What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [84]
Mostly, though, I am thinking about the notion of forgiveness, wondering if I always forgave my mother or if I never did, even now. I am wondering what it is that we ask of our mothers: what do they owe us? What is it that we owe them? Before I left, I wanted to tell my mother, “Look. You were an artist, living in an oppressive atmosphere. You did what you did in order to survive. I know you never stopped loving us. I felt it.”
But I did not say that; even now, I cannot say that. I expect too much from the role of mother, both as a daughter and as a mother myself. Georgia is more of my idea of how that role should be played. It is she I modeled myself after. But what do my own daughters think of me? They haven’t told me. They probably don’t even really know, yet. But they will. And although God knows I don’t like to admit it—that in fact I never have, until now—God knows that when they tell me what they think of me as a mother, I am going to take some serious hits.
I suppose what I now believe is that we owe our mothers and our daughters the truth, and the truth is that my mother was forgiven in the way she was not forgotten. If I tried to shut her out of my mind, there were reminders of her, anyway: the odd way I crook my little finger when I write, as she does. The way I laid my hand across my babies’ backs, which is the way I remember her laying her hand on me. I hear her inflections in my voice; I see her knees emerging from my bathwater. All my life, when I ate certain things, walked certain places, witnessed certain events, there she would be. Close your eyes and draw a silk scarf past your ear: that is the whisper I heard. That is the soft presence I felt.
For so many years, when I thought of my mother, I thought of her tortured looniness before she left us. I thought of her callous disregard of our obvious needs. I thought of her unspeakable differentness, and was ashamed.
But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla’s and my backs; watching at the window for the six o’clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn’t drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of her face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue—waiting, I see now; she was always waiting.
The captain is going on about the sunset now, and I lift the shade impatiently, as if that will shut him up. But he is right in asking us to look; the sun is a rare, deep red, sinking slowly into bruised-looking clouds colored purple and black. I watch carefully, not seeing any movement yet. I will soon, though. You think the sun will hang in the sky forever, but once it reaches a certain point in its descent, it goes so fast—flattens, seems to hover for one instant, and is gone. Then comes the darkness, which we illuminate artificially while we wait for the new day, for the rising up again of what once seemed lost.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1998 by Elizabeth Berg
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-76343-3
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