The Year My Mother Came Back (16 page)

FIVE

I miss Julia. We all do. Spring break is next week and I can't wait. She's so busy with rowing practice that we rarely see her.

“Hi, Mom.” It's the first time Julia has called home in a month.

“Hi, Honey. We're so excited to see you.”

“Actually, I'm calling to tell you that Zoe invited me to meet her. She asked me to visit with her and her family in Florida for four days. I wanted to give you a head's up that I'll only be home for the last two days of break.”

“Wow.”

I'm thrilled for Julia and Zoe. And terribly disappointed for us. I feel usurped and insecure and excited and curious and confused and filled with love. I'm all these things at once.

“Not only will I meet my birth mother, I'll get to meet my two half-sisters. I'm so excited!”

What if Julia likes her biological family more than ours? They probably don't brood. Maybe Julia won't need us anymore. I feel obsolete and lonely, as if Julia has already chosen Zoe over me.

I picture Zoe at twenty, the age she was when we met her at the adoption agency, nineteen years ago. She was seven months pregnant. Brad and I had waited two years for a baby and had almost given up hope, when Zoe asked to meet us. We just needed her approval.

“I was adopted, when I was a baby,” Zoe told us, at that first meeting. “I want the adoptive parents to be at the birth, so they can bond with this baby right away. Alice and Brad, I want both of you to be there.” Zoe grinned at us and giggled. “I approve!”

I'M ON MY
way out the door when Julia gets home. After five days in the Florida sun, her skin is golden, and her hair is streaked with blond. She's wearing flip-flops, tank top and shorts, which show off her newly athletic body. From all the rowing, she's become powerfully muscular. She looks glorious.

I give her an enormous hug. “I'm racing to pick up Eliana.”

“I'll come with you.”

“Great! She'll be thrilled.”

We walk the six blocks, passing street vendors, nannies with strollers, a violinist playing Tchaikovsky, business men and women, a woman collecting bottles from garbage cans, a postal worker, New Yorkers of all stripes racing, biking, scootering, wheelchairing, window-shopping, sauntering, and jogging up and down Broadway.

“I had an amazing time,” says Julia, as we walk.

“What was it like when you first saw each other?” I ask. “What is Zoe like? I want to hear everything. Was it wonderful, confusing, overwhelming, intense, joyful, all of the above? Did you have feelings you never had before?”

“Not until right now,” she says, her eyes welling up. “When I was there, it was so familiar and easy. Zoe is a lot like me, temperamentally. I felt comfortable with her instantly. Actually, Zoe had to have a minor operation last week. I think it's called an “umbilical hernia.” They had to put some stitches in, because her bellybutton keeps opening up—something like that. She kept apologizing because she was laid low, and I ended up taking care of the little girls a lot of the time, but they're adorable, and it made it more comfortable for me, because I knew what my role was.”

“I thought about you all week, but I didn't want to intrude.”

“I appreciate that a lot, Mom.”

“Do you think Zoe would want me to call her?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Definitely. She told me she hoped you'd call.”

“I REMEMBER THE
first time we met, when I said,
‘I approve,'
and you guys looked so happy,” Zoe said to me on the phone the next morning. “I love the photo and the letter you sent me when Julia was six months. I took them out every year on August twenty-third, and wished Julia a happy birthday.”

“I've often wondered, Zoe, did you ever have regrets about the adoption?”

“Nope.”

A moment of silent disbelief. “Never?”

“Never. I knew you'd be good parents.”

This is oddly disturbing to me. I'd always assumed that Zoe had gone through a maelstrom of doubt—the kind of Sturm und Drang I would have felt in her situation. No qualms about giving her baby up for adoption? That's crazy! It's such a foreign concept to me. I have regrets about
everything!
I bought a small coffee this morning, and now I regret not getting a large. How could Zoe not have had second thoughts about giving up her newborn baby? I guess it's because she's not the Sturm und Drang type, but still.

“I remember the moment I knew you'd be a good mother. When I was in labor, and I barfed on you,” Zoe giggled. “Do you remember?”

“I do.”

“And it didn't bother you at all. You just cleaned me up and took care of me, in this very maternal way.”

