because that’s how my mom taught me

A day late for Mother’s Day, but I thought I’d share anyway because it is one of my favorites. In honor of my truly exceptional mother, here are words from the very talented poet and founder of Project V.O.I.C.E., Sarah Kay:

If I should have a daughter…

“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.

And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”

But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it.

I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.

You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.

And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

“Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”

Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.

Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.”

for the children, they mark, and the children, they know

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Sometimes she smiles in her sleep. The corners of her mouth turn up at the ends and the edges of her eyes crinkle in that familiar way. Like she has a secret that none of us will ever know. The hospital room is dark, only illuminated by the soft yellow light from the streetlights beaming through the open blinds and by the small sliver of fluorescent light creeping in beneath the closed door. It’s quiet but not really quiet at all. Nurses talk in the hallway, carts are rolled up and down the floor. The IV clicks as it dispenses liquid healing – or at least liquid numbing – and there is a constant beeping from some hidden machine that serves as a constant reminder of where we are.

It’s raining and for now we’re alone in the white tile room. It’s quiet and impossibly lonely, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve been here before, done all of this before, but somehow it is different this time, harder and more painful because it is her. And she is everything.

Morning light streams in through the window and I sit Indian-style on her hospital bed. Not because the hospital allows it, but because my mother insisted and in my world, Mom’s rules are the only rules. I’ve been living by them for the past twenty seven years and they’ve yet to steer me wrong. Well, I suppose there was that one time … but no matter. When she patted the space next to her and told me to sit with her a while, I didn’t hesitate a breath.

I feed her ice chips because she turns her nose up at the Jello and flat out refuses the beef broth. She hums “King of the Road” for an unknown reason and fusses with her blankets while she gets up the nerve to ask me for answers to questions her pain-medicine-fogged brain has forgotten since the doctor sat with us a few hours earlier.

“I’ll lose my hair.”

“We’ll get you new hair. Prettier hair.”

“I don’t want to be sick.”

“You’re only sick if you say it out loud.”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

“Do we? I think it’s pretty freaking true.”

“Don’t curse, Blair.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It isn’t ladylike.”

“I know.”

“Oh, God, I’m my mother.”

I smile. And quietly hope that I am mine.

At home, Brian makes dinner. Only high-fiber, soft foods. And we both sit down at the table with her and eat it without complaint. The back door sits open because Mom is hot, and Brian and I wrap up in her over-sized sweaters and throw blankets across our laps. The phone rings off the hook. Well wishers bring food and cards and flowers. Smiling and graciousness are exhausting. Brian says it first, what we’ve both been thinking.

“This is going to suck, isn’t it?”

Always eloquent.

“Probably. For a while.”

“But then she’ll get better.”

“Then she’ll get better.”

It’s a statement. There’s no room for question. Because neither of us is willing to acknowledge any other possibility. Neither of us will tolerate the option of a world without Mom’s rules.

We sit curled up on the couch – all three of us squished together, Mom in the middle – as Brian reads aloud from a book we’ve both recently finished. It’s funny and we all laugh and then we get in trouble for laughing because laughing hurts. The book is cast aside, we eat banana pudding and talk about growing up. We make a list of ten reasons why our childhood was stranger than anyone else’s. (One of which is because Brian and I won a sack-the-pig contest one year for being the fastest pair to catch a pig, throw it in a burlap sack and drag it over a makeshift finish line. All for no prize money. Not even a blue ribbon.) It’s funny and we all laugh and then we get in trouble for laughing because laughing hurts.

Mom wants a milkshake, so we drive across town for one. Mom is desperate for a Diet Coke, so we make a trip to the grocery. We bide our time – waiting for the pain to stop, waiting for the fear to set in, waiting for the tears, waiting for everything to fall apart, waiting for her to get better. Because all of those things are inevitable. Of the few things we know, we know that much for sure. We wait for answers that might never come. We wait for her to ask for something else, anything to feel like we’re helping, like we’re fixing what’s broken.

