This is something that Mummy Ask wrote this some ten or more years ago and always makes me feel home. I thought you might enjoy the read –
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Sometimes, when I am sitting stock still, I can see the landscape outside my house slipping by, like the passage of a ship. It is as though a slow moving vortex has edged around itself around my garden, somehow pulling outward at the boundaries of that landscape, as I sit and watch. But much more often than this will happen to me, it will be music that I hear rather than seeing that particular type of motion surround me. When the music comes, it is a silent kind of music, that I cannot remember from any well-known catalog of memory yet it remains in someway, familiar. Though always I am given to marvel, at how easily these things do come to me.
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When I was a child I often lay on the lawn of our house staring up at the sky. The reflection of sunlight through the clouds told me there was a God. A strong beatific man hanging suspended on a throne, looking back at me, as I lay flat on the lawn. Though I could only see the light emanating from the clouds, I knew. And I always believed. As I read my holiday books there in the garden I would look up now and again and see the sky through the branches of the peach tree, leaning down toward me. I always thought that the trees in the garden, the shade and light, the warm summer breeze and the sky leaning down wanted me to be there, knew I wished to belong to them and on those garden days, cherished my company. I always believed it was true. I still do now.
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As a child, I never knew how to play by myself. I took the dolls out and lined them up. I fed them and wheeled them around, and I gave them names, but it was because it was expected of me, and I knew something about that too. I knew about expectations. I wasn’t a lonely child, but I knew how to be by myself, the sky and the garden taught me that. But I didn’t know how to play on my own, when I wasn’t in the garden. On rainy days or when everyone else was busy, I was always sitting somewhere imagining my invisibility, sitting stock still.
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My mother says that when I was baby and she sat me on a rug to play with toys and when she would become distracted by some chore or a neighbor stopping to talk across the back fence, when she returned I would be sitting in the same position quite still, not moving. I don’t know what it is when leaves rustle, air moves, sunlight falls and shadows are breaking. I am not at all sure of the house when it is still and the walls move in and out, slightly. Like breathing, I think, like the sound of your own heart. Something embryonic. Like the outside world sailing by, like a ship. Something to compel stillness, something urgent to which there is no response.
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In later years, when I became a mother that is why I could easily understand. Why the touch of a baby to the heart, a simple silent hug, stopped their crying. Why I knew above all things that you had to believe in love. For I knew if I held them inside my own stillness, they too would know they had not fallen far from that deep embryonic silence. Perhaps the great verandah, where I was first put out in my pram, where the breezes comforted me, was my first soft breast. Perhaps though I could not at first see the trees shadowing the verandah, I knew in that certain way, that they welcomed me there. And I must have imagined then, that the sun flashing between the leaves was my father. All of these things were put in my infant ship, and went sailing by.
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So when I became an adult I asked myself the question – is it possible to know that those things of childhood can continue to sustain us? And the answer came sure and swift to me… Yes, that is what I know. From the moment I was born I knew I had a certain passage, a destiny to fulfill. But my father would never know any part of that early feeling, and my mother was not to meet me until I was several months old. So I took my position every afternoon in my pram in the garden nearby to the trees, with the sun winking in. And I must have imagined that they alone loved me.
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Though, my adopted mother and I did grow up together. And since I have become an adult the cold distant lands of our relationship have come together now in that sun. And though she has stretched her hands out to meet me across the desert lands that once lay between us, I never took her seriously, for she has never meant for me to see her as she has done recently. There is a need now, mutually felt, for the close reconciliation of that loosely tied bow which is us as mother and daughter.
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My adopted mother is a strong and feisty woman. In her I see the first breath of life that was ever really me in that new beginning. That which was me first, beyond the breezes and the summer trees. And now in her eighties she leans toward me, like the heavy stones of my heart. My mother seeking something, calls out to me. And I know what it is she asks me, she asks to believe, she asks me what I know. I know I am in love with her, my mother. I know she is the thing I seek and I am the thing that in sleep, she sees as a glancing vision. I know that in the familiar silences between us, there is more than meets the eye. There is the deep peace of welcome environment, of the fibers and the air that circulates, that is ours alone, in that comfortable silence. And as well, there is a sadness. For some stones are so heavy that we need silence to help carry them.
