As the seconds ticked up on the clock on the cold white wall we heard the seconds tick down on an unnamed, unreadable clock. I wish I’d told you I loved you more often. I wish I’d told you I believed in you, given you more confidence in yourself. You said this often over the past two decades. Since you really saw my brokenness. Or, rather, how I tried to break myself. And always, I sat mute. Wanting to say something, afraid to say it all. I wish I’d said that I never, ever doubted your love. I remember your righteous outrage when my middle school decided, without telling anyone, one afternoon of daydreaming during a standardized test was enough to reclassify me. I remember how you always encouraged my dreams, whether becoming President or building my own Six Flags in the backyard. I remember all the hugs and “I love you”s and how my heart broke when I heard you never, ever received those from Grandpa. I remember you— my 5-foot-tall, lightweight, white mom, alone with your 8-year-old son driving the church van across the tracks to pick up kids others had given up on, grandmas and grandpas on their front porches, shooing away the ne’er-do-wells (though you’d never call them that). I remember the hours, the money we really didn’t have, poured into the “behavior-disordered” middle-schoolers you adored. And I remember grown men approaching you decades later to say that they remember. The love you showed others never took away from your love for me. It completed it. Nearly. I also wish I’d said that boundless love you showed everyone else was also meant for yourself. Because I learned that my body was not my friend. That aging is bad. That fitness is a battle. There were the products and programs. Barbells, calorie logs, videotapes, step counters. Fonda, Simmons, Atkins, Ornish. Kitchen scales + tape measures. All kinds of ways to measure how we do not measure up. I can’t recall a time when you weren’t on a diet. I learned that time was an enemy. Never enough. To sit still, unless you’re praying or in a pew, means falling behind. And people suffer. I saw how you never wanted to be a burden while driving others crazy with your inability to say what you wanted to eat. “Whatever you want” is not the gift you thought it was. I saw a visiting evangelist chastise you for repeatedly refusing help when we needed it. The yoke was supposed to be easy but it sure looked like you carried the weight of the world. I wish I could have told you that the best in me comes from that lavish love you showered on everyone but yourself. I wish I could have helped you see that I learned selflessness and how to bury the self, but I also saw you rewrite Grandpa’s script, listen to the evangelist, find a therapist in your 70s and wrestle with the burdens of silence. I inherited it all. And I know now Rose is watching what I do with it.
Photo: Mom with 1-day-old Rose
If this resonates, I’d love to hear from you. A comment, a share, or even just a like goes a long way. Writing into the silence is its own practice, but knowing the work lands makes it easier to keep showing up.