FSB Author Article
My
Mother's Bed
By Elizabeth
Flock,
Author of Sleepwalking in
Daylight
The
bed is already crowded when I crawl into it. The cats have
arranged themselves neatly around my mother and they are not happy
when I climb aboard and upset their cozy set-up.
I
fit easily into my father's mattress indentation, he's begun his day
but the covers have kept his spot warm. My mother is just
awake, still soft from sleep. And that is perhaps what I like
best about this infrequent ritual, the intimacy of lying close to the
yawns and stretches of a fresh day.
I live out of town
and cannot visit as often as I would like. Time skitters by far
too quickly on these trips. Days become filled with friends,
family squeezed here and there in between. So although I am
certainly far too old to be crawling into my parents' bed I relish
the private time with my mother. Not to mention the youthful
implication of climbing into one's parents' king size bed.
Our
talk can be about our sleep the night before ("I had the
strangest dream"), our meal the night before ("I love the
atmosphere but the salmon was overcooked"), plans for the day
ahead ("Is that store still here? The one on the corner
behind the bank? Let's go there for sure"). Then we
meander to meatier topics: ("is [insert family friend's name]
happy? It seemed like they were strained when we ran into them
yesterday"). Meatier still are the questions about my
life, my marriage, my
choices.
Truth is, my life is nothing like what I
thought it would be. Pretty much every friend I have says the
same thing. My friend Kathy is fond of saying "if you want
to hear God laugh, tell him your plans." God must be
laughing big time right about now.
I'd always imagined a
storybook marriage, kids, home, friends. I thought the big
dilemma would be how many children to have . . . four, to make it
even? Two, to make it affordable? Of course this was back
when I thought forty was ancient, and eating an entire bag of Doritos
wouldn't show up on my fit body which would, by the way, always stay
effortlessly fit.
At thirty-five I visit, we lie in bed
looking up at the ceiling and I ask my mother if everything's turned
out the way she thought it would. She seems surprised at the
question and answers "It's better
than I thought it would be. Different but better. Why,
honey? Are you okay?"
And so, there in my mother's
bed, I tell her. I tell her I cannot have children of my own.
We talk about the fertility clinics, the failed procedures and the
soul-crushing reality that it is not in the cards for us. For
me, that is. My husband has two daughters and if it weren't for
them I think I might have withered up and floated away. They
are my girls, pure and simple.
At forty I visit, we lie
in bed looking up at the ceiling and I ask my mother how she and my
father have stayed married for four decades and counting. And I
tell her. I describe the heartbreaking realization that my
marriage will not continue. Wait did I fail to mention that it
was my second divorce? Yeah, no, it was. Though the
circumstances were far different each time. That's something,
right? It should mean something, really mean
something, that I've managed to stay close to my second ex-husband,
shouldn't it? At least I pulled that
off. I may have failed miserably at marriage but post-marriage,
well, I've nailed that. My friends say we're the coolest
divorced couple they know.
Lying next to my mother at
forty-one, I felt a hand on my wrist, a delicate bird-hand I know as
well as my own, as I wondered aloud what the hell happened to my
life. My mother listening, staring at the ceiling knowing it's
easier to talk that way, like when you're in a car.
"I've
made a mess of my life, Mom," I say, my eyes fighting back
tears, following instead a hairline fracture in the ceiling paint,
probably from the house settling. "I've pretty much fouled
up every single aspect of it."
Her hand gives a light
squeeze. My mother knows -- she always knows -- I need to keep
talking so she remains quiet.
"Two divorces? Two?
What the hell is wrong with me?"
Do I tell her how hard I
worked -- how hard we worked -- to keep it together? Do I
confess that I am mostly to blame? Will she smile knowingly if
I admit I'm a handful, I'm difficult to live with and I have such
impossibly high standards no one not even Barack Obama could meet
them? (Well, he
could).
Most of my friends wonder why I walked away.
"Lots of marriages become stagnant," they say.
"That's what happens. It doesn't mean you just walk away.
You don't just throw in the towel, Liz," the word just
implying an infuriating haphazardness. The decision to leave my
marriage was not arrived at impulsively. And it certainly
wasn't easy. It was agonizing, painful, and so deeply wounding
a part of me died in the process.
"Nothing is wrong with
you, Liz," her voice shakes me out of my litany of misery.
"Life tries to break us apart sometimes and you didn't break.
You bent, yes, but you are not broken. You just need to heal.
You'll pick yourself up, honey. You will."
At
forty-one, we lie in bed, looking up at the ceiling and she asks me
how I am and I tell her. I tell her I am finally happy.
While her questions sometimes make me squirm I am grateful
they are asked. I may not tell her this but I am also grateful
for the advice that follows. For with age comes acknowledgment
of our own limitations, our own ignorance. Our parents' life
experiences are seen in a new and more favorable light (finally,
they will surely say). So if we have any measure of maturity we
will recognize our parents as people who just may know what they are
talking about. At the very least we can appreciate their
journeys.
The cats have readjusted themselves at
different angles beside and on top of my mother. I feel her stroking
my hair and reflexively I say: "I know, I know. I need a
hair cut."
"I was just thinking your hair is
beautiful," she says.
A comment I could not have taken in
as an awkward teen, a brooding twenty-something or an independent
thirty-year old. But I am forty-three and so I smile. I
am grateful for her words.
I am grateful for my mother.
And I am grateful for my mother's bed.
Copyright
©2009 Elizabeth Flock author of Sleepwalking
in Daylight
Author
Bio
Elizabeth Flock, author of Sleepwalking
in Daylight, is a former journalist who reported for Time
and People magazines and worked as an on-air correspondent for
CBS before becoming a full-time writer. The New York Times
bestselling author of But Inside I'm Screaming, Everything
Must Go and Me & Emma -- a Book Sense Notable title
and Highlight Pick of the Year -- Elizabeth hails from Connecticut
and currently lives in New York City. For more information, please
visit http://www.elizabethflock.com/.