for my Mother.
My mother wanted things.
She wanted a house with white pillars. She wanted room for a garden and a yard big enough for two dogs, maybe three, but big dogs, not small ones that always bark. She wanted sundresses, the kind with tiny yellow daisies and flowy skirts, and white sandals to go with them. She wanted suburban sunsets that she could watch from the lanai with a mason jar full of sangria. She wanted her small feet propped up on a lawn chair and her toes painted red. She wanted lazy winter evenings and hot summer nights. She wanted the sound of crickets at dusk. She wanted mourning doves.
She wanted early retirement and a beach house down south. She wanted sparkling granite countertops and shiny kitchen supplies. She wanted to know how to use the kitchen supplies. She wanted new hardcover books and hot tea. She wanted an SUV with that new car smell. She wanted a gym membership, and pink Nikes to go with it. She wanted Coach purses and pantsuits and Chanel no. 5. She wanted slippers and silk robes and pretty bras. She wanted to like what she saw in the mirror.
My mother wanted to be good enough. She wanted someone to tell her she was good enough and she wanted him to mean it. She wanted to find someone to love and not have to wonder if there was anyone better. Above all, she wanted to feel safe. She wanted to run away and keep running. She wanted to find a place meant for her, a place where nothing bad would ever find her. She wanted to know she was exactly where she was supposed to be. She wanted hope for the future and nostalgia for the past. She wanted God to speak to her. She tried to hear Him in the wind.
Instead, she got a dusty apartment with a dirty carpet and a stove from the ‘70s. She got a parking lot instead of a driveway and a rule prohibiting dogs. She got secondhand jeans and cheap cotton underwear and sunsets she couldn’t see from her side of town. She got no lawn for a lawn chair and no time to paint her toes. She got bitter winters and sweltering summers, an expensive furnace, and a broken air conditioner. She got mosquitos at dusk. She got crows and crow’s feet.
She got grocery store wine and thin paper plates. She got unemployment and sickly parents to take care of. She had no one to help her, no shoulder to cry on. She got a feeling of dread in the organic aisle when she knew she couldn’t afford it. She got a gym that was too far away and no motivation to go to it. She got an expanding waistline. She got a fourteen-year-old car and expensive insurance. She got sweatpants with holes and old sneakers that didn’t fit right. She got books from the library and an overdue fine. She got stacks of bills and afternoons spent praying on the floor of her closet, waiting for better days to come.
My mother didn’t feel good enough. She had no one to have and to hold, in sickness or in health. She got single parenthood and no child support, loneliness and no one but a baby to cure it. She got raising a child that would eventually leave, because that was her job, to raise it until it could go on and do what she prayed would be great things. She had the fear of the inevitable. She had no one to make her feel safe. She had anxiety and nerves. She had sacrificing her own happiness to maintain everyone else’s. She had isolation and yearning for things to change. She had no money to run away and she had nowhere to run to. She dreaded the future and resented the past. She had silence as an answer from the Lord. He had spoken to her once, many years before, but she couldn’t hear him anymore. He wasn’t speaking loud enough.