Reflecting on reflecting.
I’ve started compiling my writing recently, going all the way back to my hand-written journals from 1995. I’ve recorded my thoughts in some form since then—lots of journals, blogs, poetry, essays. It is a mind-boggling amount of content. I know there is something to do with it but I haven’t figured out what yet.
I only realized that I have 30 years of non-stop written material pretty recently—I knew it abstractly of course, but there hadn’t been enough distance (or therapy) to really revisit holistically without getting lost in any one period.
I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately, and this was a new experience—living long enough that I can now mentally anthologize my life, find recurring themes, tie together narratives, look back and reflect on both my fundamental sameness and forever-changed-ness.
On Mother’s Day in 2008, I was 23. Writing about my mom now at 39 makes me self-conscious. My loss was so long ago and peers around me are starting to lose parents with more regularity. In recent years, it’s actually deepened my loneliness on the issue—to lose a parent as a child or young adult craters your whole life in a way that just can’t be compared to later-life loss. I’m also not a mother. So there’s a selfishness I feel when centering my grief that wasn’t present in my 20s.
When I was 23, I smeared my grief everywhere. In rereading this from 16 years ago, I can still remember how it all poured out of me. I wasn’t writing as a craft; it was a necessity. And it was incredibly vulnerable to share this live-processing, but I did. I needed to be heard. Everything was messy, and it felt freeing to say so.
Now it’s less of a need to be heard and more of a need to turn 30 years of raw personal material into something true and universal, so as to continue to connect. Since connection is pretty much the meaning of life or whatever. Reading this back, I have enough distance from the grief to know that it’s actually a pretty fascinating little look into my brain prefrontal-cortex-maturation, a vignette in which I talk to myself through a mother mirage.* Enjoy!**
* Mirage is an optical phenomenon caused by the total internal reflection of light from distant objects. When light passes from cold air (denser) to hot air (rarer), it bends away from the normal and undergoes total internal reflection, thus causes an illusion to the observer that, light is coming from the ground. [source]
** I had to end maaaany copywriting projects at FreshDirect and Freshly with “enjoy” so this is like an inside joke with myself.
SATURDAY, MAY 10, 2008
Ta-da! Je suis folle…
Linda: Hi. Happy Mother’s Day, ma. A little early. I guess. Just thought I’d call.
Mom: Oh, hi. Thanks, Lin. I thought I was dead, though.
Linda: Well, you are. I mean, yes, of course, but… Are you busy or something? You sound busy.
Mom: No, no, not busy. Not at all. A lot of free time on my hands. You know how it goes.
L: No, not actually. Not yet anyway. But I’m sure you’re right. So… how have you been?
M: Like I said, free time. Time to really think. How about you? How is New York? That’s where you live, right?
L: Yes, yes. Brooklyn. Um, it’s good. As good as it can be right now. Listen, I miss you. Do you think you could make an effort to visit me or something? It’s been, what, 10 years?
M: Oh… I don’t know, Lin. If I have… Well, we do a lot of crafts here. Sunday we’re making dreamcatchers out of yarn and feathers. Remember those? I think you made one when you went to girl scout camp.
L: Oh, right. Well, that’s crafty. You have lots of friends then? Lots of dead friends for crafting fun or…?
M: Yes, yes. I’ve met many lovely people. We all talk about our kids, complain about our old jobs, but mostly we occupy our time with other things.
L: That’s great, mom. No, really. I’d hate to think of you all alone out there! But… I just…it would be really great if you could just show up for this Sunday.
M: I’ll make a real effort. A reeeal effort. Is there something you need from me?
L: No, it’s just that everything is particularly insufferable this year. All these commercials and advertisements! And your 10-year just passed and everyone has forgotten you. And people… A coworker asked another girl if she had gotten a Mother’s Day card and I was standing right there and… well, she purposely didn’t ask me as if to exclude me. And when she saw me writing out cards the next day, she was all, “Um who are those for…?” and she made me feel like not having a mom is an illness. Wouldn’t it stick it to her if I could tell her you showed up for brunch or something this weekend?
M: Oh, is that all? Lin, you can’t… you can’t just do that. You can’t let little things bother you. You’ve heard a lot worse, right? About me? About me being gone, right?
L: Well, yeah, you should know that.
M: OK so. You just keep living your life. You can’t call me here every time someone is ignorant or insensitive.
L: Why not? All my other friends get to call their moms whenever they’d like.
M: You know this is different. You can’t dwell like this. Jealousy can kill you.
L: I’m not dwelling! It was brunch—just a quiet little Sunday. It seemed like a fair thing to ask.
M: It’s not fair to me. I can’t get away right now. Just like you can’t visit me, see?
L: I know. The mom I knew would make an effort, though, would go out of her way to be with me.
M: I’m not the mom you know anymore. I wish I was but I’m only half-mom, and half remnants of Janis. I’m mixed with grains of memories and I’m built on shadows of dreams, built haphazardly out of vague notions about who you thought I was, who I never could be for you.
L: It’s just not fair, mom. Be whole again.
M: You’re acting like a child.
L: I am a child. I am 13 and I am yours. It’s the books and the movies and the references and the insensitivity. It’s the anger and the loss and the lack of words to express You. You with a capital Y. How do I know where to go? I just need this one day. In one day, we can, we can, we can cover everything. All. Everything I’ve wondered and will ever wonder.
M: This will make you happy?
L: No. But it’s a start. A start… at chipping away at the lonely.
M: You’re not lonely because you lost me, Lin. You’re lonely because you lose everyone before you’ve even lost them. Nowhere can ever be as lonely as this home inside your head that you’ve made for yourself.
L: What, so you know now? You’ve been gone for 10 years and you think you can just know me again?
M: No one will ever know you like I know you.
L: Knew me. You no longer exist. You’re nothing. Bones underground, holding hands with a dead brother and father. You’re flowers on a stone in a plot near the highway.
M: That hurt me.
L: You don’t have feelings.
M: Well, you have too many!
L: Let’s not… let’s not do this. You’re dead and I’m a trash can filled with bad thoughts like broken bottles. We haven’t gotten anywhere.
M: But you feel a little better, no?
L: Not yet, no. Talking to a figment of my imagination doesn’t exactly prove my recovery, mom.
M: All this anger.
L: I was angry before you died too. So were you. You ate your anger and filled up, and exploded. I won’t do that.
M: Good, don’t. Isn’t that the point? Didn’t I die so that you could live a better life?
L: God, I hope you don’t really believe that. I can’t think stuff like that. Don’t let me. It’ll choke me while I’m sleeping. Besides, it’s not exactly like this has been easy for me. Yeah, you’re dead, but I suffered a lot too.
M: I know you did, but please don’t be selfish, or worse—a martyr. It doesn’t look good.
L: I wonder if we’d actually talk like this. If you’d have the words. Do you think we’d be close?
M: Of course. Of course. We… we would’ve been something. I needed you like you needed me. We would’ve been spectacular.
L: Don’t say it. I can’t hear this. It hurts too much. I have to go.
M: Wait—before you go. The real me…she isn’t pieces of your sub-conscious and leftover shards of pain. I promise that I would say all the right things, all the things you’d want to hear. I promise I’d heal you if I could. The real me.
L: Oh, you’re just saying that.
M: No, no. It’s true. See tonight wasn’t as lonely as the others, right?
L: I talked to my dead mother. But yes, you’re right… not as lonely. Even with the rain and quiet noise of an empty apartment. But we both need to go. Save me a dreamcatcher. You know, for whenever.
M: I will. I’ll hang it above the bed where you’ll sleep because even we have nightmares. I love you.
L: Happy Mother’s Day.
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