The Mothers at Halloween: My Mother as Chewbacca
In my favorite photo of my mother, she's wearing the blue dress she wore most often, loose and simple, with a thin, white belt. She leans against a staircase in Quaker Square in Akron, Ohio, where we spent every Saturday, her elbow nonchalantly perched on the banister, wearing a Chewbacca mask.
She stood there for an hour, still and silent, while my aunt, my sister and I watched for the passer-bys' reactions behind the register at the Sweet Greek. We giggled at each gasp, each surprised expression, the handful of blood-curdling screams. She never took the mask off, or apologized, even to the terrified children who were pulled along by their irritated parents, even when one mother said, after her toddler burst into tears, "What kind of person DOES this?"
My mother was not stoic, but she knew how to be still: how to stand in a ray of sun coming through the window, eyes closed, just feeling the warmth on her back; how to mend a garden, slow and steady, pulling weeds and propping up seedlings one at a time; how to lie down beside me, her arm touching mine, until my breathing stilled. She taught me to talk to each part of my body as if it were a separate person, to tell it, "Be still until tomorrow." She also taught me how to make fun of people right in front of them, how to laugh at myself.
After she died everyone was in a hurry, moving fast, talking fast, and the things she could do in record time without rushing--cook a meal, clean the house--had to be done in a frantic way to show how hard we all were working. Nobody got excited about Halloween anymore.
Late one night after finishing my homework, I fell onto my own bed, my clothes still on, and looked up at the ceiling, guilty because guilt always hung heavy and low in that house to fill her absence. It had been more than a year since she died, and the school year was waning, the days getting longer--even this late, there was a little pink in the sky when I turned my face toward the window. It had been so long since I talked to my toes, my hips, my neck, that no part of me would listen.
Then next thing I knew, I was cutting two holes in my own sheet and pulling it like a mask over my face. "What am I doing?" I asked myself, and then I began to laugh, because it was so ridiculous, so unexpected. I looked around my room through those holes, half expecting to be transported somewhere else. Nothing looked any different, but I could feel the warmth of my own breath, how every finger, every toe, was its own small universe. I felt my body gather itself the way I had once watched my mother gather the glass from a broken plate, bare-handed but careful. And when I closed my eyes, I saw my mother as Chewbacca, just looking at me in her calm, steady way, and fell asleep.
She stood there for an hour, still and silent, while my aunt, my sister and I watched for the passer-bys' reactions behind the register at the Sweet Greek. We giggled at each gasp, each surprised expression, the handful of blood-curdling screams. She never took the mask off, or apologized, even to the terrified children who were pulled along by their irritated parents, even when one mother said, after her toddler burst into tears, "What kind of person DOES this?"
My mother was not stoic, but she knew how to be still: how to stand in a ray of sun coming through the window, eyes closed, just feeling the warmth on her back; how to mend a garden, slow and steady, pulling weeds and propping up seedlings one at a time; how to lie down beside me, her arm touching mine, until my breathing stilled. She taught me to talk to each part of my body as if it were a separate person, to tell it, "Be still until tomorrow." She also taught me how to make fun of people right in front of them, how to laugh at myself.
After she died everyone was in a hurry, moving fast, talking fast, and the things she could do in record time without rushing--cook a meal, clean the house--had to be done in a frantic way to show how hard we all were working. Nobody got excited about Halloween anymore.
Late one night after finishing my homework, I fell onto my own bed, my clothes still on, and looked up at the ceiling, guilty because guilt always hung heavy and low in that house to fill her absence. It had been more than a year since she died, and the school year was waning, the days getting longer--even this late, there was a little pink in the sky when I turned my face toward the window. It had been so long since I talked to my toes, my hips, my neck, that no part of me would listen.
Then next thing I knew, I was cutting two holes in my own sheet and pulling it like a mask over my face. "What am I doing?" I asked myself, and then I began to laugh, because it was so ridiculous, so unexpected. I looked around my room through those holes, half expecting to be transported somewhere else. Nothing looked any different, but I could feel the warmth of my own breath, how every finger, every toe, was its own small universe. I felt my body gather itself the way I had once watched my mother gather the glass from a broken plate, bare-handed but careful. And when I closed my eyes, I saw my mother as Chewbacca, just looking at me in her calm, steady way, and fell asleep.
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