In Dreams and Waking Life

Boxing Day 1967

Solid gold ring on a satin pillow.
You have no idea how short your time will be.
She, only 18 and he a mere 22.
Is this out of love,
or the dangling stigma attached
to unwed mothers?
Do you really love each other?
So young. Do you know?
Love doesn’t look like a coffee stain on the wall.
The porcelain in a trillion pieces.
There’ll be Ajax mixed in
where sugar should be.
You’ll try to kill each other, you know.
With all the passion you have for each other.
Please make it count.
Your time is so short.
Death will do you part.
My mother at 20 has no idea her life
is half over.
My father at 24 still thinks it’s ok to smoke
Around my mother-
8 months swollen with my asthmatic sister.
Just make it count.
Your time
is so very short.
I love you both.
You love each other.
You just won’t know it
until your time together
has gone
the way of the four winds.
So just please…
Make it count.


When I wrote the above poem, I was enrolled in a creative writing class two years ago. The exercise was to go back in time and speak to someone you now know. I chose my parents on their wedding day. Looking back on it, I have no doubt that they made it count; their time together. But the truth of it is, I can only assume. All I have are my own memories and forfeited chances to connect with her.

August 20, 1990. The day is gray and pregnant with tears when I go to the hospital one last time. I am thirteen and do not want to go. I am much more interested in doing whatever it is a thirteen year old would rather be doing. But my bike lay abandoned in our driveway and I had no one to walk to the corner store with, to purchase sweets and magazines that day. So I went. I said my last goodbye. That night, the house is filled with food that goes uneaten and well-wishers meant to console. But I don’t want comforting. I do not need it. I do not cry that night- or the next. Three months later, a friend waits outside for me as I charge about my room, stuffing change in my pockets. I swiftly throw my feet into my mom's bubble gum pink Reeboks (we wore the same size) and make my way downstairs. I swing into the bedroom to hurriedly say- like so many times before, “Mommy, ah runnin’ to the store wit Jill- ah comin’ back just now.” But she is not there. My God. She. Is. Not. There. It hits me. I sit down on the neatly made bed and proceed to break…Finally. My father wondered when it would happen. My eldest sister is grateful. I have officially allowed myself to feel the loss. December comes. We are reading The Friends in my English Lit class. Overwhelmed by how much the book mirrors my own young life, I run blindly out of the classroom. I slump down in the hallway against the lockers, an ocean of tears unleashed. It is the last time I cry for her, directly.


There were so many times I questioned why this woman left my life so soon. I can recall waking at 5 a.m. Ritually getting on my knees. Asking God to keep her around just long enough to see me graduate high school or make Honor Roll again. Those and the like, are the foolish requests I made. As if I would somehow be alright if she was taken the very next day. If I had been twenty years old when she was ill, cancer devouring her body from within- I may have asked to keep her alive long enough to see me graduate college or get married. Who knows. Or would I have known better by then?


Years later, I am in the handbag section of a department store. I am with my significant other. It’s Mother’s Day. He needs help selecting a gift for his mom. All I see are fabulous purses that my mother would love. Every bag I pick out- he claims is too flashy or high-end for his mother. I explode. Make a scene. Tell him that his mother is so God damn plain and has no sense of style. "Pick one and let’s go! I want to get the fuck out of here." But my rage is displaced. I only wish I could buy one for my own beautiful mother, long gone. The tears well. They do not travel down the contours of my face, drop down to their rightful place of healing. But...you ought to know...she had impeccable style-I want to say. Nothing comes. I leave the store ashamed.

It’s late at night and my mother is sitting at the foot of my bed. She cannot stay long. In my dreams, she never can. Always traveling with a large group, she has only moments to check in with me before being on her way to help others. I later find out that when she visits my sisters in dreams, it is very much the same. But tonight she is not urgent. Her manner is more relaxed. She looks upon me with passive eyes. For the first time in a long time, she is not worried or displeased with what she sees.

A few inquiries on her grandchildren but then she must go. She also wants to know how Daddy is. Does he still want his food served for him as though he’s too regal to do it for himself? Deep down I know he’s just tired. He doesn’t ask for much. She never seemed to mind, so I try not to either. I tell her that he needs to remember he only had one wife. Her smile shows amusement and a knowing that is hers alone.

I am not my mother. I see her now, soft auburn hair spilling from a loose bun while she absently shuffles through the mail. She smells of Estée Lauder and spearmint gum. She was always right where she needed to be, unlike me. There is no one to blame. But I blame it on the time. It never was enough, especially not now. She has to go. I wonder why I do not cry for her. I truly love her but I cannot cry. It’s almost like she never left, but she did.

What she left behind is a mosaic of herself in each of the girl children. A proclivity to travel in my middle sister, a Mona Lisa smile in my youngest niece, an intuition in myself. We are all so solidly her in so many ways- that I tend to forget...until I witness my father watching one of us. A lifetime of love behind his weary eyes. They made it count. I know this now.