Mother worked from home, embroidering appliques for a nearby sweatshop. New work arrived every morning and left every night. Six days a week, each new day always the same as the last.
Late in her old age, after life had robbed her of the skill to hide her emotions, Mother admitted to me that in those days she felt unfocused, unwanted, left behind. I didn’t respond.
There were a few minutes of silence, and then she spoke through tears to tell me that Father had only married her because she had ridiculed him once at a dance.
Quickly then, the cadence of her voice changing from bitterness to scorn, she told me that in that period of her life at our first home, working in isolation while caring for me felt like a punishment which she didn’t deserve.
After holding her breath and changing her mood to reflect the hatred in her eyes, Mother admitted to me that she and Father were at their happiest before I was born.
Was it anger, rage, or pride that stopped me from crying or showing the devastation and rejection I felt? How could I not be, hearing at last the words behind the emotion that I had seen flash across her face all my life?
I got up from the table without speaking a word. I walked down the urine-scented hall, only stopping once to tell the nursing home staff that I would not be returning. I made it as far as the parking lot when pity for the old woman gained a foothold and I turned back because I understood that her mind was no longer her own.
Sitting in front of her once again, I reminded her of the times when she made sure that my shoes were clean and efficiently laced, and the times when she painstakingly arranged the curls in my hair after drenching each one in sweet violet water. Then, for a happy second, we both remembered the scent.
I chose to lie and not tell her that what I remembered the most from those days were her robotic actions and how they were lacking in warmth. Speaking those words would not have erased my newly discovered truth that her overwhelming confusion from those days had embroidered itself onto me and guided me for so much of my life.