thirty-five
Despite my mom being on West Coast time, she’s already sitting outside on the deck, the French doors at the bottom of the stairs open and the smell of coffee wafting my way. Somehow, I slept until nine thirty, the latest I’ve awoken in months.
“Mom? What are you doing up?” I ask groggily as I step outside.
“Six a.m. every day. So, I just got up a bit ago,” she says with a smile. “I forgot how beautiful this creek is. I used to come out here every morning that the weather permitted. It was the perfect way to start my day. To be honest, I even came out on some days during the winter, just to watch the icy water flow by. It’s almost more special than it is on these warm days.”
Not until now do I remember, but thiswasher spot.
“I made you a cup of coffee,” she says as she hands me a mug.
My sleep last night was so heavy, and I need a solid caffeine bump, so I welcome the cup. “Thank you.”
“Putting in these doors to the deck? Brilliant idea. There are so many changes to this house.” Suddenly, she drops her head and raises a hand to cover her eyes.
My heart sinks, and I’m suddenly furious with myself and feeling selfish for barreling ahead with what I wanted and not thinking about how it would affect her. “God, I’m so sorry. I never should have done all of these renovations. I didn’t know you’d care. I thought you wanted nothing to do with this place.”
And she seemed to be so in love with everything last night.
She grabs my arm. “Of course you thought that because that’s whatIwanted to believe. It’d be easier if this house meant nothing. If it was just a property to be sold. One with no history, no feelings. Fooling myself about so many things worked for so long. Or I thought it was working. But it doesn’t anymore.”
“I forgot our life here too. I get it.”
Then, she lifts to look at me, and the pain in her expression nearly takes my breath away. “Because I taught you to do that. Your pain is on me.”
I cannot say otherwise, although I wish I could.
“But you’re here now.”
She sits before she unloads all that she needs to. “I started my family here. And then I lost my family here. Not just Mike, but also you and Erica. I lost my kids on the same day that I lost my husband, and that’s on me.”
“Mom, you don’t have to—”
“Yes,” she says forcefully. “Yes, I do. I need to explain some of what I’ve figured out about myself. The day you left LA was the wake-up call that I needed. One that I didn’t want, but one I had to face. I’ve spent every day since thinking about you, worrying about you, and then finally taking a look at myself and how many mistakes I’ve made.”
“We all make mistakes. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay, Callie. Not when it affects my children.
“Listen, I was so lost for years when I was growing up. I hated myself. I had miserable grades, was totally socially awkward. God, I can still see the gym teacher’s expression when I was called up to bat for baseball. Or when my music teacher winced when she walked by me as I was forced to sing in our chorus. I barely had friends, and the ones I did have? Well, we were never really close.”
I nod because I can relate to these things all too much. My life in California felt like one disaster after another with not a moment to build any kind of self-esteem or confidence.
“I’m an awkward person; I just am,” she admits. “It wasn’t until I met your father that I felt whole because he celebrated me for the person I was. He didn’t try to change me.”
The tears that fall are painful to watch. It’s hard to picture my mother as anything but the self-assured, high-powered woman that I’ve come to know her as, and this vulnerable side of her—one that she’s been sharing from the moment she got here—is totally foreign. Yet I’m now starting to remember the mom she used to be to me.
“To this day, my heart is obliterated again and again every morning when I have to start my day without Mike, and that’s why I couldn’t stay here in this beautiful house and in this beautiful town after he died. To be in a place that would only shine a light on his absence? It was unimaginable. So, without thinking anything through, I took you and Erica, and I abandoned my life so that I could pretend that my heart wasn’t utterly destroyed. But my irreparable mistake was not understanding that leaving was the worst damn thing I could have done because I shunned every support system I had. I failed all of us.”
“Mom…” It’s impossible to know what to say to her. “You didn’t fail us. It was a horrible situation. You just did what you could at the time.”
“Mike would have been so disappointed in me. He’d have hated who I’ve become.Ihate who I’ve become. How I’ve blocked out my past, how I’ve raised our girls.”
“But we’re okay.”
“You’re okaydespiteme, and you’re okay because of what your father gave you and because you dug yourself out of a hole that I’d helped dig. That’s the truth.
“After we lost him and I was on my own, watching you struggle in LA in the same ways that I’d struggled? Seeing you feeling badly about yourself, having a tough time in school, holding down a job? It reminded me too much of myself. I hadn’t known how to help myself as a kid or as an adult, so I didn’t know how to help you. Not one person had said the right thing to me when I was a lost teenager, and therefore, I didn’t know what to say to you. So, selfishly, I distanced myself from that. From you. I didn’t know how to help you, and I should have figured it out. That was my job as a mother.” My mom looks so broken and lost and sad when she takes my hand. “But I have never been disappointed in you. Not for a minute. I’ve just been disappointed in myself.”
