Of things lost, of things found
I’m looking at my mother and touching her hand, but she doesn’t look back at me. She stays still, folded on herself, her back bent forward, looking down; then she shuts her eyes as hard as she can. She is trying to keep out the sounds and the images that seem to attack her from the outside. The world around her is frightening. Elvira tells me that my mother no longer wants to leave the house. The familiar and comforting meaning of things seems lost to her. Sometimes the world falls on her as a wall of noise, loud and unpleasant. All she can do is shutting it off.
I’m sitting with my mother in her kitchen in Rome, at the white folding table she bought many years ago (in the world of my parents, I notice, things last much longer; they are so much more permanent than mine). I’ve always liked this tiled room, all white and aqua and filled with light (the Roman light: open, merciless, and with a weightless quality I’ve not found anywhere else.)
She is wearing a white nightgown, a long burgundy robe, and a shawl of the same color. “She is always cold,” tells me Elvira. She also tells me that my mother doesn’t want to take baths. She used to take her clothes off, before they changed her medications.
I know she still recognizes me: she lets me sit close to her and talk to her. Occasionally, she does look in my eyes. Then she says: “Andiamo,” let’s go. I take her hand, which is cold, and we start walking in a circle through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the hallway that goes by her bathroom and her bedroom, then the kitchen again. We go around and around at a slow, careful pace that reminds me of walking meditation. It is walking meditation: I try to be present. I try to feel her. What is left of her, I notice myself thinking.
A coffee shop of her own
A few weeks ago I felt quite sorry for myself (long before Katrina, when I didn’t yet feel ashamed to feel sorry for myself). It was Friday evening and I was still at work finishing a report. Usually I leave work earlier on Fridays and I enjoy some Anto quality time by myself. I love spending time in coffee shops. It reminds me of Italy. The combination of being by myself and being in a social environment–creating a sort of semipermeable boundary between me and the world–soothes my soul. I love watching people, reading a book or a magazine, and sipping a good decaf latte.
(After a long period of initial diffidence, I started enjoying Starbucks, especially when they added sandwiches to their menu. For some reason a cafe is not really a cafe for me if it doesn’t serve some salty food. But my favorite coffee place by far is the Gryphon Cafe in Wayne)
So, that Friday I was all stressed out because the report took much longer than I hoped, and I was tired after a long week, it was dark outside, and I wanted to go home. So I called Scott and I asked him: “Can you please make a coffee shop for me?” And he said, “Sure.”
When I arrived home, our dining room, which after months of slow and painful work was finally painted and organized, had been transformed in a coffee shop. Scott found two picnic tables in the basement and some white tablecloths I didn’t even know we had, organized chairs, plants, and candles to create a perfect european cafe atmosphere.
(Note: You will be surprised to learn that Scott really wanted me to write a post on this. About every couple of days he would ask me, “have you written about the cafe in your blog yet?” Yes, he can be really nice at times. Yes, I am grateful and feel fortunate, but I still reserve the right to be mad at him sometimes.)
Our dining room is still a coffee shop. This is where I blog and I spend most of my time when I am at home being myself (that is, not doing laundry, washing dishes, or paying bills). I think Virginia Woolf would be pleased.
All about our mothers
Everybody is blogging on their mothers lately. Jory started with a post on her mom, Joy, that made me sob.
people have somehow caught on to this woman’s ability to not judge– even in matters concerning me–to listen, and, if you’re meeting her in-person, to feed you.
[After that post, Joy decided to start her own blog]
Then Gillian talked about her mom’s 64th birthday and posted the cutest daughter-mother picture.
My friends from childhood will still ask me how she’s doing, and say how much they liked her. Despite what they were wearing, what colour their hair was, and how much metal was in their faces, she treated them with respect, which is a rare thing for a teenager to receive from a friend’s parent.
Ronni Bennet talks about witnessing the death of her mother.
Even Shelly, who doesn’t seem the sentimental type, wrote about her mom inheriting Shelley’s old Nikon Coolpix 995:
I told her I would write detailed instructions on how to use all the lenses and filters. “Be sure to also write down what kind of film I should use,” she said.
What about my mother?
My mother in February 1959, one year before marrying my father and one year and 10 months before I was born.
My mother has been beaten by life.
My mother lost her father when she was 5 and the World was in War.
My mother was raised by a crazy mother who could not forgive her for the death of her husband.
My mother married my father to escape her family.
My mother was depressed and unhappy when I was born.
My mother didn’t feel good enough to raise a child.
My mother didn’t trust herself and anybody around her.
My mother never learned how to love and be supportive. Nobody did it with her.
My mother had a spark that never had a chance to burn.
I love her but I cannot live close to her.
I miss the person she could have been.
I miss the relationship we could have had.
Mamma, mi manchi.
If I just had been so thoughtful
Today I had lunch with Amber, a Business System Analyst who works as a contractor for my company. I met her at PhillyCHI, the local chapter of the ACM Computer-Human Interactions special interest group. She is such a smart wise young woman. I am in total awe of young people who are thoughtful and deliberate in their career choices. In comparison, my professional history resembles the random path of a disoriented fly (including repeated crashes against the light bulb and related first degree burns).
The entire PhillyCHI group is impressive. Really smart, passionate young people. It’s nice to have a local group like this. Hey, we are not in San Francisco or New York, but we are still extremely cool.
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