“That's how you knew I'd be a good mother?

“Yes.”

“And that's why you never doubted your decision?”

“Yes, I just knew.”

“Did you change your mind about us when you heard that Brad and I divorced?”

“Not at all. I felt bad for you guys, but I knew you'd both continue to take care of Julia. Look how beautifully she's grown up. You did a great job as parents.”

“Thanks. Yeah, we did okay. Zoe, did you ever find your own birth mother?”

“Nope. I've never been interested in meeting her.”

“Never?”

“Nope. Not interested.”

“Really? I would have thought . . .”

My sentence trails off. I guess it's a blessing to have no ambivalence. But I can't help assigning symbolic value to Zoe's umbilical hernia. She was separated from her biological mother at birth. Twenty years later, she gave her first-born baby to us. At age thirty-nine, Zoe's bellybutton—where the umbilical cord once connected her to her birth mother—has not fully closed. That first wound won't heal.

“Zoe, I hope it's okay with you that I called today.”

“Are you kidding? I was hoping you'd call. I'm thrilled to hear from you.” She paused, then said, “I thought you might not approve.”

“Approve of what?”

“Of Julia coming to see me.”

Do I approve? I had always expected Julia to meet Zoe. I'd anticipated that it would be a rite of passage for Julia. I didn't expect it to be such a challenging rite of passage for me. It requires letting go—not my strong suit. Is this the garden-variety heartbreak every mother feels when her child leaves home? Or am I losing something more, as Julia, on the cusp of adulthood, begins this new relationship, rationing her limited free time between Mom on the East Coast, Dad on the West Coast, and Birth Mother in Florida? Or am I brooding simply BECAUSE I HAVE AN INNATE NEED TO BROOD?

“MOM, HOW LONG
have I had the fixator?” Eliana has recently graduated from a walker to crutches.

“Five months.”

“When does it come off?”

“May. Next month.”

IT'S MAY. THE
fixator and the six bolts have finally been removed from her leg! Eliana now wears a hot-pink full-leg plaster cast. The femur will be compromised and fragile for another few months while new bone fills in the holes. She's in the cast for ten days. After that, she'll have to relearn how to walk.

THOUSANDS OF MIGRATING
birds are passing through Central Park, communing in this avian oasis, singing like crazy. Through the trees are flashes of bright yellow, orange, red, blue feathers. The park ranger tells me that the eccentric wild turkey has finally flown away—probably in search of a mate. Hooray turkey!

SIX

“I'm treating you to lunch, Mom.”

“Thank you, Sweetheart. No argument from me.”

I was twenty-two years old. It was June 1977. We were at my favorite Indian restaurant, in Greenwich Village. Mom and I had finally made peace with each other. Ever since she visited me at Princeton a year ago and spent the night in my dorm room, something had clicked. There'd been a sea change. She and Dad seemed also to have made peace with each other. She had made peace with herself.

I'd graduated Princeton the previous June, and my first year out of school was wonderful. I was living in a loft in New York City. For the first time in my life, I was supporting myself—barely, but still.

The turbaned sitar player and tabla player sat cross-legged on the Persian rug covering the wide window seat. My mother and I sat at a table near the duo, enthralled by the music and by the plates of food passing by: steamy curries, sizzling tandoori platters, deep-fried pakoras, and puffy golden poori bread, each one more aromatic than the next.

“Mmmm, everything looks and smells so delicious,” said Mom. She looked older and grayer, but more relaxed, wearing a loose-fitting, Indian-print cotton dress and a long necklace of carved wooden beads.

The waiter brought our menus.

“The lunch special is enough for two to share, if that's okay with you, Mom—”

“Whatever you order is fine with me.”

“Sir? We'll have the vegetable pakoras, shaag paneer, lamb curry, poori, and two mango lassis.” The waiter left with our order.

“How's the loft working out?”

“It's a fantastic rehearsal space. I hope you and Dad can come see the new piece I'm working on with Anne.”

“I'm sure we can.”

“Anne is an incredible dancer and choreographer. She has this beautiful combination of stillness and intensity. I love collaborating with her.”

“Does she live in the loft?

