“You don’t have to talk,” she said, noticing I was stirring. “I’m just going to sit here.”
Thank you. It’s exactly what I needed. An immense, familiar peace filled me, her profile eliciting early memories as I continued to drift in and out of sleep, my body ridding itself of the anesthesia from an early-morning surgery.
I dreamed of sitting tall beside her as she drove the white station wagon with two sure hands on the wheel down bright summer streets and squinting up from my canvas raft to see that she still sat in the striped beach chair in case I needed her to rescue me from the crashing waves. Then I was suddenly spinning on the old, brown Naugahyde-covered stool in the kitchen as she prepared dinner, her black wavy hair in sharp contrast to the fading glare of a snowy afternoon through windows over the kitchen sink. I felt the weight of her as she perched on the edge of my bed, saying prayers with me, the hall light streaming behind her into my room cloaked in night. Her slight frame in the living room window as I pulled up to the house in an old blue Ford with my first boyfriend.
All of these memories, backlit, glowing. A mother’s silhouette. [This image heightens the awareness of a mother sitting nearby throughout the author’s life.] Anchoring, soothing, solid. As an adult, going about the daily routines, I had forgotten about the calming, restorative effect of having my mother simply sit in my presence. I looked to her as I always have. My mirror, my friend, my ever-present reminder-er that my haircut is all wrong and my weight is too low. All these years she has been the constant in my life. Now sneaking around the edges of my heart is the knowledge that she will someday be gone. It is an unbearable knowing. Where will she be when I need her? Who will be backlit for me then?
The ability to have children may end, but mothering endures. It is a singular and beautiful calling to become the silhouette to love’s light here on this Earth. In this room, helpless and still, I saw clearly that my position in the chain of motherhood would remain unchanged. A child doesn’t stop needing his or her mother simply because he or she is growing older, and a mother’s instinct to love her children never ends.
My thoughts turned to my son and daughter, young adults trying to find their way and make sense of their circumstances. I wonder if my silhouette holds the same power. If I was there when they needed to peer from their own darkness and look toward the light. If I understood when they were young that love shines brightest during the simple moments of mothering that become so routine that we perform them without thought.
I look forward with a new understanding to the many years I have left with them. Even if that means just sitting in a chair in a shadowy room by a sunny window, a chance to remind them of the immense, familiar peace of a mother’s love in this often harsh world.
I awakened again, [Here is where Pohlman brings us back into the physical scene, but we feel like we’ve been here all along.] my head pounding. She was there in a second with ice chips and a cool cloth. “Do you want me to turn off the ceiling light?” she asked as she leaned over me.
“No, leave it on,” I replied, adding one more image to my treasure box of silhouettes.
Sheets smoothed, pillows adjusted, she stood searching for some other detail to attend. “Thanks, Mom,” I said as I felt the tug of sleep once more.
“I’ll just sit over here,” she whispered. “You don’t have to talk.” [Pohlman has purposefully bookended this piece with these words from her mother, giving a sense of closure to this essay.]
This next essay is from Bree Barton. “The Greatest Lesson We Learn When Someone Is Unkind” is a wonderful example of interiority. Barton meets a compelling character, and their exchange prompts self-evaluation.
THE GREATEST LESSON WE LEARN WHEN SOMEONE IS UNKIND
By Bree Barton
Published in Tiny Buddha, November 2013
Reprinted in Tiny Buddha’s 365 Tiny Love Challenges (New York: HarperOne, 2015)
I recently travelled to Malaysia for a friend’s wedding. The people were kind and warm, the culture rich, the trip magical. On my last day in Kuala Lumpur, I was headed out to buy souvenirs for family and friends when I stumbled across the most beautiful temple. I wandered around, overcome with majesty, trying to breathe it all in. I was still under the temple’s spell when someone spoke to me.
“Your dress is ugly.”
I looked to my right where the voice had come from. A woman was sitting on a bench, not looking in my direction. “Sorry?” I said, thinking I must have misheard.
She waved me off. I stood there for a moment, trying to decide on a course of action. She was American, the first and only other American I’d met during my trip.
Had she really just said my dress was ugly? Maybe she said my dress was pretty, I thought. I must have misunderstood. [This passage of interiority reveals the surprise and confusion Barton felt.]
“Did you just say my dress is ugly?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I did.”
I took a deep breath and replied, calmly, “Why would you say that to me?”
“I’m entitled to my opinion,” she said. “Your dress is ugly; I can tell it’s not well made. Your purse is dirty. I am free to voice my thoughts, and those are my thoughts about you.”
To say it felt like getting slapped in the face would be an understatement; it was more of a punch to the gut. My blood boiled, my heart raced, but still I kept my voice at an even keel. [We see the inner struggle escalate.]
“You are entitled to your own opinion,” I said. “But we also live in congress with other human beings. Why would you say something so aggressive and unkind?”
She reiterated her insults. Her words sliced coolly into the way I looked and the clothes I wore. That’s when I said the one thing I regret saying.
“I wish there were fewer Americans like you traveling abroad,” I told her. “You give the rest of us a bad name.” [This is the end of the exchange but not Barton’s interiority. The essay continues to move forward as the author ponders this woman and what it means to be unkind.]