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My mother comes to visit me. Outside, the house sails by on the patient sea. She comes to comfort me. The simple breeze and the simple warming breast. We spend hours talking about family. She laughs at my silly ways, she endears herself to me now in a way I have never known. She takes that step to come close to me again and again these days. A spider runs the length of dusty carpet between us. There is a glance from us both, a shifty kind of awareness. Spiders are not something we are used to dealing with. We let it run and disappear into the next room. Then, she plays me a piece of music she thinks I might like. We sit reminiscing together on the dusty carpet.
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It is often a knowing kind of thing about family that draws us inward. That makes us suspicious of the others. Careful. Though you cannot be too careful about family. My mother sits in the living-room with me and she peels a fruit. Usually I have something prepared for her lunch, but not today.
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Carefully she takes away the outer layers of the fruit. And she is slow when she eventually eats it. She is savoring the taste. When the air has taken on the smell of the peach she turns to me. She speaks to me of the garden. Do I remember the fruit trees? The way the sun poked through the cloudy sky and played with the shadows through the leaves? Yes, I know, I say, yes, I know. So then I know that it wasn’t just me alone. She knows too. And I am sure now though we are separate and I am grown up, that she also believes, perhaps she always has.
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My mother sits with me and knits, and the thread she works spins in and out. I am part of her knitting, I say to myself. And she hears me and nods. My mothers’ gray head bends towards me. I acknowledge you, she seems to breathe. And these are the words that sit high and mighty on those spent summer breezes, these are the words that will carry on for me when she is gone. My mother sometimes sleeps here with me. Her wakefulness and alternate breathing shudders down through the house to huddle next to me. And when this happens I find myself at sea. The ships of childhood sailing by.
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But for now I have her. I finally have my adopted mother now. After waiting to meet ‘head-on’ with her for so long, I finally have her. But my adopted father, oh well, he purposely left us alone some years ago, so we could be together for just for this. I know I was proud when I saw him off on his journey, next to the ships that languished for us all on those silent seas. And we all stood helplessly waving goodbye when he died, as every known thing, pulled slowly away from us. The death of my father is a stone at the bottom of my heart.
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My mother sits in the chair, looking out of the window at the garden sailing by. We are very still and the atmosphere is transfused with slow movement. She sees it, but keeps it silent. I say nothing at all. I am only air and light then. When she returns her gaze to me, I am simply a mirror. A familial, basic thing. A happy, compliant daughter. As we shuffle through the afternoon it is my mother that I become, just for a minute, just for an instant. Just in each quick, silent look. And I want her there, showing me who she is because it does not come home to me this way, each time she is here.
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When I walk beside the sea. Something happens to me then. A crazy kind of merging takes me over then. I want to lie on the sand, close my eyes and go to sleep. Go to sleep to the sound of the waves. The sound of water grinding sand. The sound of water mutating into earth. Flat and kind of different against the rolling minuscule particles, I push my body into the sand. Eyes closed I am the wind that takes the wave. And my hearing, the last thing that survives, among my senses.
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I am at the funeral of a child. The white Formica casket tucked into the corner of the room. It is very small. Unable to stop crying I lean forward. Holding the sanctimonious pew. When the room is empty I move toward the casket, my pale rose in my hand. I have never done this before. I feel more than anything that I owe her some words. So I cannot put the rose down until I have spoken to her. ‘Juliet’, I say, ‘ I have loved you more than my own life.’ And I place the rose in the center of the white casket. It is just like everything else, so very important. And I know in the silence, that the draperies and the flowers in the urns, appreciate the gift of a rose. Want to take in that perfume, as it suffuses into that rare air. We are here to bury the dead. We are among the living as well as the inanimate. We believe Juliet will live on in the particles of air surrounding us. In that air we continue to breathe. In the air that draws outwards from us, like a huge slow-moving vortex.