“Nope, no room. At last count, I have eight roommates.”

“Eight!”

“It's become a crash pad for the downtown dance and theater crowd.”

“Is it worth the hassle?”

“Well, it's cheap. I only have to type two days a week.”

“How's the job?

“It's a typing job, with incidental teaching. I love the teaching and I have plenty of time to rehearse, so all in all, it's pretty good. Yum, aren't the pakoras terrific?”

“Delicious.”

“We each pay only fifty dollars a month, but forget about privacy. And then there's the brothel downstairs —”

“Brothel?”

“Oops, forgot to mention—”

“Alice!”

“That's why the rent's so cheap.”

“Don't you think it's time to move?”

“Actually, Seth and I are looking for an apartment together.”

“Mazel tov! I'm happy for you.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course. Why wouldn't I mean it? I like Seth.”

“You do?”

“Sure. He's a nice guy, and you're clearly fond of each other. What's not to like?”

“Wow. This is the first time you've approved of any of my boyfriends.”

“Huh. I suppose you're right. You've grown up. I have, too. As long as he makes you happy, I'm happy for you.”

“Thanks, Mom, that means the world to me. What about you? How's your new job?”

“Best job I've ever had.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I love everything about Empire State College. I love mentoring. I love my students and my colleagues. It's my dream job. They even pay me well, how d'ya like that—a first for me, after all those adjunct positions. I'm so grateful this job doesn't require a doctorate. You know how long I worked on that damn dissertation.”

“Yup.”

“I've finally found myself, at age fifty-seven. Call me a late bloomer.”

“You're a late bloomer!”

“This is the first time in years that I am truly happy.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I was depressed for such a long time—even before I had cancer.”

“I didn't know.”

“Oh, c'mon, Alice. I'm sure you knew, on some level. I'm convinced that my depression caused my cancer. Which reminds me—Great news! I just got a clean bill of health. Cancer-free for ten years!”

“Wonderful!”

“After the cancer, I was terribly unhappy. I was so disfigured, I no longer felt like a woman. But now—please indulge me, Alice, I want to tell you a story—I have a colleague at work named Seymour. His office is next to mine, and he flirts with me. Look at me, I'm blushing. It's not an affair, but it's a genuine flirtation. It makes me happy. Flirting with Seymour makes me feel alive. I feel more alive than I've felt in a very long time.”

After hugging Mom good-bye, I walked up Second Avenue toward the loft, feeling so buoyant it was all I could do to keep from skipping—or floating—and I realized how remarkable that lunch was. After a decade of Sturm und Drang, we loved each other again. It was official! This wasn't just a truce. We were no longer warily testing the waters. It had been a whole year that we enjoyed being together. As awful as our adolescent relationship had been, from this day onward, it was going to be great. And I was so thrilled for Mom. She was finally happy. God, this was a new dawn for her. She survived cancer. No recurrence for ten years—hooray! She finally achieved the professional success that eluded her all these years. After going through hell, she was at the height of her powers. Her happiness made me happy.

TWO WEEKS LATER,
my mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the early morning. Dad said they were both asleep, when she bolted upright with her head in her hands, groaned in pain, and fell back on her pillow. She never regained consciousness. A fault on her main artery burst. She died of cerebral hemorrhaging from a ruptured aneurism.

AND THEN I
was in Colorado, two months after her death, trying to create a piece about her. My choreographer friend Anne and I were living for one month in Boulder, in an old miner's cabin high up a mountain, two vertical miles out of the city. We pumped water from a well and bathed outdoors under a canvas army-surplus shower. We drove down the mountain every day to rehearse in a sun-drenched, maple-floored dance studio in town. We were creating a dance-theater piece called
Separation in Four Parts.

I had never lived in such a beautiful place as this. And I'd never felt so lost and unrooted, as if I might float away. I scrambled up to the summit behind the cabin and watched an eagle circling over the ravine. I sat at the edge of the cliff, fighting vertigo, fighting the urge to leap off the edge and fly. I wondered what it must be like to soar on air currents like the eagle, defying gravity, unafraid. The eagle made me think about Mom.

