When I was growing up, my mother and I never shared clothes, makeup, or secrets. Still, whenever I was alone in our big house on the hill, I would sit in her walk-in closet beneath flowing fabrics, between rows of shoes, size 8-1/2s, lined up on each side. I tried on a pair of heels or sandals, always way too big for my little feet. Mostly I just sat there in the quiet darkness and waited. For what, I’m not sure.
To this day, I cannot find a word adequate to describe what I felt in that instant. Fright, dread, agitation, none of those terms come anywhere close to the sheer naked terror I felt, not as much for me but for my children at home.
There were times after that, years even, when she was indeed sort of well. Unless she wasn’t. She functioned but then she had always kind of functioned, on and off, all her life. All of my life. The off part of the on and off was the hard part: for her, for me, for my father and sisters, her friends and other family. The off part was what finally sent her to bed and then landed her in a mental hospital.
For years, I was the sister who sought Amy out, who fought for her sobriety, begged for her to stay with us. But since the last time she left, two years earlier, I have reversed course. The children are the priority now – her son and daughter- and I will do everything to protect them.
In my failure I can begin to acknowledge the wisdom of my late grandmother, as the eldest and wisest woman in the house simply had to have known how much her grandson loved her- even though he may not have known it.
I miss the seasons, my mother would say. I scoffed at the time. I thought the seasons were a superficial thing for her to miss: the surface of the earth and how it changed. But what she meant was the same thing I did. She missed our home, the way the light shifted so effortlessly against our skin.
I didn’t know as much, back then, I wasn’t as educated, but I knew that blood when you’re pregnant isn’t good. I made my (ex) husband take me to the emergency room. It was a similar situation. Me, lying on a sparse emergency room bed, wearing that open-backed gown, the doctor coming in, saying, “I’m sorry, your baby is dead.”
My mother was helpless with anything beyond lipstick in a tube.
I can't recall when I first did her makeup—I know it was first my idea, for some occasion like a wedding—but after that she would ask me, if she went out somewhere and there were people beside my father involved.
After a couple weeks, I learn how to hide the medication in my mouth. Make it look like it’s gone from under my tongue when the nurses check. Soon enough, my personality comes back. I decide I want out and become less than cooperative.
The last time I saw my mother before her illness I tried to help her do the simplest thing. She had bought a new clock, one with an extra large display. We didn’t know yet that she was losing her sight; we didn’t know that a few months down the road, after the cataract surgery she feared, (we disregarded those fears), she’d have a stroke. All I knew that day was that she needed me to set the clock.
