I go to see a therapist after I welcome my girl to the world, my impeccable daughter Emma Jayne, who we name after Mom. Her Dad’s last name is a long one, so I imagine one day she will drop that and use the first two as a label or company of some sort. I tell Leslie story after story about my dead mother. I was at such a loss for having a baby without her maternal advice and support and I am besotted with regrief. Or first grief. Maybe I never properly gave it the time of day at all at 27. My Houdini-like break from home to Chicago is more run-away than remarkable trick of avoidance. It can not hide.
I regale Leslie week in and week out, for an hour about Mom. A paid audience. I feel like it is a form of stand up as I regale her about the main character of my life. The only personal thing I know about Leslie is that she too has lost her mother, (imperative to me in my choosing a therapist) and she wears cashmere cardigans draped over her shoulders, blouses and sensible flat front pants.
I have left Emma with LouLou for these outings, our beloved babysitter LouLou who teaches me all I now know of new mothering. She lovingly dotes on Emma and calls her “my baby”. This makes my skin crawl some days, though I know it is with great affection, it makes my head hurt. I tell Leslie, that as time moves on, I wonder if my Mom was even real. Was she more like pixie dust in a rearview mirror? The fly in and fly out and sprinkle the miracles and then poof, variety? Here and gone at 50. I turned around and Leslie has a tear streaming down her cheek this day. I cannot save Leslie from my sad. I can barely mother the tears of the child I have or the inner child hurting deep in me.
Months pass and I have fallen for Leslie and her vanilla walled office, and time that is solely set aside for me. I tell Leslie that I imagine Mom swoops in, like some of the Grandma’s I meet at Sing and Dance class. She would come for the weekend, and give Emma’s Dad and me a date night out or a few hours away from home. I relay all of this to Leslie. She is silent for a bit and says, “From what you have shared with me about Ellen, I think she would tell you to buck up.” Dear Lord, she is spot on. I know as Dorothy does in the Wizard of Oz, I have all I need inside, I just need to believe that the lessons are in my blood and mother’s knowing, and maybe I need to treat myself to a pair of sparkly shoes. I need to drop the façade that she is diving in for the save. Ellen would be a very busy and bossy Grandy, as she once said she might like to be called. She would be up to here with work and her husband Peter, enjoying her later years.
What I do with grief, or this sudden regrief, is memorialize my loss offering grace and revisionist history to those who have left us in their stead. I recall what I wish. I wish for what I no longer have or maybe never would. I have a hole I can never fill. Well, I have one I will have to fill myself.
I sprinkle the memories and keep walking.
