My Mother's Eyes

That's my mother in the top third of the picture, I'd guess at about 15 years old. She was a natural beauty, and I think my older daughter looks a lot like her.

My mother would have turned 60 this past Monday. I say "would have" because she died at 50, back in 2001. While others were enjoying MLK Day in their own good ways, I was thinking a lot about "Mama."

Mid-afternoon I picked up the phone and called someone who knew her long before I did: her mother. Like others her age, Grandma rambles and her memories are sometimes disjointed. We talked for more than half an hour, and about half way through I asked, "Grandma, wouldn't today have been Mama's birthday?"

"Well, yes," she said like someone who'd been reminded they ought to turn the tea kettle off before the house burns down. She got silent for a moment and I fought the urge to fill the void. When she finally spoke it was like someone gathering items from around the house to be put away at the end of the day.

"It's the worst thing in the world to bury your child. God didn't intend it that way. God wants us to be buried by our children." The words were smooth, like some worry stone you've been carrying in your pocket for a very long time, the kind you rub on when you need to fret. Clearly, she'd been rubbing on this idea for a long time, turning it over and over and over in her mind.

She put them in the air with her Carolina drawl, but those worry stone words were heavy and they thudded right through the phone. They just sat out there between us, there on the ground like something simple and obvious. LIke "Look at that tire, it's flat." Or, "I think the chicken's done, let's eat." The words are true, but they didn't really reveal any great truth.

"Yeah," I said softly. I didn't want to stop her from talking because I wanted her to say more. I wanted her to tell me some wonderful memory about my Mama as a child. Like maybe how she was really good at her times tables when she was only 7, or that her hair was thick and dark the day she was born.

Nothing followed.

So I filled the silence with another "yeah," my voice trailing off.

Maybe it's senility, maybe it's her meds for depression, or maybe she just can't go there. Or doesn't want to. Either way, I figure she's had a pretty hard life and nobody should push her into remembering things she doesn't want to deal with.

Before too many more milliseconds, she moved on to talk about my sister. She has three stories about my sister. They're pretty funny stories, but I've heard them all before. Every time I call her, in fact. Along with the "have you heard from your sister?" questions. I artfully dodge them, in the same way she doesn't talk about my mom. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

So I contemplated my mom on Monday with my own memories.

Don't feel sorry for me, though. I'm a realistic person with an honest memory about who she was. She had her fair share of problems, and they got carried into all her relationships in one twisted way or another. One of her problems was chronic pain. She took a lot of prescription meds for that. Some of them weren't hers.

Another problem was some form of mental illness that, to my knowledge, never got accurately diagnosed. If I was the speculating type, I'd tell you she could have been bipolar or maybe had borderline personality disorder. Who knows? It's been almost ten years after her death, why worry about it? Maybe I worry about because some days I wonder if I'm on a manic high or a depressive low. Perhaps you've been there, wondering if you're just a little "too creative" or your thinking has become too expansive. Such speculation about my own mental health doesn't seem to be very healthy, however, so I try not to linger there any longer than necessary. And remembering all her faults doesn't much help me these days.

Instead, I've tried to draw some good from her life. She did, after all, love my father, carry me in her womb, bear me into the world, and nurture me the best she could. It wasn't always great, but between my dad, God, and plenty of other good people, I've always had more than I needed of everything important. My mama gave me some great things and not all of them were what you'd call grace gifts.

• I remember that she made sure I got piano lessons and a love for music. I hated it when she made me practice, but now I'm glad she did.
• She took me to see Alabama, my first concert of any kind. And Charlie Daniels opened for them.
• She took me to see all my grandparents and family, and to my knowledge never did anything to come between me and her in-laws.
• She made me pick peas in the garden in the middle of the hot humid North Carolina summer.
• I saw her start a fight with her brother and a sister by clocking them with rotten tomatoes when no one else was looking.
• Her Sunday roast could have been a lethal weapon, but I'd pay a pretty penny for some of her country style steak.
• Our home was always clean (maybe to a fault), the beds were always made, the laundry was always done, and there was dinner almost every night. Some of those dinners were edible.
• She had a very green thumb, and I wish I'd have paid closer attention to how she did that.
• It took her a while to love Traci, but from their first breath she loved my kids fiercely and tenderly, and she made sure there was always money there for dance lessons and t-ball uniforms during the lean years of our marriage.

There's more I could say, but I suppose this is enough for public consumption. Cecilia Gail Bass Long was a simple person who came of age in a complicated world. She loved well, but she was also "mean as a striped snake." She could rant and rave like a pro. Not every memory of her is good. In fact, it's taken ten years of her being dead to say that I remember more good things than bad things, so maybe my memory isn't as honest as I've led you to believe. But here's the take home message for me: I can live in the past and be forever and continuously bruised by the hurt she brought, or I can live with an eye toward the future and count all that's behind as water under the bridge. After all, how long does a person have to be dead before you stop blaming them for your problems? The best I can do is take responsibility for me.

Perhaps that's the best gift of all.