The Seasons of My Mother

by Marcia Gay Harden

  Jesus rises. Easter is coming. Anxiety overwhelms me. I want my own personal second coming. A second rising. Church songs and Sunday school and cookies, tea and apple juice. On a lake in Texas, a pink table is set for tea. My mother, the Easter Bunny no more, will smile and drink her cupful. My sister will visit, and take her to the Zilker Botanical Garden in Austin. No Easter eggs there. Instead, blooming birds-of-paradise peek from emerald leaves, maroon roses, striped iris. The garden basket is full and waiting to be picked.

  Mother/daughter/sister/worker/actress/boss. Daughter? Racked with guilt about not visiting my mom over Easter, I justify my spring vacation trip with “It’s my since-my-divorce-tradition to take my kids to Waikiki in Hawaii, and stay at the beautiful Halekulani hotel.” (Forever named “Hock of Salami Hotel” by my daughter Julitta when she was seven.) I can sense the kids need to spend time alone with me; I’ve been busy with travel and work, I’ve been depressed and worried, and they miss me. “Please Mommy, let’s go to Hawaii. Pleeeaaaasssseeee?” says Julitta. Hudson logically adds, “It’s our tradition, Mom. We should go.” Eulala offers helpfully, “And I can work in Ty Gurney’s surf shop over the break, and pay for my own lessons.” “I don’t know,” I say. “I miss my mom too.” Again I debate going to Texas, again I ponder Hawaii, and—creaking open the lid on my head—decide in favor of surfing. A glimmer of light leaks in. I pack colorful, foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, three Easter Bunnies, and jelly beans. I cram them into suitcases that are already packed with bathing suits and cotton dresses and colorful hats with no ribbons. I will hide them around our hotel room, in picture frames and under beds, in the slanted shutters and hotel slippers on Easter morning, just as I have done for the past few years. After the giant plane lands in Honolulu, I breathe in the damp air, and let the lush hush of the breeze waft across my cheek as I stand for a moment on the pavement, watching the kids count the bags as I have taught them to do. Colorful leis greet us as we arrive, the aroma of tuberose wafts across the starched white sheets of our suite, and on the balconies we search for dolphins or sea turtles. Leaning out over the rail, we watch the surfers, tanned and poised, skim the long, long breaks of Waikiki, and we drink in the sweet, pineapple-light Hawaiian sunshine. It feels so lovely. I take pictures, and hit SEND.

  Easter morning, I wake the kids for sunrise service on the beach. We gather our Starbucks at dawn and walk the cool morning sand a distance, passing a circle of guitar-playing worshippers sitting on a grassy slope, and eventually we come to a beachside church service. We sit in plastic chairs in the sand, and a voice drones from the giant speakers. The kids look at me respectfully, yet imploring. Please, Mom, I read in their eyes, do you really think this is God? Do you really feel something . . . anything . . . here?

  They’re right. I feel nothing except obligation, and I want to feel Love. The message is vague, the songs too white and too high, there isn’t enough hippie in the attitude, too much polo shirt, not enough fringe, and so we wander back to the guitar group, which is now baptizing a man of fifty and two teenage girls dressed in white. They enter the ocean waves and Hawaiian music is strummed, and people sing, and I feel God dance on the thrum of the ukulele, I feel Love sway with the hula sounds, and I begin to feel a small prick of light. First one head, then another, and then a salty third is ocean-dunked and reemerged, and clinging clothes misshapen by the wet stumble back to the strumming circle, all smiles and congratulations and born again. We are welcomed in, but not fussed over, and one of the teenage girls is crying. Her mother is praying. We drink coffee and eat their muffins, and sip cold apple juice.

  “Mom,” Julitta says, “is Jesus real?”

  “What do you think?” I ask. I don’t want to feed her my answers. I want her to come up with it herself.

  She ponders. Then: “Yes. In our hearts.”

  “Yes. I think so, too,” I say.

  “Do you think He will make you get Alzheimer’s? Like Nani?” she asks.

  I am quiet.

