My Mother, My Mother
My mother, my mother, my mother.
Where to start?
She remembered the scandal about broadcasting Elvis‘s pelvis on national television. “Elvis the pelvis,” she’d laugh.
She wasn’t a huge Elvis fan. She liked Johnny Mathis, Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Maria Callas, Broadway show tunes, opera, folk, not so much rock ‘n’ roll.
My mother, she was soft. She was a soft girl, melting on the beach, into the waves, like the sea foam in her poem. Rolling on the beach with a magical someone, merging with the waves, and like seafoam, being swept away, swept away.
My mother wanted to be swept away from her feelings, from her deep, deep insecurity and shame, so much shame, my mother carried so much shame
First for leaving her mother behind at 14, and second for coming back divorced at 21, with a toddler and an ex-husband who was capable of paying exactly zero child support. The shame.
From the infinite promise to the dust of shame, my poor mother.
So sad all the time, she just wanted to blot it out.
Once in a while she’d be happy, once in a while.
That was the rare exception, for my mother to smile genuinely, and to laugh genuinely, and her eyes would clear, and they would look at mine and I could see her in there, not just a wall of shame and fear and alcohol.
A gypsy told me once that my mother was my soulmate, and that my heart broke the day I was born, because she was mine, but I wasn’t hers. That’s what the gypsy said, of course, then she wanted $10,000 to tell me more, which I did not pay, by the way
My mother, where to start?
Like one of the white flowers that smells like heaven, but you cannot touch because you will bruise it, my mother.
Even 40 years after losing her, 40 years later, the rusty sharp knife of it can still get you, right at the belly button. Right there. A kick in the solar plexus, 40 years later, it can still happen. It surprises you.
That’s how broken I was by losing her, broken by the whole thing, the whole sad episode, never on the track of my life again, always having to stay between the lines, for dear life.
Like that time I successfully hydroplaned in my car on the interstate, my child asleep in her carseat in the back, hydroplaned and lived to tell about it at the next rest stop, where I learned that a driver ahead of me hadn’t managed to hydroplane successfully, and their car skied up and over the concrete barrier into the oncoming traffic, and they were instantly killed.
I pulled into the next rest stop, which fortunately was not far, and I could not stop shaking, and my daughter was still peacefully asleep in her car seat. I shook and I shook, and eventually I recovered and drove another 150 miles to get back to my hometown, my dear little hometown.
My mother would be proud. She loved me.
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 