i do not know my mothers face,
a rhinoplasty took its place.
i looked like you
(the one she used to show,
it's not the one
i'm used to, though.)
I wonder sometimes if my mother was there when I first noticed my own reflection, in a spoon or a mirror or something, but then again, of course she was -- it was her. Now, of course, I’m other things too -- but none really that I like so much, or at least that I take any pride in. The parts of me that aren’t her are the ones I think disappoint her. In the shadow of her sacrifices, I am aware I’ve come to this world on borrowed time, as I suppose we all do. I come to silly ideas like that while I attend this school, on borrowed money.
And a poem I once read my father wrote
It was in some old files written on the top hand corner
Ashes I can't sweep up.
Oh well. He was not very kind.
My mother, who I have this first image of standing over my crib --- the crib slats are in the periphery -- and she is saying happy birthday.
When I was two she brought a zebra to the house and that must have been very expensive. Perhaps she thought about the zebra in 2008, when the house was in question.
My mother is strange and loves TJ Maxx and I can see her at the kitchen table using a thumbtack to push the plastic T part of a tag without breaking so she can reattach it later.
She always sits at that kitchen table and writes. She is undoubtedly sitting there anytime I call. When I ask how she’s doing, she responds with plots, notes, and deadlines. I hope this is not all she thinks of, but I know it’s probably the best version.
I wish there was a word, not atheist, not agnostic, that means ‘to believe in the cosmic entanglement one shares with their mother’.
Nonetheless, my parents are crazy, their family’s odd only in the conventional American way. I see why they both fled, and wonder if I have the impulse to do the same. My father has returned now to the town he grew up in, and going there is terrifying, partially for the material (Trump flags, the oppressively depressing industrial shell, the generally inedible food, the presence of my very cunty stepmother), but mostly for the way it feels like an omen. Going to Wisconsin is like living a terrible dream of the future, not because I will ever live there, but because a fixation on regret is a cyclical family curse of mine. The threat is what might happen if my life is one day punctuated by something no more important than weekly Friday Fish Fry, disguised in some modular black coat or behind some dwelling in Brooklyn.
My parents as a unit are not role models, and they love to tell you that. They do many silly and/or unfair things, but so do all parents, and if anything can be gleaned from the observation of regrets, it is always to forgive. Many of my friends, or at least peers, operate on a cultural paradox -- to blame our parents for our every shortcoming and yet vehemently believe any therapist or Instagram graphic which claims “You are doing the best you can.” I can’t vouch for that of anytone, even myself, but I am positive that the only parenting “philosophy” (what a terrible phrase) was to try to form me into a person who did not repeat their mistakes. As for everything else, I believe a lot was lost in translation somewhere in the Ralphs parking lot where they used to trade me off.
This is my favorite metaphor -- my father would arrive, go inside, and leave me in the car. My mother would wait until he was gone, collect me, and we would leave. For the first few moments we would stay quiet, until the car had picked up some momentum, and then I would say something like hi mama. And the way I can still hear it, her voice sort of breaks, and she says Hi moo!!!, with the bravado of an actress entering stage.