  “Why did Nani get it?” Her voice is tiny now. Soft and curious and scared. “Will I get it?” She holds her breath.

  I look out at the waves. “I pray not,” I say. “I don’t think so. No.”

  “Will you?” She barely whispers.

  I want to say, “Just shoot me if I do.” I think I heard my mother say that once. But I know what my daughter wants. She wants to see me forever safe, forever happy, forever a bunny in an oval egg preparing for a pink tea. I say, “I will work very hard from now on for a cure for Alzheimer’s, Julitta. I don’t want to ever forget you.”

  I rise from the sand, and grab her hand, and say, “Let’s swim!” We all run holding hands into the water. My head begins to clear. The fog begins to lift. Maybe that will be my siphon, my leaf blower, to join the forces of Alzheimer’s research and blast an end to this horrid disease. We rise, and we rise, and we rise, and we rise, in the waves, together.

  Epilogue

  AS WINTER COMES TO AN end in the beautiful New York Catskills, there is a magical moment when the sap miraculously starts to flow through the maple trees on my property. The daytime temperatures rise above freezing, causing every fiber of the bark to breathe a sigh of relief. Then, the nighttime temperatures plummet, causing the wood to harden once more. I love that moment, that exact second in winter, when the frozen world first begins to thaw. The seasons imperceptibly shift, as if spring ponders, one groggy morning, whether she wants to wake up or not. She opens a sleepy eye; it doesn’t last long, perhaps a brief day or two, but in those precise moments, deep in the rich earth, microbes begin to stretch, seeds begin to warm up, bulbs begin to stir, sap begins to run, and soon, soon, spring turns over and throws the snow-white covers off her blanketed grounds and gets out of bed. Rip Van Winkle wakes up.

  In that small, mystical synapse of time, the maple sap flows, and my children and I tap the trees around our lake with delight as we gather the sweet elixir that will soon be boiled down for syrup.

  This yearly miracle was going to be captured in an episode of The Flower Path. The kids would have gathered the maple sap and boiled it down, Mom would have shown how to use maple leaves in an arrangement, or how to dry and press them for greeting cards, but we never got to it. This was one of many opportunities robbed from us. The thief—you know his name—had been planning this robbery for a long time. The thief stops in for dinner regularly now. He tends to hang out longer than he is wanted. We don’t exactly welcome him, but we have come to accept him—what else can we do? He is a regular guest at our dinner table, plucking memory from the desert dish like a plum. Mom gets tired of fighting with him as the day comes to an end. She just wants to sleep. I’m afraid of this thief, and often I don’t know how to go forward. I don’t know how to make everything okay again. I feel as though I am frozen in the second before the sap begins to run. I know, for my mother, there will be no “spring awakening.” No one wakes up. The tapestry unravels. The threads dangle.

  My mother has been so many things in her life: from daughter to mother to teacher, traveler to activist, and more. She has inhabited each position, each identity, each season and stage of her life with grace. Even the “stages” of Alzheimer’s she manages with grace. Stage 4 Alzheimer’s, stage 5, stage 6, and stage 7. I know it’s cowardly, but I don’t want to know where she is. I don’t want to attach a number to her. These are not the stages of her life I want to talk about. This is not the season I want to remember.

  Her legacy cannot be Alzheimer’s.

  “What else, Mom? What else do you want people to know about you?”

  What is the legacy my mother imagines? I wonder.

  She slowly responds, carefully forming each word: “Well, what’s important that people know about me is: My children. My travel. And flowers. And I want to always be helping my children. And helping people.”

