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| Fresh flowers in the Union Square Farmer's Market. 2:30 PM. |
Mother’s Day in New York. A fresh and breezy Sunday; not warm not cold. Did you know Americans spend about $4 billion on Mother’s Day. And something like $70 million for the cards. And that they eat out more on Mother’s Day than any other day of the year.
We never celebrated Mother’s Day in my mother and father’s house. I didn’t know it existed until I was a teenager and my mother asked for a card. At that particular point in this young boy’s life, just past puberty, Mother and Son were no longer on the same page. Looking back, I can see how off-putting and probably hurtful it must have been for her to see son behave like his father. Father who was not easy for Mother, far from it.
My mother died in her 82nd year twenty years ago. In retrospect, I see her life on a much broader canvas than when she was living and often managing to inject controversy (to put it politely) into her relationships with her children. Ironically, she did no such thing in her relationships with her grandchildren who rightfully had great affection for her.
Mothers are complicated figures in our lives. In our truths and in our falsehoods. There are good mothers, wonderful mothers, horrible mothers, terrible mothers. Same goes for fathers. Nevertheless, it is with them or at least because of them that we learn how to make our way in life.
My mother was eighty when I accidentally learned one day in conversation with her that her father was the dominant voice in her head even at that age.
I had recounted to her an anecdote of Garrison Keillor about a dialogue he used to have with his mother and why he didn’t call her more (reason: he heard her voice in his head so much, he didn’t need to speak with her on the phone).
My mother laughed hearing the story. So I asked her if she ever heard her mother’s voice in her head (her mother had died when she was a child). No, was her answer.
I then asked her if she ever heard her father’s voice in her head. Yes, everyday, she told me.
This surprised me. I was fascinated to learn this but my mother wasn’t. She didn’t want to talk about it, as if we had touched on something embarrassing.
“What does he say to you?” I wanted to know (I have my mother’s curiosity.)
“I don’t know,” she answered as if to say, “I’m not telling….” The octogenarian woman suddenly sounded like an uncertain young girl. A young girl who had to answer to a father.
I pressed her but she wouldn’t say what her father said to her when she heard his voice in her head everyday.
So, considering my mother and her life and her way of looking at things, considering how critical she was with her children, I asked: “Does he reprimand you?”
“Yes,” she answered as if the young girl embarrassed. Eighty years old and still concerned about what her father would say. After a long life of working hard, of raising, supporting, educating her children, making a life, against all kinds of odds -- both fate’s and hers -- it was still about the girl, her father and what he thought.
That was when I discovered she was her father’s daughter first and my mother second. And that's the way it had always been. Until that conversation I saw her only as Mother. A power. A rock in some ways. A pillow and a comforter to the child. And a nuisance other times, even many times. But Mother, not child.
I used to hear her voice in my head. The conversations, the exchanges, sometimes heated, sometimes oft-times heated, gnarly. But then I’d reached a certain age (40) and certain things came together in my head; and somehow her voice no longer intruded in my thoughts. In the meantime, I can still conjure up her voice, especially the laughter, like her laughter when she heard the Garrison Keillor story. A mother’s voice.
To change the subject on these beautiful cool May days, like a Mother, a good Mother might do, I want to remind you about the exhibition of JH’s photographs of New York that have introduced these Diaries for the past seven years (such as the photo below, which will be in the exhibition). It will be taking place at the Porcelain Company on Park Avenue and 58th Street beginning Friday, May 16 through Monday, May 19th. All proceeds from the sales will go to the Central Park Conservancy. Please participate with us in supporting the heart of this great city.
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