MEMOIR
My Mother’s Past is Always Present
A story of inherited loss
Long before I had a sense of “I,” there was this feeling of my mother’s incompleteness, her almost there-ness, a disconnection I could not put my finger on. Sudden and abrupt — mom unplugged like a needle lifted mid-song. And always surrounding, swirling as a clue, was the fiction of those, one generation removed, who had come before me. Photographed people, fragments of the past. Contributing to or taking away from the greater whole? I was never sure. Familial connections stuck in time like a blinking clock after losing power — hour after hour after hour.
I learned that family is a stone tossed across the water landing audibly on a high note, sinking directly as if by appointment, leaving a legacy of ever-widening waves, a second-generation ripple echoing with thoughtless predetermination the mold from which it was cast.
Family is a dream fragment picking at memory throughout the day. I want to remember.
I am three. I am four. I am five. I am six. There is a chair I sit in, where I wait for my mom to come home from work. It is simple, straight back, no arms, short legs; originally flowered, now reupholstered to a serious and somber wheat. It’s still the same chair, still my spot; we are now just a little less comfortable with each…
