I wonder if I could convince Mom to clear out some of the old collectibles around her apartment to make room for all the new gifts.
She had a pretty good idea her mother would protest and say that so-and-so had given her such and such knickknack, and what would she do if that person came to see her? She would be certain that the person would look for the gift and want to know that she still had it and that she displayed it prominently.
I’m sure I can find a way to convince her to part with some of the bric-a-brac. All I have to do is word it the right way.
Carolyn realized that having a task ahead of her made her feel more like her forty-five-year-old self. She had found she could always move ahead when she had something on her to-do list. It kept her thoughts on track, and if her thoughts were on track, her emotions usually complied and went along for the ride.
“Come sit with me,” her mother called from the dark leather sofa in the living room. She leaned against the raised armrest of the traditional-style sofa and released a weary but contented sigh. “I cannot believe you are here. When I saw your face, my heart flew. Do you know that you look more and more like my mother? She was such a beautiful woman, just like you. She had the same high cheekbones and lovely smile. She would have enjoyed today so much. I do miss her.”
Carolyn sat down, and they visited for a restful moment as her mother recounted her favorite parts of the day and the delights of her party. As she was talking about how much she enjoyed the cake, her mom began to cough. She leaned forward, and Carolyn patted her on the back, feeling the curve of her spine through her thin blouse.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. I think I’m not used to talking so much.”
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, I would love some juice. Thank you.”
Carolyn headed for the kitchen and heard her mom say, “And maybe a small bite to eat. I have cheese. Maybe I have some crackers. Better yet, I have some small pizzas. Yes, let’s have those. They’re frozen. And wouldn’t you like a nice salad to go with our pizzas?”
Clearly the Birthday Queen was still holding court. Carolyn smiled to herself. She had a pretty good idea what her role would be while she was here. She didn’t mind. Helping other people made her feel as if she was being about the work she was created to do. Besides, when was the last time the grand matriarch of the family had someone to care for her every whim? If Carolyn could spoil her mother for a few days, then she saw it as a much better birthday gift than another trinket to squeeze on a shelf.
“Would you like orange juice or this red juice in here?” Carolyn called from the kitchen.
“Orange juice, por favor.”
“Got it.” Carolyn went looking for the individual pizzas in the compact freezer located in a small pull-out drawer at the bottom of her mother’s old refrigerator. The freezer was stuffed so that every inch was used. She pulled out a small plastic bag that contained less than a tablespoon worth of chopped onions. Another plastic bag contained one chicken drumstick. She found a total of seven of the frozen individual pizzas and guessed either her mother had stocked up because they were on sale, or this was one of her favorites.
Carolyn reached up to open a cupboard in search of a glass. When she did, a plastic salad bowl tumbled to the counter. She scowled at the overpacked cupboard and was pretty certain she would find all the cupboards filled to bursting. Instinctively she wanted to empty the cupboards, rearrange them, and return only the items her mother truly loved and made use of. The recent renovations she had done to her home made her all the more motivated to assist her mother in experiencing the same joy that came from cleaning out and freshening up her home.
“Mom, would you like me to help you to organize some of your things while I’m here?”
“What things?”
“Your cupboards.”
“What’s wrong with my cupboards?”
“You have a lot of stuff that I’m guessing you don’t use. It would lighten things up if you got rid of whatever you don’t need.”
“I need everything I have. It’s all I have. Why? Is there something you see that you would like? You can take it, if you do.”
“No, I’m not trying to go shopping in your kitchen. I’m trying to help with tasks that might be unpleasant or even difficult for you.” Carolyn returned to the living room with the two glasses of orange juice and handed one of them to her mother.
“Do you think I’m so old now that I can’t clean my own kitchen?”
“No, that’s not what I’m suggesting. Not at all.”
Even though her mother’s voice didn’t sound agitated, her expression was one Carolyn was familiar with. When her mother’s eyes narrowed and her chin went forward the way they were now, Carolyn knew she should drop the subject. Not just drop it for the moment but drop it for good. For the duration of her visit, she would have to refrain from any cleaning and remove any suggestion of downsizing from her vocabulary. This was her mother’s home. She needed to respect her mother and her mother’s ways.
Returning to the kitchen, Carolyn shoved the plastic salad bowl back onto the second shelf. She unwrapped the hard discs that were the size of a salad plate and thought they looked sad and unappetizing. Poking around in the refrigerator, she found some leftover black olives and some hard cheese, which she added to the pizzas. She remembered the chopped-up onion in the plastic bag in the freezer and had more respect for her mother’s method of saving every little bit because now she had something to use to spiff up their meal.
With the exception of an occasional trill from Alma in the living room, the only other sounds coming in through the open window were muted notes of life happening. Children’s voices floated up from one of the apartments below. Sounds of footsteps and chair legs moving on the floor came from above. Consistent motor sounds from the busy city intersection seemed to roll out all the bass notes of this evening song. Outside, above her, all around her, life was humming along. This new pace, these new sounds, brought her unexpected comfort and contentment.
