Alive and Well

So much of what I write, think, and speak of my mom is about her absence: how her death has impacted me, how much I feel the void she left behind every single day, how much she missed out on by not living beyond her mid-forties. I also think about her illness, how it felt as a child to watch her body disintegrate within the span of six excruciating, terrifying and short months. But this week, on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, I am thinking about her presence: who she was when she was here.

I remember her mostly within the walls of my childhood home in Wisconsin. She was in the kitchen cooking meatloaf, tater tot casserole, and pigs in a blanket. She would steal potato chips off my plate while we ate lunch. She was regularly making banana pudding with Nilla Wafers, or baking fudgy brownies or zucchini bread to bring to someone she loved. She always let me lick the batter from the bowl. She adored dessert of all kids: blueberry pie, candy corn, circus peanuts, marshmallow toffee, Pralines n’ Cream ice cream, crispy chocolate chip cookies, and Hostess Snowballs. She was often doing the dishes and looking out the back window to the yard, wiping the countertops, or scraping the gunk from under the metal of the stove burner with a butter knife while talking on the phone. She would sit at her alcove desk tucked into the corner of the kitchen, surrounded by striped floral wallpaper, drinking either a LaCroix or a Miller High Life and listening to the messages on the answering machine. With a number two pencil, she would be noting down soccer practice dates and times on the calendar, planning a birthday party for one of us, making a shopping list, or writing a thank you card.

In her bedroom, on her big, soft bed, she would read to us aloud, turning the pages one after another, the three of us cuddled close to her, soon just my sister and I, and then just me. I felt so close to her, breathing in her scent, hearing the crispness of her ‘s’s. She would rub my back when I was crying in that bed after a nightmare, while dad softly snored next to us. In the bathroom, which was attached to their bedroom, she could be found maintaining incredible hygiene. She kept her fingernails cut short and filed them often. She didn’t wear makeup, and brushed her hair with a simple purple comb. She wore it sometimes permed, sometimes feathered, sometimes short, sometimes dyed chestnut. She smelled like Carmex, Oil of Olay, and dental floss. I remember looking at the L and the R on her white contact case on the bathroom counter, the blue lenses floating in clear liquid at the end of the day. She’d give herself breaks regularly, soaking in the sage green bathtub. After leaving her alone for as long as I possibly could, I’d climb in and lay with her in the warm water and she’d whisper to me that my body would look like hers one day.

In the living room she could be found knitting, listening to the stereo system play records and cassette tapes of songs like Don’t Worry, Be Happy, or Imagine, or Good Vibrations, singing along just slightly off key. On Saturday mornings we’d find her in there vacuuming, dusting, washing the windows inside and out, arranging and planning and placing objects here and there. In the den, when she’d hoped nobody was watching, she would work out to Jane Fonda exercise videos. She would diligently and neatly label our VHS tapes with a TV recording of Lassie or America’s Funniest Home Videos. She would fold laundry in the basement on a table next to the washer and dryer - each of our clothes lined up in neat piles next to one another. She would spend evenings in the nearby work room organizing photos or wrapping gifts on the green felt of the pool table.

She was the epicenter of so many beautiful Christmases. She knit bright red and green Mary Maxim patterned stockings for every on of her nieces and nephews and for each of her children. We helped her place decorations around the house, figurines and wooden music boxes pulled from a bin and unfurled each year smelling of the last. She wrote on each ornament with the year, gifter and receiver, making sure those memories stayed with us on each one of our future Christmas trees. One Christmas morning, she gave us a package carefully wrapped in red paper. It was a soft white cat who we named Marshmallow. She cried when I told her I knew about Santa.

She would spend sunny afternoons in the back yard hanging clothes to dry on white lines stretched between three maple trees. In the summer she could be found planting and weeding and harvesting the vegetable garden. She showed me how to suck the sugar out of a clover flower, how to build a fairy house out of pine needles and acorn tops and small stones. She fawned over cosmos, queen Anne’s lace, lilac and eucalyptus. She celebrated seeing a squirrel, a mama deer, and a porcupine. She felt sorry for ants when we stepped on them. She felt sorry for dogs who were in kennels, barking to be let out. She felt sorry for the families of the animals her brothers hunted. She filled so many bird feeders with seeds and suet and orange slices and delighted as she watched them enjoy each bite.

I remember her hands, calloused but also smooth, holding mine on the way into the Piggly Wiggly. I remember the comfort of her beautiful soft cheeks, her smooth freckled arms and the long scar down the inside of her right forearm from an incident with a fence when she was young. I remember her simple gold wedding band and small diamond engagement ring, and her silver bracelet with a little bird and sunset painted on it. I remember her white Greenpeace sweatshirt, her light pink sweater, her jean jumper dresses, her World Wildlife Fund panda tote bag, her crisp white Keds sneakers, her wide rimmed glasses. I remember her pet names for so many things. Urinating was piddling. My dad Kerry was nicknamed Larry. His employees were little men. I was nicknamed Lucy. Farting was shooting a bunny. Fingers were pinners.

Beyond our home, of course, she was busy too. She was at the wheel of our blue station wagon, and then later, a white GMC conversion van, both of which she would ‘dance’ by pressing intermittently on the brake at stoplights. I would watch her as she drove, wearing Aviator sunglasses and chewing a piece of Big Red cinnamon gum, cut in half to save money. In the back seat of the van while on long road trips, she would teach me how to make baby footprints with my hand on the steamy windows. She walked our dogs religiously around the neighborhood and at the dog park, encouraging us to join her even though most of us were unwilling. I watched from the bleachers as she bounced up and down in the water with women much older than her at water exercise classes at the YMCA. She’d say “I wish I was in that river in a canoe,” as we crossed over every bridge. She went rollerblading on the winding paths of Lake Michigan’s lakefront in downtown Milwaukee, unable to stop because the stopper was so worn down. On family camping trips, she could put up a tent or start a fire or unhook a fish single handedly. She sang songs from The Sound of Music on the chairlift at Ski Brule, the place where she and my dad taught us all how to ski.

She didn’t have a job. Or a paid one, I should say. I always knew she was busy volunteering when she’d leave the house, but I had no idea until after she was gone how much she was doing. She was teaching young parents how to gently guide their children through challenging phases at a local nonprofit. She was putting on puppet shows for a program to help children understand that differences should be celebrated, not dismissed or made fun of. She was working on a program for school bussing between the inner city and our suburban schools to give lower income students a chance to shine. She was in the giant lecture hall of the high school weekly, participating in the PTA. She organized fund raisers and charity events and felt empathy for and spent time giving to every single soul she encountered.

For those eleven years, she was everywhere and everything to me and so many others. Though our time together was fleeting, my mom gave me so much to go off of, so much of the core of who I am. That time when she was alive and well has filled the thirty years following somehow with so much richness and intimacy, and each year around this time I always say her passing feels like yesterday.