Amateur Hour

by Kimberly Harrington

  Your eyes are drawn from us, that much is clear. You with Dad’s eyes and you with mine, sort of. They are big, beautiful eyes, perfectly suited to your faces. I almost can’t take them in; they overwhelm me. Together, we have seen chapters upon chapters through those eyes. We have seen how unpredictable and scary a crowd can look even if, before you were born, that crowd would’ve looked fine to me. You have taught me how to see a bucket loader and an excavator because those are apparently two different things. And you have showed me the teeniest, tiniest flowers, the inchworms or neighborhood dogs or spotted piglets, and that I really shouldn’t be worried about you when you jump from a crazy-high boulder into an untamed swimming hole. (I will still worry.)

  We have been looking into each other’s eyes since the first time you were each laid upon my chest and in my drugged-up trying-not-to-hyperventilate state—because as it turns out you get cold fast when you’ve been sliced open and you can’t feel half your body and honestly was I really awake for that?—I remember those eyes. And each time I looked and saw those eyes I thought, “Of course.” All those months of wondering what you would look like, of churning my imagination in an attempt to see all the possible faces, and of course when you were born you looked completely, exactly, and precisely just like . . . you. It was as if a part of me expected your faces, those eyes, all along.

  You have filled up my days with spark and purpose. No matter how much work there is to be done, I always feel a bit down when I’m staring at your backs as you leave to catch the school bus or when I see your sweet faces as you wave to me from the window as the bus rumbles by. And my heart floats when I hear the familiar sounds of the screen door swinging open, a backpack dropping to the floor, and sneakers or flip-flops or snow boots getting kicked off. Of course I tell you those things must be put away immediately and in the right places because we’re not animals, but know my first emotion is gratitude that you are home. That you are with me. Again and again and again. I wonder how I will do when those sounds of doors opening and bags dropping are as infrequent as to require an actual holiday.

  You are the ears, the M*A*S*H-era Radar ears that can’t hear me tell you to turn the TV off but can hear sirens from across town. Yours are the ears that hear music, save it into the hard drive of your brain, and allow it to come out of your fingers when you sit down at the piano later and play it all back. Yours are the ears that we looked at suspiciously when you were a baby; you had that one small round bump right near the opening of your ear. Thirteen years later, it’s still there. It has done nothing to harm you, and when I see it, just like your particular raised eyebrows, it reminds me you were once that small little baby who could fit neatly into the curve of my arm. Sometimes I crook my arm and trace an oval shape within it and say, “Baby Walker used to fit right here” and you always tell me to stop, but I know there is a part of you that loves it. It is the part we all have inside of us, it’s the part that wants to remain small and cared for.

  You fill up our house with sound; piano and the radio, “Mom, listen to this,” as you read me something from your books whether I’m listening or not. There is a small Nerf basketball tossed into that hoop over your closet door and your mouse Oat’s squeaky wheel that kicks in right around bedtime. There is giggling and fighting, hair drying and the loudest singing in the shower I have ever heard in my life. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, all of these stations coming in on the same frequency, and I jam my middle fingers into my ears while I’m trying to draft an e-mail or just think a thought. So that first day of school after summer vacation? Although I have been waiting for it and I am ready, the silence almost breaks me. I can’t believe it’s only 9:45, 10:15, 11:30, noon.

  I worry about what I will do with that silence when you both are grown. What will I do with that? Is it payback for me shushing you and waving my hands at you when I was on a work call in that NO-NO-NO-OH-MY-GOD-GO-AWAY way that I did? Is this the slow burn? I wish I could deposit those sounds in a bank, to take out when everything is too quiet, when I’m traveling away from home, when I’m down. I would withdraw the sounds of you both running down the beach in Maine under the moonlight with sparklers and I would withdraw you telling me the dream you had about a unicorn when you were three. I would withdraw you calling me “mama” because it’s already been years since you’ve called me that, and I would withdraw every single time you unabashedly whispered to me that you love me, love me, will love me forever and will live with me always. I would withdraw every time you asked and begged for my attention, to look at a plane, a truck, a police car, a train, a ferry, a lobster boat, a snowplow, an excavator, a cement mixer, a helicopter, a tractor trailer truck, a car, an ambulance, a fire truck. You wanted my attention so much, all the time, and I didn’t always give it to you.

  I would withdraw the milk-drunk lip smacks and the kitty-cat cries; I would withdraw the sounds your mouth made when you were a toddler and you were talking and breathing through it constantly, huffy and puffy. I would withdraw all those and then some, to deposit back in my heart, to remind myself my life was full of sound and I cursed it. I wondered when I would have silence and time to think. I would remind myself this silence is what I thought I wanted.

  You both hum. So did your great-grandmother. It’s a trait I had completely forgotten about until I was in a thrift store one afternoon and heard the elderly lady who volunteered there humming away. A light and lilting da-da-dee-da-da-da as she arranged and rearranged. In this stranger, I heard my grandmother’s voice again. And when you hum, I feel like you are having a conversation with her. It brings her close. I hope you never stop humming.

