save herself. Even after asking for help and being offered help, she would not save herself. So, we kept our distance for the rest of her life, loving each other in the only way we knew. Well before the end we had said everything we needed to say to each other about love and disappointment and salvation. That was a couple of years before she died. The only thing left to say after that was that I loved her. And I said it as she was dying. I stood beside hospital her bed and held her hand. My sister stood on the other side of the bed, holding her other hand. We told her we loved her and that we were with her, repeating and repeating as her breathing slowed and stopped. I still miss her. I miss talking to her. Even in the not-so-good years I would always call her on her birthday.

Comments

[George]

I like the small easy chair inside the fireplace.
I'll bet that was your idea.