She sleeps between us on the couch and we lay watching her as Johnny Cash sings gospel music in the background. We don’t know what we’re waiting for. But we know we’re waiting, will wait, for as long as it takes. Because it is her. And she is everything.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

and i’d like to think i could cheat it all, to make up for the times i’ve been cheated on

My finger traces circles around the rim of the wine glass. Around and around. Catching on a slight dip—a barely-there imperfection—on the inside of the lip. It isn’t a chip. Not a result of over use or lack of care, just a slightly wrong move by the glass’s creator. My mother and I bought these wine glasses at the Blenko Glass Company in West Virginia. We used to stop there every year on our way to the beach, family vacation for Mom, Brian and me. We’d take the short detour and stand for hours, watching the workers craft glasses and vases and hurricanes and even tiny Hershey-Kiss-shaped glass drops. I used to want to be a glass blower, creating masterpieces from liquid and fire. It looked like magic.

My mom always told me I’d make a fine glass blower. She said I could make beautiful magic art.

Around and around.

The half-empty wine bottle sits just within arm’s reach. The dryer is humming in the background, Elliott shouts at me from bed to check the locks on the doors. My hair falls in wet tangles down my back. My throat grows tighter with each breath.

Around and around.

I’m not using the correct wine glass for a Burgundy. I’m not even sure this is a red wine glass. It tastes the same either way. I sign my name next to the neon orange flag, then turn to the next page and sign again. I remember my mother doing this for her mother. Only when my mother did it, she had a pair of kids and three decades more life experience. Top off the glass, turn the page, sign again.

Around and around.

An executor of her will. In charge of her medical decisions should she not be able to make them for herself. I set the wine bottle down on a proof copy of my wedding invitation, leaving a wet red ring on the paper. Wedding. Cancer. Words are just words in another person’s life until they’re bottles of wine and legal documents in your own. Endometrial. Uterine. Stage 2. Surgery. Radiation. Words and signatures and what if’s and next steps and ‘will I have to wear a wig at your wedding, Blair? Will you go shopping for one with me if my hair begins to fall out?’

Yes, Elliott, buy hamburger meat, we can make spaghetti sauce. No, Brian, don’t come home, there’s just a week until your college graduation, and we’re fine here.

The dryer hums, Elliott snores, the phone rings. I listen to Brian’s rage from the eye of my own storm. His ‘Why her?’ seems beside the point, and I say so. I can feel how much he loves her and in this quiet moment on this late night I think maybe if he can just hold on to her like this, he’ll keep her from falling off the earth. And maybe he will.

The bottle of wine is empty, Brian has cried himself to sleep and I can hear his ragged breaths on the other end of the line. And a brother and sister who never lie to each other now have the Mt. Everest of lies towering between them: “Everything will be fine, I promise. We have nothing to be scared of,” I said to him. “No. I’m not worried. Yes, I promise.”

Around and around. An empty glass now.

My head aches and my throat burns, but I don’t cry. Not a single tear. I can feel them, they’re built up behind my eyes and pushed up against my chest. My fear is under my skin, between my toes, in my hair. It’s there when I go to sleep. It’s waiting for me when I wake up. It’s only absent in between because I’m too numb in the latest hours of the night—too exhausted from fighting exhaustion.

And it’s only now, in these moments at the bottom of the wine bottle, in the seconds just before sleep takes over that I give into my most selfish thoughts: Let it be anyone but her. Not the single pure creature in this world. The only person who has never once let me down, who has never made a single decision without me in mind, who I call for everything always. Let us argue over colors and flower arrangements and tattoos and morals. Let me fight it for years only to become just like her. Let me wish it on someone else. I’ll pay for that sin later. Yes, I promise.