As soon as the timer was set on the oven, Carolyn tossed together a simple salad. She carried the two small plates out to the glass coffee table in the living room, thinking they could eat there instead of at the table, since it was covered with gifts. When she delivered the salads, Carolyn saw that her mother’s eyes were closed.
“Mom?” she whispered.
She didn’t reply so Carolyn tried again. “Dinner is served.”
Still no response. Carolyn’s heart froze. “Mom?”
She stepped closer and peered intently at the slouching matriarch. With slight, unhurried breaths, her mother’s chest rose and fell. She was the picture of peace.
Don’t scare me like that.
Carolyn sat on the couch across from her mother. She placed her open napkin across her lap, as she had been taught to do as a young lady. Then, as she had also been taught, she lowered her eyes and prepared to repeat the standard mealtime prayer. Her lips parted, but the ancient words didn’t come to her.
Undaunted, Carolyn took the first bite of her salad and tried to remember the prayer she and Marilyn repeated every night at dinner. Being in the presence of her mother was bringing back familiar routines of the simple life they had shared. It was a good life. She had a good childhood. Her father worked in construction up until three months before he died of a pulmonary embolism. He was a mule of a man who demanded only one thing: respect. Carolyn’s mother gave him not only respect but also sweet and tender affection. She loved her role as a wife and mother and gave the best of herself to her family.
Carolyn had hoped to emulate the same pattern for the life she and Jeff shared with Tikki. Respecting and loving Jeff was never a problem. Giving her all to her home and family became a challenge when she started to work full-time. If she could have stayed home, she would have. But she had no reservations about life in the San Francisco Bay Area requiring two incomes. The way Carolyn saw it, the fairy tale she and Jeff sh
ared had simply ended too soon.
Carolyn chewed her salad slowly, thinking about how different her life would be right now if Jeff were still alive. It was a luxurious journey into the world of “what if,” and one that she hadn’t often allowed herself to take. Would Jeff have come with her on this visit for her mom’s birthday? What would it have been like to sit next to Jeff at lunch with Bryan across the table?
Would I be sitting in the other room with Jeff right now, explaining to him at long last what happened between Bryan and me? Why didn’t I ever tell Jeff? He never knew there was cause for Bryan to apologize to me.
Carolyn swallowed and put down her fork. Bryan apologized to me. Not once in the twenty-five years since she last had seen Bryan did she think she would encounter him again. And never in her wildest thoughts did she think that, if she did see him, he would apologize.
Soft light, the shade of melting butterscotch, spilled through the living room windows. The sheer, rose-pink curtains that hung to the floor billowed in response to the final puff of wind that seemed to come from the unhurried lips of the fading day. Alma fluffed her feathers from her perch and trilled a sunset song. Her mother’s chest rose and fell with the ease of the ocean’s tide.
Carolyn marked the moment in her memory. There was a sweetness in the room, in the company of her mother, that she felt nowhere else on earth. As much as she had longed for this serenity and had tried to duplicate a similar sense of calm in her own home and life, the extra blessing of peace that she felt here had eluded her best efforts.
What is it that I feel here? Is it love?
The faint scent of smoke wafted into the room. Carolyn popped up and hurried to the kitchen. The timer hadn’t gone off. Yet, as soon as she opened the oven, she saw that the pizzas were past being done. She pulled them out, using a dish towel as an oven mitt, and swished the air, trying to clear the trace of smoke. The pizzas were a bit crisp around the edges but not bad. They looked edible.
Carolyn brought the well-done pizzas to the living room on two dinner plates and set them on the coffee table. The strong aroma roused her mother. She sat up straight and looked around, slightly confused. As soon as she saw Carolyn, she smiled and spoke in Spanish, her first language.
“Are you ready for some dinner? I started in on my salad, and I’m afraid the pizzas are crispier than I had planned.”
Carolyn’s mother answered her again in Spanish, saying something about the oven timer being broken. She slipped back into English. “I cannot remember the words when I am tired. I have not spoken so much English since I left America.”
“We don’t have to talk,” Carolyn said. “It makes me happy just to be with you. It’s been too long. Far too long. I should have come to see you sooner.”
Carolyn’s mother brushed away the regret-filled words. “No matter. You are here now. We will have our time together now and be grateful.”
Carolyn thought about how her mother, the oldest of the five sisters, had moved to the United States when she was fourteen. Their family came from deeply rooted Spanish ancestry and had been on the Canary Islands for two hundred years. Carolyn’s mother and Aunt Frieda were the only two sisters who married men from the United States. The rest of the family moved back to the Canary Islands. Carolyn couldn’t imagine growing up in one culture with a distinct language and then, as a teen, being immersed in a different culture and having to learn a new language.
“Tell me about Marilyn’s wedding. I regret so much that I was not able to come.”
“Everyone missed you.” Carolyn gave her mom lots of details about the wedding, about Tikki’s promotion at the bank in San Jose, about Larry’s new job and the upcoming move to Santa Cruz. She had nothing but positive reports. It seemed in keeping with the tempo of their meal.