  You are the metronome, the ticktock that has always been inside you. You hear rhythms in your head, you play them on the kitchen counter, the floor, you click-cluck them with your mouth. You used to get in trouble for that in class. They had to create “strategies” for you to stop. You are older now, and instead of strategies you have peers. They’re the ones who comment now, about all those sounds you make. This has been described as “disruptive” in the past. It’s taken me all this time to think, yeah, maybe disruptive is exactly what it is. You should always strive to be disruptive in this world. Fitting in and doing what is expected only leads us to be good, little, middle-of-the-road humans. Yuck.

  You are the gentle heart and the scientist, the dreamer and the realist. Four years ago, one of the worst fights you got in that whole summer was over the fate of a cricket. There were so many crickets in our backyard; we heard them all summer, chirping to one another. One had become entangled in a spiderweb and Walker wanted to watch the spider eat the cricket. He understood the food chain and predators and prey. This was how life worked; this was how all life worked really. But Hawthorne wanted to save the cricket—the mere thought of sitting there and observing another creature being killed and eaten felt so morally wrong as to actually be insane. I raced from the house when I heard the explosion of shrieking, shouting and tears, surely someone had been hurt, a stick to the head, something. Instead, you stood in front of me with those big blue eyes, and tearfully explained that the cricket had just been leading its cricket life. It had not been bothering anyone; it was just going about his cricket business. You explained it deserved to be saved, it deserved to live. Just like we all deserved to live. What if its family was worried about him?

  But by then it was too late for the cricket.

  It was the angriest you’ve ever been with your brother. You felt utterly betrayed. It was as if you realized someone you loved with everything you had was, in reality, an actual monster. I understood both of your arguments; I was on both your sides. Most mothers are the worst kind of mothers, the non-side-takers. There are so many sides now. I used to think the world was like a box with a finite number of sides and angles, then you guys showed up, started growing up and disagreeing and branching out into the original and weird and lovely human beings you are and I came to accept instead that it’s a faceted world, with infinite planes and endless reflection
s. I know each of you as well as I can ever hope to know anyone and so, I absorb your anguish. I understand your arguments and I want to be on your sides, both of you. But mostly, in those moments when all hell is breaking loose, I soften to the point of collapse when I realize there are still souls in this ugly world who care so very much about the fate of a cricket.

  You were born a team. You will need to continuously search—with sincerity, with love, with good intentions—for the side you can both always be on. You have sharp minds and good hearts, so I trust you will be able to do this. Please do this for me. Historical evidence suggests it is possible, you’ve always had a connection others have commented on. You get along so well, you play together so well, you genuinely seem to like each other. That’s what they’d say. Of course you are like all siblings and there are power struggles and tattling and smacking and betrayal. I understand everything is changing at a rapid pace for you right now. You’re entering big, scary, exciting phases in your lives. But you still make each other laugh—hard—you understand each other so well that if we’re in a bookstore you can each find a book the other might enjoy (and you’ll be right), and you love each other with everything you’ve got. Most important, you have each other’s backs. I hope you always, always will. Long after your father and I are gone.

  You are all the change I feel in my own life, the change I’m not sure I’m ready for. But here it comes, ready or not.

  The other day, Walker wanted to play a game you guys had invented when you were little. Walker is obsessed with trucks. Hawthorne is obsessed with animals. And the game you invented is called Tranimal Day. Granted, the naming could use some work. Mostly it consists of animals riding around in trucks, pretty straightforward as games go. You have played it for years. And you would play it for hours; sometimes it could easily take up half the day. I always thought of that game as the ultimate expression of your connection, of you understanding what makes the other tick while also getting exactly what you wanted for yourselves. I felt proud of that game in the typical way parents feel proud of something they had exactly nothing to do with.

  You have played this game less frequently over the years, and it’s not like I expected you to come home from college and play it or anything, but when Walker wanted to play it this past week and you said no, you didn’t want to play that game anymore, you just weren’t into it anymore, it was for little kids, it was silly, well . . . I’m pretty sure both my heart and Walker’s heart broke at the exact same time. I think I even said something in a slightly desperate tone like, “Are you sure?! Oh, you should play it. You used to love that game!” when really what I wanted to say is, “How can you be outgrowing things like this, silly things, things I hadn’t thought about but which suddenly mean the world to me, without at least giving me a heads-up? How can you go about this business of getting older without so much as a second thought when I am at least on my thirty-ninth thought about it? I’m not ready, why are you ready?”

  I’ve spent so much time thinking about your firsts, I haven’t thought so much about your lasts. It’s hard for me to imagine you’ll never play that game together again, not even once. But this is the process, I guess. Such a stupid process.

  You are the ghosts. I see you in strangers and strange scenarios, in new landscapes you’ve never seen and in people you’ve never met. I find you. I see your arched brow or your giggle. I see the things you love and they make me think of you. You were with me when I saw horses crowded along the fence line of a pasture in Oregon and I went three miles out of my way to turn around and go back. I couldn’t just keep driving away from those horses. I knew you would love to see a picture of them. You are with me when I’m on a plane and as I’m getting close to landing at a bigger airport than ours back in Vermont, I peek down and see the FedEx hangar with all those planes gathered around like piglets at their mama’s teats. I think about how almost every morning when I used to drive you to school when you were little, we’d see that one single FedEx plane coming in for a landing every morning at 7:35. The regularity of it was comforting, like an alarm clock confirming we were already awake and on our way.

