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My dendrites were outside my skin. In a world where most successful people seem to have nerves internally or not at all, I gathered clues from my surroundings. Hypervigilantly, I gathered clues, flaring up at the sound of my mother’s voice, loud noises, sideways glances.
My mother told it like she saw it, no censor on her mouth. When she attempted diplomacy, her mouth became a tight line, the thoughts escaping through her fingertips, which drummed on whatever surface was at hand. At the time it didn’t help me to realize her personality had a more global reach than her children.
Feisty, outspoken, formidable. My brother and I agreed that formidable sounded better in French. “Helen, you do a lot with your looks for someone who’s so ugly.” Helen stood up to her: “Edith, you hurt my feelings,” then let it roll off. Why would she alienate everyone? I wondered. Only later did I think she must be sick. But she was my mother. I couldn’t sort it out or face the truth.
“You are me,” she had said. Her chance for a do-over and this time she would get it right. She was a wife of the fifties and sixties, so smart (she had a masters by nineteen), but it was a life wasted on carpools and cleaning the house, boiling Bird’s Eye frozen string beans and broiling lamb chops.
Above all, I wanted a feeling of peace, especially with my mother. In the hospital, dying of cancer, my father, cranked up in his bed wearing a crisp white T-shirt and baby blue pajama bottoms, had said, “I don’t want to leave before you and your mother work things out.” I stood by his bed, smoothing the pleats in my plaid pleated skirt. “Dad, we can’t work it out on your timetable,” I said sadly. My mother died 28 years later and still we hadn’t worked things out. Will we now that she’s gone?
Prompt: Write about someone you haven’t worked things out with.
Copyright © 2018 by Laura Deutsch