  It strikes me that over the years, when I’ve sometimes lost track of my mother’s thread in relation to me, it is in her relationship to herself and to her
community where true growth and exploration were happening. While I was struggling in New York to “make it” as an actress, I lost track of her rise—like the bamboo in the backyard, I hadn’t stood still long enough to see her grow. But others had seen it, and I now discover these events of my mother’s life like unearthed pieces of her tapestry; they come together in stories her friends tell, in pictures I dig from the bottom of a box, in scrap bits of mementos or her scrawled Spanish lessons. Her womanly graduation photo in front of the china cabinet reminds me that she was educating herself, putting herself through college and studying at night and on weekends so that she could graduate with an Associate of Arts degree, which she did, at fifty-seven years old. Her Spanish books remind me that she learned the language well enough to spend a study month in Mexico, where she lived with a host family who spoke no English. And her ikebana community informs me that Mom was an activist. An activist?? My mom?? I’ve learned that in the early 1990s, Mom had made it her mission to reactivate the Fort Worth ikebana Chapter 38, which had dissolved several years before. I’m stunned that I didn’t know that. I feel guilty; I didn’t see it happening . . . I was busy with my own life, preparing for my first Broadway play . . . how could I have not known this? I thought I was the activist—marching in the gay pride movement with my fellow Angels in America cast in New York City. But no. I learn that Mom was already marching in her own way in Fort Worth. Her students explained that Mom had by this time earned four levels of teaching certificates, her present level being First Somu in the Sogetsu School, and she wanted to continue learning and growing, but she had nowhere to study. So she had banded together with some friends and students, writing letters and insisting on meetings, and, with the support of the local ikebana community, finally convinced the Ikebana International Headquarters in Japan to reactivate the chapter. They had begun with twelve members, and Mom had proudly watched their numbers grow.

  In 2012, Mom was honored with a lifetime achievement award by her ikebana group, Chapter 38, as they celebrated their twenty-year anniversary. Our entire family gathered. Seeing her in the midst of so many friends, all expressing how much she had changed their lives, it was clear that Mom’s legacy would not just be her children and grandchildren who surrounded her during the ceremony, but also the legacy of building a place where arts and harmony and peace and beauty could all come together. Mom was delicate that day; her cognizance floated in and out of the flurry of speeches. She wasn’t sure of all the names of her longtime friends; she wasn’t sure of the import of the events around her, but we were. And though it saddened us, we were there to celebrate, and all of her children were bursting with admiration and pride.

  The celebration was just that—a celebration of all that my mom was, and all that my mom is. We celebrated the past and present, but the future is unknown. I have never made peace with the unknown.

  Later that night, in the quiet of her own home, Mom calmly said, “People often tell me things I used to do . . . but I don’t remember any of them. I’m afraid I am losing so much of my memory.”

  “How do you feel about that, Mom?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s nice to know. It’s good because these are things they actually saw me do, so I know it’s true.”

  Yes. It was true. She had done these things. Mom had come full circle. Her grandmother and her mother would have been so proud. She had brought home to Dallas–Fort Worth the riches of her time spent in Japan, where she had enjoyed the greatest adventure of her life. In doing so, she had made many “friendships through flowers”—which is ikebana’s motto. And she had culturally bonded countries and cities through the art of ikebana, which is its mission. Our fierce, kind, capable, and creative mother had, in her own quiet way, changed the world around her, and made it a more beautiful and pleasing place to live.

  The unknown is what we battle now.

  Not long ago I Skyped with Mom and read her some passages from this book.

  “Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s good for the women. It’s helping them. And it is something, the whole arrangements, that come from inside me. They express something inside me about my day.”

  Recently, my sister Sheryl asked Mom what the Japanese word “ikimashō” meant. She said, without hesitation, “Hurry up.” She was right. She had learned that expression thirty years ago.

  It’s time for me to ikimashō. I have come to a blank page, the end of the book. I stare for hours, and then call my mother. I’m afraid to stop, afraid to leave something out, afraid to let go.

  “Hi, Mom. Whatever you are thinking about, I want you to tell me. Whatever you think about your children or your travels, or life, or God, or love; whatever you think about sex, or food, or aging; whatever you are thinking about, anything, I want you to tell me. Okay?”

  I am FaceTiming with her, and I can see that she starts to say something, and then stops.

  “God . . . ,” she says.

  “Do you think about God?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think about God?”

  “Love,” she says. “Love. It happens to everyone. The better the thoughts, the better the thinking.”

