Mother Daughter Me

———

M
Y LONGING FOR HER WAS ALWAYS THERE. WHAT I WANTED MORE
than anything was my mother’s attention. I plotted and I campaigned. I hatched plans. I pleaded. Then, just when I thought I had her, she would slip from my grasp. As the disappointments piled up, I learned to focus on pinpoints of hope: The less demanding the request, I figured, the greater my chances of success.

By fifth grade, I had pared my expectations back to a single meal. I invited my mother to have lunch with me, a tradition at the elementary school in our little beach town. Once or twice a week a parent could be seen in the lunchroom, seated at one of the short tables, knees high to the chest, gamely eating a Sloppy Joe or a hamburger or a grilled cheese sandwich, washing it down with the standard-issue carton of milk.

I wanted my mother to be one of those lunchtime parents. I would make it easy for her. I would get Mr. Cook’s permission to leave class early and wait for her out front. She would drive up in the Buick station wagon, and as she walked toward me she’d beam one of her megawatt smiles that told me no one and nothing else in her life mattered. I would beam back. Though barely clearing five foot three (and only with the help of a profusion of thick, wavy hair), she was huge in my mind’s eye and would grow still taller as she approached me. I would take the hand of this giant among mothers and guide her to the lunchroom.

We would sit down at the spot I had picked out for us. She would gush about the delicious food and the fresh milk (“Divine,” she would say). In deference to my sweet tooth and her own caloric vigilance, she would offer me her dessert. By the time she left, all the other kids’ doubts about my mysterious home life would be put to rest once and for all, as this mother–daughter breaking of bread would signal to them an epoxy-like bond. For thirty precious minutes my schoolmates would see that I, too, had a mother—and not just any mother but one to beat the band, beautiful and glamorous and shiny with life.

For months, I begged her to do this one thing. Her excuses were many and resolute, if not always convincing. (Even a nine-year-old can sift the linguistic chaff from the grain.) But I persisted with my entreaties until, finally, one day she came.

It was Taco Day, my favorite. The visit lasted one lunch period, but my memory stretches it to become an epic. Our beige Buick, a mighty vessel of a car, glided into the parking lot with regal ease. As my mother opened the car door and touched her high heels onto the ground, the pavement glistened in the Southern California sunlight. I was waiting for her, of course, and, true to my fantasy, when she caught sight of me her look was one of unalloyed delight. In the lunchroom, we sat with a few of my classmates, whom she greeted with one of those radiant smiles. I could tell that they were bewitched. She placed her small paper napkin in her lap and lingered over the two beef tacos on her plate as if they were foie gras, pronouncing them—yes—divine. I ate my own small square of white cake with chocolate icing and my mother’s too.

After lunch, I took her to my classroom. Mr. Cook was seated at his desk, grading papers. As we entered the room, he looked over his reading glasses and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Tipsy with pride, I introduced him to my heavenly mother. No doubt he had been expecting a dowdy bluestocking, for his gaze was fixed on her. “This is the mother who sends Katie to school with math puzzlers to share with the class?” he must have asked himself. Then I showed her my desk, which was in the middle of the room, “equidistant” to the walls, I pointed out, casually tossing off my new vocabulary word. There at the front of the desk stood my golden spelling-bee trophy.

When it was time for her to go, I accompanied her back to the car,
past my regular four-square group out on the playground, past the courtyard where a papier-mâché version of Quetzalcoatl was under construction, past the girls’ room and the principal’s office and into the parking lot.

She put her hand inside her purse and I heard the jangle of keys. Instead of stiff with fear at the sound, I was calm and happy. I hugged her and held on. “I’m so proud of you, sweetie pie,” she said. When she reached the car, she turned to look at me, rounded her lips, and sent a loud smooch into the air. And then she was gone.

———

W
HENEVER I ARRIVE IN SAN DIEGO, THE FIRST THING I WANT TO
do is leave. It’s the sun, which shines without mercy. At the airport, I’m surrounded by happy travelers streaming in from sun-deprived cities, their compasses set for the beach and SeaWorld. I want to stop them and ask if they’ll take me home with them—to Minneapolis or Des Moines, Seattle or Detroit. San Diego is stingy with its shade, and the ever-present sun makes me feel not lifted but low, unsure of my footing.

The summer sun, of course, is the worst, and today, in late August, it’s already relentlessly bright at 9:30
A.M.
To my relief, I’ve arrived with plans to stay no more than a few hours. I’m on a mission. I’ve flown to San Diego to help my mother carry out her plan to leave after nearly forty-five years.

A seasoned mover (some would say a compulsive one), I’ve spent weeks helping my mother with the logistics, even recruited my favorite moving man—a burly and jocular Irishman named Kieran, who specializes
in transporting pianos but hauls around entire households, too—to drive his truck down from Northern California and collect my mother’s possessions. And now it’s time for us to get on the road and start the drive to San Francisco.

I take a taxi from the airport to my mother’s house, and when I arrive, Kieran and his crew are already there, loading the truck with the possessions my mother has chosen to bring with her. Among them are two pianos—one Steinway grand and one Yamaha upright. I pull up just as Kieran and two of his guys are rolling out the stunning Steinway, my idea of perfection embodied in a single musical instrument.

Cheryl, the professional downsizer my mother hired a month ago, is directing the movers and making a few last-minute additions to the contents of my mother’s Honda sedan, which Cheryl has packed expertly with several boxes of legal files, a Waterpik, various driving pillows, a couple of large exercise cushions held together with duct tape, paper bags filled with a month’s worth of various vitamins, medications, and Metamucil, and at least a dozen rolls of paper towels. I notice right away that my delicate, birdlike mother, for years reluctant to venture much beyond a ten-mile radius from her house, is surprisingly calm, and I guess that Cheryl is the reason.

A large woman in her early sixties who towers over my mother, Cheryl gives the car a final inspection. Then something happens that’s completely out of character—not for Cheryl, I gather, but for my often skittish and always hyper-cerebral mother. Cheryl folds my mother into a lingering hug, then stands back, sets her large hands on my mother’s shoulders, looks deep into her chestnut eyes, holds her gaze, and takes several deep inhalations. “Remember to breathe,” she says, like a football coach sending a nervous freshman onto the field. My mother nods obediently.

I climb in behind the wheel. We wave goodbye to Cheryl and the movers and pull away from the house. Pretty soon, we’re zooming north on Interstate 5. With nearly five hundred miles to travel, I hope to reach San Francisco in nine hours, a calculation trickier than your average Google Maps reckoning, as I’ve had to figure in frequent restroom breaks for my mother. Once we’re out of L.A. and heading inland, we hit the southern Central Valley and long, monotonous stretches of I-5. But the miles aren’t
boring to my mother, who sits in wide-eyed wonderment at towns with names like Buttonwillow and Lost Hills.