Clear the Air
About a month after that visit to Condon, I told Bill I wanted to visit again.
As with many kinds of grief, I looked for the thing that would take me back to before the loss had begun. Even though the wildness of my feelings had begun to settle, the hooves of Mom’s words kept kicking at me. Disappointed. Lonely. Bitter. These words knocked loose my sense of purpose and direction and jolted the confidence I’d had in my relationship with Bill.
I wanted Mom to make it better.
Over the weekend with my family, I waited until late on Saturday night, after dinner and after my brothers and sisters and their sleepy kids had gone home. Waited until Dad and Bill had gone to bed.
Once again, Mom and I were alone in the family room, TV turned down low. She hovered a pencil over a crossword puzzle. I sat on the sofa doing nothing more than trying to find the right words to begin.
My family didn’t admit when we were hurt. We didn’t let go of a hurt by talking about it to the one who let loose the arrow. Talking might make everything worse. I didn’t want to hurt Mom by telling her she had hurt me. And I didn’t want that hurt turned back on me.
She tilted her head to the paper, fitting letters into squares.
My beating heart that had once beat inside her.
I took a breath. “Mom,” I said.
“Hmmm?” She penciled another letter on the page.
“You know last time we were here?”
“Uh-huh.” The light of the lamp made a shiny gold circle on her dark hair.
“What you said about me not having children?”
She looked up, pencil above gridded letters. “What did I say?”
How could she forget? How could she not have felt tangled up in the mess I’d been carrying for the last month?
“You said you were worried.” The words were shaky in me. “That I’d end up being a bitter, lonely old woman.”
She widened her eyes. Surprised. “Oh,” she said. Her eyes changed to remembering. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
I started to cry.
She put the paper and pencil on the table.
“I felt really bad about it,” I said. “I’m happy with Bill. We’re not having kids. I didn’t decide that randomly.”
“Oh, Jackie.” Her voice wavered. “I didn’t mean.” Soft. Careful.
“I want you to be proud of me.” I said I’d followed her push, gone to college, gotten a degree. That maybe I’d had some wrong starts, but I had a good career. Bill was the right man for me.
I wanted her to say she saw this. To take back her hurtful words. I wanted what I’d always wanted from her. For her to approve of me.
“I am proud of you.” She sat up straighter. “We’re both proud of you. For all that. College. Work.” She leaned forward. “But more than that. Who you are. What you do for our family. You bring us together. Bill too. I can tell how happy you are with him.”
“I’ve felt . . .” A careful search for the right word. “I don’t know. Mad. I guess. And hurt.”
My words made her cry. They made me cry.
“I only meant I’ll miss having more grandkids,” she said. “And being a mother has been my biggest joy.” She went on fast, like she was trying to reach me, to give me what I needed. “But that doesn’t mean your life isn’t wonderful. That I don’t think it is. You’re doing things I never will.”
She wiped her eyes, her nose. We looked at each other. I still sat on the sofa and she still sat in her chair, but the distance between us had narrowed.
Not gone, just less.
She couldn’t take her words back, even if she tried. I’d already absorbed them into me. The childfree life I’d been so sure of had taken a wound, and I would never be so sure again.
I didn’t tell her this. She might use it as proof of her rightness. She might worry about my happiness, the thing a mother most wants for her girl. That worry might lead her to open the wound even more.
I thanked her for listening. I told her I loved her. Again I was aware of my heart beating as she went back to her crossword and I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
She had taken a wound too. She’d had other yearnings: for college or art or medicine, but she came from a generation that hardly gave her any choice at all.
A child living the kind of life the parent chose is a validation of that life. Me having a child would have been a validation of the wild and messy years Mom had gone through raising us five kids.
I’d given her plenty of reasons to worry in the years from my teens to my early twenties. Since then, I’d been working to prove to her that all that hard work as a mother, and all my exploring as a teenager, had been worth it. Me having a child would be the kind of balancing that is important between mothers and daughters.