  When all is said and done—even without memory—what still exists is love. It is omnipresent. It transcends place and time. It is her true nature. Love.

  I remember one Sunday not long ago, when, with the help of her caregiver, Rose, I’m dressing Mom for church. Pretty gold top with a cowl neck, stretchy black pants, earrings and necklace, makeup, curled hair. Her skin is soft and clear, her eyes gentle, her spirit trusting. She smiles at me, perhaps not really sure of who I am, but feeling happy to be with me. It comes and goes, her recognition of what is around her, and, minutes later, she says “Marcia!” as if she had just discovered the thread. She remembers my face on the tapestry.

  We get in the car, turn on the radio, and sit in stunned silence as Sarah Vaughan begins to fill the space with a soulful, glorious song. I’m sure she is singing to us. She knows we are listening, and she is singing to Mom, and to me, and to Rose as we drive to church on Sunday morning.

  “Eeeverything must change . . . nothing stays the same,” Sarah moans in velvet notes, drawing out the A’s of chaaange and saaame in long and rolling drifts. Her voice is full and throaty, and when she sings the second verse “Everyone must chaaange . . . nooo one stays the saaame,” she clings to the notes, wringing them out in a soft vibrato.

  I slow the car down, not wanting to miss a word.

  “The young become the ooold, and mysteries do unfoold, ’cause that’s the way of tiiime . . .”

  “That’s for sure,” Mom says, her eyes glancing out the window as the Texas landscape swishes by. “That’s a beautiful song,” she says. I turn it up.

  Sarah’s voice begins a haunting build: “There are not many things in life you can be sure of except rain comes from the clouds, sun lights up the sky . . .”

  Mom looks out the window and stares up at the sky.

  Then, when Sarah’s voice hits “and hummingbirds do flyyy,” Mom responds quietly, “I have a hummingbird.”

  The song hits me in the heart, as if we’re being given a lesson in how to go on with our lives, and Mom and Rose and I drive on, through the one traffic light, past the tumbleweed, feeling like we are in church already, in the car, listening to Sarah’s wise and painful voice sing out, while Mom responds to the lyrics.

  Sarah sings “Winter turns to spring,” wrenching the notes of “spring” in a halting plea. Mom says, “yes it does,” and she whispers along with the song, “seasons always change . . .”

  Mom looks at me on “a wounded heart will heal,” and I smile at her. She smiles back. I reach across the coffee cup holder in the car, remembering orange hibiscus in a brown coffee mug, and I hold her soft, cool hand.

  “Wounded hearts do heal,” I think. Especially with mothers who hold you tight, and braid your hair, and caress your heart with gentle counsel.

  I see Rose in the rearview mirror, staring out
the window, blue above, and big white clouds blanketing the sky.

  Sarah’s voice goes high to meet the Texas sky, high and wide, on “mysteries do unfold.” Her voice is soaring now, at once painful and yet joyful, soaring up into the Texas clouds. She sings “fly,” again and again, “flyyyyy, flyyyyy, huuummmingbirds do flyyyy,” and her voice flies away on “fly” . . . and Mom flies with her. She flies, right up into the sky, and holds Sarah’s hand—soaring with angels and birds and joyful voices, looking down on all the people below. Mom is laughing, her hair streaming out behind her, her golden cowl neck ripples like gossamer wings, and she is watching herself, and me and Rose, from above as we drive to church. “Yes, sun does light up the sky,” she says, laughing, the clouds between her teeth. She is lit up like the sun, flying with Sarah Vaughan in a big blue Texas sky.

  We pull into the parking lot, and I have to wait a minute to get out of the car. Sarah knows this. She finishes her anthem.

  “And music, music makes me cry . . .”

  Mom smiles as we wheel her through the parking lot. She cups her hands around her now white hair so it doesn’t get messy blowing in the soft breeze; she adjusts her earrings and fiddles with the gold cross on her neck that once belonged to her mother. Then she closes her eyes, basking in the warmth of the sun.