Around and around, catching my finger on that dip at every pass. A slightly wrong move by the glass’s creator. My mom always told me I’d make a fine glass blower.

if people were rain, i was drizzle and she was a hurricane

“Sometimes you’re just too charming for your own good,” my mother says, smiling at me affectionately as she scoots her chair around the table so she can sit in the late afternoon sun. “You get that from your father.”

I just grin and wink at her, leaning back in my chair and dropping my sunglasses on my face before scanning the menu.

“You get that wink from him too.”

She thinks I charmed the manager at one of our favorite restaurants into opening the patio – which was ridiculously closed on a sunny, warm afternoon in April – but really all I did was smile and ask very politely. And no matter how much she may scoff at my patio-opening abilities, she’s the one who wanted to sit out here. “It’s such a lovely day,” she said when we arrived, “I wish we could eat our lunch on the patio.”

My mother knows my soft spots – she put them there, after all.

“What can I get for you ladies?” the server appears out of no where and I listen to my mom order before I place mine.

“I’d like a piece of black-bottom banana pie.”

“Blair, for lunch?” my mother scolds.

I look at my mother and then back at the waitress. “Yep, pie for lunch. Good pie, too. It’s my birthday.”

I’ve been pulling the ‘it’s my birthday’ card for about three weeks now. (While most people are OK with just a day or a weekend, I like to stretch my birthdays out as long as possible  … regardless of my age.) And for three weeks, every person around me when I use this excuse rolls their eyes and makes some sort of under-the-breath comment that it isn’t really my birthday.

Elliott put up with it for about eight days before announcing he was ready to call a moratorium on the whole month of April. My dad tried to tell me that “birthdays between 25 and 30 don’t really matter. You have to wait for the big birthdays now – the ones that end in zeros.” My sister has been wishing me a Happy 25th birthday all week. I’m not, in fact, turning 25.

So as the birthday excuse falls from my lips, I wait for the inevitable grumbles that will follow. But I’ve momentarily forgotten my present company. My mother simply smiles at me and turns back to our waitress. “The birthday girl wants pie.”

My mother has always been big on birthdays. When my younger brother and I were kids, birthdays meant elaborate parties involving clowns and magicians, decorations and multiple cakes. As we got older birthdays translated into long-weekend trips, and even now when neither of us live at home, birthdays mean piles and piles of gifts, birthday lunches and dinners, and general over-indulgences. The fact that I am now officially in my late 20s is of no matter to my mother. She spoils me just the same.

Last year, I celebrated my birthday with a rare occurrence in my adult life: dinner with both of my parents at the same time. At some point during the meal my dad was laughing at my mother’s antics as she pulled out gift after gift and so he asked her, “For goodness sakes, she’s an adult. Why do you continue to carry on like this for her birthdays?”

Mom’s answer was immediate and straightforward. She smiled at my father and then ran her hand down my long ponytail. “Because she hung the stars in the sky. And because she lets me. Why would I give up time and attention with my only daughter when it only gets more rare as she grows up.”

I get a lot of things from my father. My mother says that given any situation, I can charm my way into an ocean view room. She says I’m funny like he is; she says I have his smile. Mom says I have my father’s ability to see the positive in most every situation and his capacity to weather even the strongest of storms. She also usually mumbles something about me inheriting his short temper.

And all of that may be true, depending on the day.

But I think I have my mother’s smile. I have her sense of humor and her gift for seeing the good in people. My mother taught me the importance of reading and writing and sharing stories with people. She used to say that no matter how big the dream, it never had to stay just a dream. My mom taught me manners and kindness, and that’s what usually gets me what I want – like patio tables on beautiful April afternoons – not charm. Mom showed me how to hang stars. I have my mom’s ability to be quiet and alone – two things that terrify most people and two things that are rapidly disappearing in our world. Things become clearer when outside noise is hushed. You see yourself clearer when you are on your own.

She steals bites of my pie, and when we get home, there is a pile of presents waiting for me. Mom never disappoints.

starry

french fried

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