I turned and walked away, and she yelled one more barb at my back as I walked out of the temple. My hands were shaking as I walked down the street. I felt a strange knot of emotions in my chest: hurt, anger, fear. Why did this woman choose to attack me? Why had she said what she said?
I had just read the wonderful convocation address given by George Saunders to the Syracuse class of 2013. George talks about something he calls a “failure of kindness,” and those three words were very much on my mind. Yes, you could say I had suffered from a failure of kindness. But what I realized was that I, too, had been unkind.
I wish I hadn’t said what I said to her. That came from a place of being wounded, of feeling the need to fight back. I wish I had said: “I hope the people you meet are kind.”
Because I do hope that for her. I hope that she is bathed in loving-kindness, that she is inundated with so much that she cannot help but share it with the world.
While it’s true that kindness engenders kindness, the lack of it can be a powerful teacher. For my remaining hours in Kuala Lumpur, I was abundantly kind to everyone I met. I complimented a girl on her joyful spirit, told shop owners how beautiful their merchandise was, smiled widely and genuinely. I made a point to be kind to these warm, generous people who had so kindly shared their country with me.
And every time I was shown kindness, no matter how small, I felt immeasurably grateful. That woman gave me a great gift. She reminded me that we all have a choice to be kind, and we are presented with that choice many times a day. [Barton’s theme is presented beautifully in this last line of interiority.]
Next comes an essay from Rudri Bhatt Patel. “The Mother of the House” is a short literary piece where the featured action is a woman cooking bread at the stove—but the essay stretches miles beyond that moment. It is an expansive essay told in very few words.
THE MOTHER OF THE HOUSE
by Rudri Bhatt Patel
Published in Brain, Child: The Maga
zine for Thinking Mothers, January 2015
My mother tells me that she doesn’t know what home is anymore. I sigh, not wanting the words to land. [Patel sets up an interesting mother/daughter conflict with hints of their history in only two sentences.] She sits at my dining table, while I make her fresh roti, an Indian bread that I devoured as a little girl. Her hands lay in her lap, and her half-smile reflects her ambivalence. I notice her veins, the bright blue lines laying roads on her arms.
“I don’t get it, Mom. What do you mean? When you are with family, it isn’t enough. You also complain that your apartment feels lonely. Which one is it?” I flip the round roti on our stove, my elbows awkward and displaced as I try to save the bread from burning.
She tries to explain. “When you lose your companion,” she says, “there is no place that fulfills you. This is my new normal after Dad’s passing.”
I feel the weight of her words and my mouth opens, but the words are stuck. Instead I watch as a piece of the bread burns at the edges.
“It is too late. There is nothing to save.” [These lines of dialogue jar the narrator and change the tone of the piece, escalating the tension. The lines have two meanings here: It’s too late to save the man they are mourning, and it’s too late to save the bread (which represents the present).] My mom interrupts my thoughts as I toy with trying to save the roti.
For a minute, I am confused. I am unclear whether she is talking about her loneliness or the bread. The conversation about her displaced home occurs, almost on repeat, every time my mother and I intersect. She confesses her pendulum of discontent. I reply in silence.
I accept that this is her new voice. The voice of a widow mourning the loss of a life she keeps referring to in the present tense.
What I didn’t expect is how much I’ve started to mother my own mom. [This simple sentence allows readers to imagine the other ways these women’s roles have changed. It expands the essay beyond this moment in the kitchen.] I am a forty-something raising my eight-year-old daughter and taking care of my mother, too. When my daughter comes home from school, I ask her those familiar words that resonate in cars all over the country, “How was your day?” Sometimes she replies with a boisterous response; other times I plead with her to confess at least one detail. When I ask my mom the same question, she will often respond with a single-word answer, and like a good “parent,” I keep prodding her until she reveals that her stomach hurt at night and she didn’t get much sleep. [The reader and Patel accept the new normal. The roles have been reversed.]
This next essay is from travel writer Lynn O’Rourke Hayes. In her piece, “An Eddy In Time,” Hayes explores the idea of letting go during a fishing trip with her grown son. The essay is universal in its topic and is made individual by Hayes’s outdoor adventures—both past and present.
AN EDDY IN TIME
by Lynn O’Rourke Hayes
Published in The Huffington Post, November 2012
Fly rod in hand, I eased into the warm waters of the storied Madison River. [Hayes leads us into her world, and the mood is set.] My son, Ben, was just steps behind me, eager to wet his line. Despite my felt-bottomed shoes, I faltered slightly, slipping off the rounded, moss-covered rocks below my feet.
“Here, take my hand,” Ben said softly behind me. “I’ll help you.”
Steadied by his strength, together we pushed forward, bolstered against the rippling current.
At 6'3", my oldest son towers over me now. This should come as no surprise. Mothers with children older than mine had long presaged it would happen like this; a fast-forward blur of growth spurts, sporting events, back-to-school nights and prom dates. But really, wasn’t it just yesterday that I took his small hand in mine and walked him into preschool? And just last week that I steadied him on skis as he slipped down a snowy pathway during a family ski holiday? And now, some twenty years later, he is holding me upright as we wade into these braided waters under the wide Montana sky. [This is an essay about recognizing her son is grown, accepting that he is an adult.]
