I am just sitting here wondering about my life at this juncture and the details which define it. When did my life slide from the endless combinations on the color wheel to a palette of monochromatic tones?
It wasn't' planned that way. I've been reading my mother's diaries and her descriptions of me, spanning 31 years of our journey, were never neutral. She didn't leave out any details and I'm embarrassed to read what she really thought. Who was I then? Who am I now?
It's all there in black and white and occasionally red and white (on the occasion of Christmas, when using a red ink pen was her tradition). I've just started this review and completed three and one-half years, not in chronological order, but rather gathering volumes from the peanut packed box my brother sent me two years ago. There's really no order, I suppose my father packed them away sometime between 1988 and 2003 after she died and he remarried.
Anyone who knows me now would wonder why I haven't organized the books in some logical timeline reference. Don't know really, maybe I have decided to allow the universe to determine what I read and when. There must be some point to it, I don't believe in chance. So on I go, sweeping away the styrofoam peanuts and old newspaper liners to rediscover me in layers.
I'm grateful for my second chance. It is really because now I understand what events formed our relationship. I understand the circumstances which formed her opinions of me. Should I have had this insight when she was living, I'd be a far different woman now. Certainly, I would have learned empathy at an earlier age.
All the colorful, descriptive, accurate accountings of half of my life are now in my possession. I am discovering my truth through the eyes of the one person I didn't get to know. Such a loss.
The pages flow in a poignant pattern of facts and emotional upheaval. She was really not well prepared for the maternal role which was not entirely her decision. She was barren due to a major surgery which weakened her back muscles from hip to shoulder. My dad, having come from a large family of 6, wanted to carry on the family name. My cousins, notwithstanding, apparently were not doing a good job of preserving the name, so as the youngest of 4 to marry, he took on the challenge.
My brother and I were adopted, three years nine months apart and from different states. Mom was raised by a single parent without the benefit of siblings. She must have been overwhelmed when I came along.
So the years came and went, page by page. Scattered recipes, poems, and obscure unidentifiable newspaper clippings are among the diary entries. The address section changes annually and I don't remember the names, but it wasn't my diary.
Some of her memories are the same as mine, exactly the same down to the description of what I wore on what occasion and lists of gifts received for every birthday, holiday, commencement, etc. Funny, how those details are carbon copies. But then again, they were happy times.
The entries, I don't want to read, but are drawn to, are those which reveal the darker side of who she was and how hard she tried to cope. I am finding that she was ill for many, many years before the cancers appeared. She struggled to be that perfect faculty wife for my dad. They were always attending conferences, at least he was and she had frequent opportunities to travel with him. Back then, a wife on the arm did much for a man's chances of success in the corporate world.
I am constantly surprised with each turn of the page as to how she remembered to include such details as my lessons, temperature, and duration of fevers when I was sick, cost of my braces and payment schedule, names and addresses of all my friends and lovers, gifts that I gave her and telephone calls she eavesdropped. It's all there; part journalistic and part confessional.
The written words are very colorful, but then she had a fine arts background so details consumed her. They were prominent in her wardrobe and her interior decorating, her Christmas cookies and her 700 plus elephant collection. As room mother, her abilities to throw together classroom parties were without rival and she was a very popular volunteer in all things I was involved in.
My life was perfect. My life was a prism which reflected who she wanted me to be. She did pretty well and then she died. She died weeks before my wedding. We planned it, together, from her hospice bed.
And that was the last chapter, I took over my life without her safety net. And just like her, my foray into motherhood was a leap of faith. And now…
All the details are blurry because I did not keep a diary. I don't have many memories, didn't think to chronicle my life from that day to this. But, it's not all about me, actually, it never was.
The grayness of my life comes at a time when the contribution is parallel to the energy of the soul.
I have the energy for sustenance and opportunities which the younger me would have needed help to navigate. All is well, a little less colorful to be certain, but well just the same.
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