When they finished, Carolyn cleared the plates while her mother rose slowly and began her evening routine. Carolyn watched inconspicuously from the hallway while her mother approached a small, built-in shelf in the dining room’s corner. A single candle rested on the shelf, and beside it was a small box of matches.
With a steady hand, Carolyn’s mother struck the match and lit the candle. She placed both hands over her heart and bowed her head. Carolyn knew what her mother was doing. She was praying. She had done this as long as Carolyn could remember. Every morning the candle was lit, and her lips would move in respectful adoration, but no words could be heard. Then she blew out the candle and went about her day.
When evening came, she returned to the candle in the corner. Carolyn remembered her mother slipping her feet into red velvet slippers and padding across the linoleum floor in the kitchen as she approached the tiny, wedge-shaped shelf her father had built for her next to the refrigerator. It didn’t matter if the TV was on in the next room or if Carolyn and Marilyn had friends over and were doing homework at the kitchen table. Their mother would close out the rest of the world, light the candle, whisper her prayers for the close of day, and then blow it out.
No images of saints or gold-trimmed icons ever appeared on the shelf. Only a candle and matches. And for a single moment twice each day her mother was blind to everything except God and her deep and abiding love for him.
As Carolyn watched her mother this evening, she longed for that same sort of elegant reverence for God to return to her life. It had been gone for so long. She missed the sense of God’s closeness.
I wonder if that’s what I felt tonight, as my mother slept on the couch. Every morning she welcomes God’s presence into her life. Every evening she whispers her gratitude to his Holy Spirit. She has invited him here, and I think he has come. God is in her home and in her life.
Carolyn knew when that sense of God’s presence had left her home and her life. She had been the one who closed off the relationship. Early in her marriage, she and Jeff had drawn close to God and to each other. They stayed involved in a strong and loving church. They raised Tikki to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength,” just as the Bible commanded. And Tikki had remained firm in her faith.
But Carolyn had shut off the avenues of communication with God. Not in an overt way that Tikki or anyone from church would recognize. The silence happened inside. In her alma. In her soul.
Carolyn watched as her mother blew out the candle and went over to the windows where she lowered the shades halfway, allowing the cool night air an easy entrance. Then she covered the birdcage, and Alma Gemela, her soul mate, ceased her song. All was still.
Just as it had long been still within Carolyn’s soul, ever since the dark blanket of grief had come out of nowhere and covered her alma so completely.
“Ni tanto que queme al santo,
ni tan poco que no lo alumbre.”
“Put the candle not so close that it would burn the saint,
nor so far that it will fail to light it.”
CAROLYN FOUND AN extra comforter in the hall closet and got ready for bed while her mother was in her bedroom. She returned to the living room and stretched out on the leather sofa that was still warm on the two ends where they had been sitting. Closing her eyes, Carolyn hoped for sleep to find her before her mind decided to evaluate any one of the many avenues of life questions that had opened up for her that day.
A few minutes later, she heard her mother come into the living room. Carolyn pretended to be asleep. She knew it was a little girl thing to do, but she did it anyway. Her mother drew close, called her name softly, waited a moment, and then left. Whatever she wanted would wait until morning.
Carolyn woke when she caught the scent of an extinguished match. Her mother was up, whispering her morning prayers. Stretching her neck and peering around the side of the sofa, she saw the back of her mother’s pink bathrobe with her face to the corner. Carolyn recognized the robe as the birthday present Marilyn had picked out and sent last year.
The pale buttermilk light of the new day poured through the lower halves of the open windows. Carolyn sat up and yawned. She had slept
much better than she had at Isobel’s, although she remembered waking sometime in the night, before it was light. It took awhile to find a more comfortable sleeping position, but she did, and somehow she managed to fall back asleep.
“Buenos días, mi niña,” her mother greeted her as she lifted the covering from the birdcage and raised the window shades.
Carolyn blinked in the brightness. “Buenos días.”
“Why did you not come share my bed last night?”
After growing up with four sisters, Carolyn’s mother had often said she was used to sharing sleeping space and had made it clear in the past that she was more comfortable sleeping with another person than alone. That fact had slipped Carolyn’s mind.
It shouldn’t have because she felt the same way when Tikki had come home for Marilyn’s wedding. Carolyn hoped Tikki would cuddle up with her instead of stretching out on the sofa. But Tikki had done the same thing Carolyn did last night. She had gone to the closet for her favorite down comforter and fell asleep with the remote control for the television in her hand. The two nights Tikki stayed with Carolyn during Marilyn’s wedding were spent in the company of late-night talk show hosts and a bag of rice cakes instead of cuddled up with her mama.
“I’ll sleep there tonight. I promise.”
The two women went about the day without making a schedule, since they didn’t have plans to be anywhere at a set time. This was catch-up day after the big party as well as conversation day, since they barely had touched on details of all the relatives and life happenings over their frozen pizzas last night.
After lingering over coffee, toast, and conversation, Carolyn said, “Is there anything you would like me to do for you while I’m here so that you can play the role of reigning Birthday Queen a little longer?”
“No, I have everything I need. I want you to rest and enjoy this as a vacation. This is your vacation, isn’t it? I still don’t know how long you’ll be here.”