This was more than a casual weekend. He had called to suggest we meet for a few days of mother-son fly-fishing, an interest we have shared since his boyhood. Our destination would be the mountains and rivers of Big Sky country, a landscape we both love. After, we would both head to Northern Idaho for the big event. In just seven days, he would wait at the end of yet another pathway to catch that first glimpse of his beautiful bride.
Throughout the weekend, we fished favorite streams and crossed canyons via zip line, joking about the next “big leap” he would soon take. We walked through the woods with his two golden retrievers, Bridger and Jackson, and reminisced about our family life. We both ordered curried chicken for lunch and lamented our mutual metabolism that required us to leave the banana bread at the counter, particularly now, the weekend before the wedding.
I wondered if there wasn’t something important, something meaningful I should say. Some kind of prenuptial, motherly advice I could offer. But it wasn’t required.
Someone asked if I felt that sense of loss some women suffer, a heart-splitting notion that marriage somehow meant losing your son to another woman. For us, there is none of that. I know that I will always be his mom and she will always be his girl.
Each evening we retreated to our room at the Big Sky Lodge, curled up with the dogs, reviewed the day’s events, and planned for the next. We shared our individual enthusiasm for the upcoming wedding festivities. I smiled with deep pleasure when he spoke with confidence of his decision to marry Lyndsay and how special and strong he believed their relationship to be. There was no hesitation. Only eager anticipation.
From time to time, I would catch glimpses of a much younger Ben. [Hayes braids the boy and the man brilliantly.] A familiar, silly grin. A childlike glance in a moment of indecision. But mostly, I saw a sure-footed man, eager to embark on this next chapter of his life.
On our last afternoon, we made one more stop along the Gallatin, hoping to improve our luck. While we both knew this weekend wasn’t just about the fish, a little more action would have been welcome. Once again, Ben provided a steady hand as we waded into the water. As the sun dropped behind the cliff and soft evening light prevailed, we took turns casting, attempting to lure the wily trout from its safe hideout.
At one point, my line became hopelessly entangled. Without hesitation or frustration, Ben quietly took my rod and said, “Not to worry. I can help.” It’s what I might have whispered two decades ago when he fell off the jungle gym or scraped his knee in a Rollerblade spill. [Hayes points out their changing roles.] But now, somehow it seemed just right that he would be the problem solver, the one to take the lead.
As the weekend came to a close, he said, “Mom, your baby boy is getting married. Can you believe it?”
What I believe is that time mysteriously evaporates and in the blink of an eye, that once mischievous toddler strides back into the room as a confident, young man. A man insightful and caring enough to create this eddy in time, in the scant hours before dozens of friends, family, and a long list of last-minute details would vie for his attention.
Knowing he has become this measure of a man provides soul-satisfying comfort. I am certain he will be a fine husband and father, locking arms with his wife through rough waters and calm seas. He’ll be present when their child takes that first shaky step, hesitates on the first day of school, or ties the first fly.
And with this knowing, I will shed tears of pride and joy as he reaches for the hand of his lovely bride, closes his own around hers, and before family and friends, promises to love her and hold her steady. For always. [This last line resonates with trust and happiness.]
This last essay is from Lisa Fugard. In “Here A Bushbuck, There A Crane,” the author revisits South Africa, and as she does, she is brought back to morning drives with her father, “through the kingdom of the animals” to the “world of Irish nuns.” As the essay evolves, Fugard realizes that those early drives set her on a lifel
ong journey.
HERE A BUSHBUCK, THERE A CRANE
by Lisa Fugard
Published in The New York Times, September 1999
I was driving along the R572 between Messina and Pontdrif when I spotted the large blackbreasted snake eagle perched on a telephone pole. I braked, reversed, and stepped slowly out of the car so as not to startle it. I used my binoculars for a moment, out of habit, and then put them down. There was something about looking through them that made the eagle seem as if it were in a separate world. [Fugard tells readers right up front that she wants to be close to the creatures she meets along her journey.] It wasn’t. Barely twenty feet of hot asphalt separated us.
In a game reserve, I might spend two to three minutes looking at such a bird and then move on in search of larger game, but when I’m driving the small dirt and tar roads of South Africa, any animal sighting, no matter how humble, feels like a privilege.
I quietly eased myself onto the trunk of my car and watched the eagle. Wind ruffled its black feathers. In its talons I noticed a large bloody hunk of something scaly—lizard or snake. The eagle scanned the landscape and periodically glanced at me with eyes that were a piercing yellow.
I often think about those eyes. I want to say that the eagle looked at me with utter detachment, but that doesn’t quite capture the sense of mystery I felt while spending half an hour with that animal. [The author is fascinated, and the reader feels it, too.] The more I stared at that eagle, the more unknowable it became. Who needs encounters with aliens when there are animals on this Earth?
My delight in these poor man’s safaris, as I call my modest back-road adventures, goes back to my childhood in South Africa where I grew up and in particular to early-morning drives to school with my father.
Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays Page 4