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Outside the sun is shining. Down through the clouds. And I know, for I have never given up believing, that God is on his throne. Outside the air closes over us. Outside the sky takes an instant turn. Gray overtones burn the sun away. Those of us in black look over at each other. These are the stones of the heart we seem to say. And my mother who has passed all these things in her life. My mother who is very old, leans her face towards me and tells me who she is.
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Damp rain surrounds the house. It pours, discharges, gently on the garden and the houses next door. I sit still, listening. The hail of tiny molecules hits the verandah roof. Now nothing is moving. The listlessness of the house hangs upside-down. I remain so still, a strange visitor, only of consequence to the rain outside.
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Inside, coming down through the long corridor, I hear the strong heavy steps hit the concrete floors. Bang, bang, bang. Very sturdy shoes. Sounds like that often enfold me. Crisp, white uniforms are not a visual effect, but a sensation that is felt. Discipline is adhered to within these walls. A code of conduct, a decorum. Babies line up on the verandah. Pram spaced out next to pram. Out here we cannot hear the footsteps, cannot hear the regiment coming for us. We are listening to the trees. Playing with sunlight, touching the breeze. Looking for our fathers and our mothers.
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My mother calls me in for dinner. Faces I have known almost all my life, line up around the table. I have made a swing. In my father’s workshop I cut grooves into a piece of timber with his saw. Outside I hang it from his rope, under the pomegranate tree. When we have taken our plates to the sink and cleared our places, we separate again and I go straight out to the swing. No-one knows. The threads of dusk link arms over the street. I sit carefully down and begin to swing. Softly, gently, because I know things in the garden need to done this way. I know the tree understands me, waited until I had eaten, lifted itself up when I came outside. I rock reverently in those strong limbs until night surrounds me.
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It takes us into the hills and to the edge of the sea, this need. It calls us to lie in the sun and gaze at the sky. To seek the rustle of leaves from the tree. The moving shadows, the air and breezes. To be silent and hear the heart-beat. Hear the quality of the stones lying dormant at the bottom of our hearts.
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I ride my bike with my daughter pillioned behind me singing made-up songs. All along the tram-tracks, she sings. In and out of the shady pine trees, up and down the sea-shore. Wheels turning. Mummy, mummy, mummy. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Our own rhythm. Nothing can end, or change. Sing me a song. Tell me a story. Round and round. No, there are never any tears.
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She could never play on her own. She prefers animals to dolls. She doesn’t want a child’s world, she only wants to be near me. I never put her pram outside. She never wanted me to. But she comes to lay under the trees with me, when I am telling stories. And in return, I hear her endless songs. She sits by the sea with me, and I watch her chase the birds. She always believes she will one day, catch them. Swimming inside her mirth, I chase her with my eyes. Along the edge of the sea, her feet making lots of tiny markings, her arms flung out. And then she is suddenly afraid, and hurtles back along the sand into my arms.
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There are stones at the bottom of her heart. This daughter, who is taller than I am now, wants to know what it is that feels like this. Crossing the room to me, she comes to lay the length of her long body once again inside the hearthstone of my arms. Silently. For we keep very quiet now. Her husband who is outside, circles the patio, and is…suddenly afraid. …He cannot unfold himself to hurtle towards her. I rock my daughter and she slowly starts to sing. Mummy, mummy, mummy. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. We are still and quiet as the air around us shakes and judders. But really, I tell her, everything is quite all right.
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There is difficulty with her father, she has trouble with the death of her friend, Juliet. She says, it has been a long time since she laid still and looked up at the sky, a long time since she ran headlong along the edge of the sea. She finds she cannot connect to others, is alone now more than she wants. Restless inside her house, she has become unforgiving. She watches her world, like mine, sailing past like a ship. She sees her grandfather pinioned on the bow. She bends and cow-tows at work, and carries on useless conversations. All right, I tell her, this my be so. But (understand) I say, as I touch her face, “Some stones are so heavy, only silence can help carry them.” Oh, Mamma, she says. And she begins to hum, and at last she begins to sing.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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2 Comments
And, I cried.
Yeah, she writes beautifully