I had no father, which sounds much more dramatic than it was. If I’d known girls whose daddies held them tight and gazed at them with so much pride it tore at the eyes, I might have thought that all girls should have such a thing. But I never knew such girls. And how can someone miss what she’s never had?
No, of this I am sure: a mother was enough.
A mother.
Like mine. One who was smart and pretty and drew horses so well-muscled and real they could gallop off the page. One who came from the state of New Hampshire, where blueberries grew in back of the house her father built and tamaracks stood in lines outside the window. New Hampshire, the granite state, whose bird was the purple finch and flower was the purple lilac and whose motto was live free or die, which is what she’d say if you asked why she made up her own rules about clothes and religion and men.
I’d ask, from time to time, why she didn’t do things the way that other mothers did.
“Why don’t you have a husband?”
“Why don’t you make regular meals?”
“Why don’t you teach me to do up my hair?”
In serious moments, I’d ask such questions, and she would listen without showing it, her small hand resting on the spine of a book. I could see by the way she squinted her eyes that she was thinking, so I’d wait until she looked up, eyebrows raised, as though surprised by my presence. As though she’d just remembered me and my questions. She’d look at me hard, and say, “Live free or die—I’m telling you girl, there’s no other way to be.”