  One time I saw a youth choir perform at a Christmas party and there was a boy singing who was probably three years older than you. He was the teenage you, right down to the glasses and body type. I felt like I was standing twelve feet away from the future you, and I slowly sipped my glass of wine and tried not to cry. I see you everywhere.

  You are with me wherever I go.

  You are everything I didn’t know I needed—in the many specific and unexpected ways I’ve come to need you—and now I cannot imagine the arc of my life without you. You have already forgiven me a thousand times over and loved me through my faults and impatience, my grouchiness and bad cooking.

  You are all the joy I can hold and, gratefully, more than can sometimes be contained. I can feel you both growing away from me and, of course, that’s how this thing works. So when you hold my hand or let me touch your hair, I notice. Randomly and oddly enough, I often think of what Blythe Danner said during her portrait session with her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow. Annie Leibovitz relayed her words. She had said she “really hadn’t been able to hold her daughter like that since she was a little girl.”

  I read that quote years before I would become a mother and I have never forgotten it. Some part of me knew already, how close we would be and then how we would necessarily move away from one another. I realize now I have already held you as closely and tightly and freely as I ever will. That all of that is already over. It hardly seems fair. It hardly seems like enough. It wasn’t enough. And now here we are, with each spin around the sun you move further away from me until, one day, you are loose in the world and our fingers and arms no longer touch.

  You weren’t born to be children always, always mine. You were born to be people, out in the world. I can’t hold both of you to me until the end of time; it’s unfair to all of us. What exactly would the point of that be anyway? And I can’t hold your hands all along the way; your hands must be free and open to hold other hands. Your friends and lovers, your own children maybe one day.

  You are all the joy this life has brought me, in two original packages. I’ve attempted to pour into you what I’ve learned but I know that will only get you so far. You will need to do and see, feel and hear. You will need to make mistakes, big and small. You will need to feel the utter insult of other people’s carelessness and callousness. You will need to understand that people you love and trust more than they deserve will go on to break your heart. Honestly, I’m still trying to understand that myself.

  You are all the joy I hope to absorb and observe, love and learn from in the years and decades to come. I have given myself over to you both in ways you will never know. And that’s okay. That’s what mothers do. I hope you will fall in love—with yourselves, with your lives, with only the people who truly deserve you. And I am beyond words and thoughts and thank-yous that you are mine.

  My perfectly imperfect children.

  When I Die

  When I die, hug each other with force, until no one wants to be the first to let go. I let go first a lot. I can tell you now, I regret it.

  Look into each other’s eyes, and pretend I am looking into them too. Sometimes I had trouble with that. Know that I was lucky and loved far beyond what I deserved. Know that I loved you. Or as my friend Dave Spancer—who is already dead—once said, “I love you all. You’re amazing. Except for the few of you who suck, but even you have your endearing qualities.”

  If my children are still quite young when I die, do not tell them to honor me with forced smiles, this is no Celebration of Life. Not yet. Do not ask them to mind their manners, to say “Thank you” when someone says, “We’re so sorry about your mother.” Life has betrayed them.

  Let them lie down on the ground and kick and scream. Let them rage like wild animals, gnashing their teeth at the unfairness. Let them retreat and close up like a morning glory after the sun has go
ne down. It’s what we all want to do when someone we love dies anyway.

  And wait. Do not plan a funeral or any other thing that would take away from what they need. Circle the motherfucking wagons. Be there for them. Surround them relentlessly with love. Make Mother’s Day something they won’t dread for the rest of their lives. I don’t know how you’ll do it, but do it. Take them to the beach on my birthday and listen to the waves, watch the seagulls grift and swoop. Read books with them and tell them, “There were so many more books she wanted to read.” Read all those books.

  Talk to them about the things that are happening now that you thought I would’ve liked very much. Tell them I loved them; I will love them always. Tell them that I’m so sorry I left them. What kind of mother does that? The worst kind, the kind made from flesh and blood and bone.

  When they are ready, when they feel like they could dance and laugh and do the same party tricks with coins that they did at their great-grandmother’s wake, throw me a party. A big one but nothing too expensive. The previously alive me loved an open bar and a reason to dress up. Do those two things. I don’t care if you serve food, as many of you know I couldn’t feed myself at parties to save my life. So to speak. If you want to truly replicate how I lived, serve mac and cheese at 2:00 a.m. and make everyone eat it straight from the pan.

  If you toast me, whatever you do, raise your glass with a “Here’s looking up your old address!” Henry Blake delivered this toast and the only way it could’ve been better is if Hawkeye delivered it instead. But beggars can’t be choosers, especially beggars who are dead.

  Tell stories about me, but don’t humiliate me. I lived my whole life in fear of humiliation. What you thought of as snobbery or shyness or a reluctance to play volleyball? I just didn’t want to be embarrassed. So don’t embarrass me. I might be dead, but I feel confident this particular fear will live on.