It's risky business, transforming grief into something else before its time, giving it a shape, putting it outside yourself, to examine and edit and craft into something beautiful, performing it for an audience before you've finished grieving. It's an occupational hazard of being an artist.

Being in Boulder and creating this performance was a wonderful way to honor my mother, but it wasn't helping me to mourn. Some days, I felt strangely detached from her death, as if it didn't really happen. Death was the subject of our new show, but constructing the piece was helping me to keep her alive. I struggled with this.

“The Giant and Puppet Show” was Part 1 of
Separation in Four Parts.
Anne was a beautiful dancer, riveting to watch, even in a rehearsal room, even when she was perfectly still. Anne was the Giant. She sat silently on top of a tall ladder, wearing an embroidered Tibetan prayer robe with long sleeves that extended past her hands, and an enormously long black skirt that covered the ladder and draped onto the floor.

The skirt doubled as a puppet stage. I sat on the floor below the ladder with a hand puppet, which reached through the opening in the long skirt, searching for the Giant, trying to get her attention by telling jokes, singing love songs, throwing tantrums.

But the Giant was transcendent and unreachable. Arms extended like wings, her torso turned in the slowest possible slow motion, like a shape-shifting cloud, or an eagle weightlessly riding the wind.

I try to remember what my mother was like in that very brief time—the last year of her life, the year when she was happy for the first time in years. She and I were finally close again. She had just come back from her long sojourn in the land of illness and despair and anger—and so had I. I want to remember her the way she was then, in her brief, glimmering coda of true happiness.

I pull an old scrapbook off the bookshelf in the living room and open to a clipping from the Empire State College newspaper from 1977. There's a photo of Mom. No longer beautiful, she's a pleasant-looking woman of fifty-seven, with warm eyes, wrinkly skin, short curly gray hair. She's looking slightly to the left, listening intently to someone off-camera, perhaps a student she's mentoring. The text surrounding the photo is the eulogy given at her funeral by her friend and colleague Lois Lamdin, an associate dean at the college. I remember trying to listen to her eulogy at the funeral, but I was crying too hard to hear. I had been asked if I wanted to say something, but I couldn't do it. If I spoke at her funeral, it would mean she was actually dead.

I curl up on the sofa and read.

“Those of us who worked with Louise Cohen carry in our hearts indelible images of this woman we loved so dearly. We remember Louise spending hour upon hour of patient, loving time with students, laughing and crying with them, opening up vistas of the intellectual world she inhabited. When problem students came along, we assigned them to Louise, and then, magically, they were no longer problem students. Louise said all her students were either beautiful or brilliant, but most often both. And with her loving encouragement and support, they usually became brilliant and beautiful.

“We will remember the Louise who brought us cookies and the solace of her presence when we were down, and told us how beautiful and brilliant we were. And Louise at graduation, such a few weeks ago, smiling with embarrassment as student after student stopped at the microphone to pay special tribute to their mentor.

“We will remember Louise as a woman totally devoid of materialism. When others talked about new clothes and cars and houses, she talked about ideas and feelings and philosophical first principles. Her only pride was in her family, in Ira and Madeline and Alice and Jennifer.

“Louise never met a person she didn't like, and she could discern and draw out the best qualities in all of us. We remember her ingenuousness, her honesty, her sense of wonder that the world and all the people in it were good. And we will remember how, when any issue, any policy, any course of action was discussed, Louise would ask the basic question: ‘Will any one be hurt by this?' And if the answer was yes, then arguments of mere logic or expediency could not move her. She became, gradually, this gentle woman, our conscience, the one voice that spoke up always, fearlessly and at any cost, from her impassioned sense of justice, for the rights of the individual human being.”

I put the scrapbook away and climb into my bed, pulling the down comforter up to my chin. This was my mother. This loving and beloved woman was my mother, as were all her other shape-shifting incarnations. My brilliant, adoring mother, who protected her three babies with fierce dedication. The woman who visited the jaws of death and returned angry and cold, an unrecognizable ghost of herself. The loving mentor, filled with life and happiness and confidence, who—as soon as she returned fully to life—suddenly died.

I roll onto my stomach and cry silently, my face pressed into the pillow.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you so much.