The Contract
I woke up thinking of you, Mom, which is something I don't do very often anymore. Not that don't love you or that the winds of time have erased your mark and measure on me....they have not.
Who you are.....
Who you were.....are woven into my fabric; into the woof and wharf of me.
I'm 63 and you would be 102 now.
When you were 63, I was 23...I think that was approximately the year you finally got sober. I am not certain, but I think you were moving to Kerrville to run the Essay House. I was moving to Houston, launching into a new life myself.
Ten years later at 73, when you moved on to the non-physical, you had pulled yourself together and made a fresh start...with a new home.....all by yourself. Of course I was busy living, too. Busy with a career and kids and all the good stuff.
I was alight......
Full......
Zipping around my world like a firefly while you did all that.
Odd to think you seemed so serene.
Was that hard for you? Were you lonely or feeling abandoned? It didn't seem like it at all. Of course I don't remember too much about the final years, ignited as I was by my own purpose and then the birth of my own babies. I do remember loving you so much, and being thrilled by what you had accomplished;
So glad to have my Mom back; so glad you were sober, that the eyes I looked into were clear and had some sparkle. So glad to see Scientific American in your bathroom and humming bird feeders hanging up again. To have your homemade candy and to talk about art.
I never told you this, but the people in my life knew I was proud of you; everyone that met you fell under your charm, even Harry Goolishian, as well as Kent and all my friends. You even won the love of Danny, oddly enough.
I also never told you that I saw that you never lost your loving, open, inquisitive heart...even in the dark years....the essence of you still survived inside all that mess. And in your sober years, when I was no where to be found, and when your other kids had formed their own allegiances (as we all must do) you found others to love and help. I can remember them now, standing at the back of the funeral home, mourning your passing, too.
I never told you that I know you were also jealous, hurt and suffered from the ravages of all you lost to alcohol....how it robbed you of getting to be the mother and grandmother you wanted to be. I know you craved this, as I do now. You knew the pain of regret. And yet you bloomed some in those last few years...... the post-alcohol years......
To me..... the clearest proof that you accomplished what you set out to do in your time here on Earth.
Your Contract.... as I speculate it to be.
If you and I preplanned any of what happened here...
As I draw my breath.......My heart says yes.
Tis the sweetest mystery of the soul's work.....That we create grand missions
Before Earth.....
Before physical form......
But I was late coming on the scene to you, Mom. I was the runt. I can only imagine how tired and weary you were as I came yowling into the family. You had to be dry as a leaf and spent....and yet, despite all that, and the alcohol...
I always felt wanted.
I always felt loved.
I always knew that our souls recognized each other.
The good moments were so good, Mom.
Perhaps that is why within my life of so many regrets and moments of wistful clinging, I feel no regrets about you.
I do not pine or cling to you....ever. I have such a delicious peace about us as we were and as we are... evidence of the full turn of the dial; evidence that we fulfilled our contract to one another. I know this.
Now as I imagine what you were "about" here on Earth, I can see the pattern in your fabric....... a solitary soul, more inclined to turn inward and seek, than to cleave to others. As a Mom you always seemed to be pushing me to see the beauty of the little things just before me....
To press my nose against the glass....
To see beyond the veil.....
To go deep....
To ask the odd question.....Never in words, but by modeling.....you nudged me to the edge of ideas to become a rebel, skeptic, free-thinker, wonderer......
You were often terribly bad at being a regular Mom, but perhaps that was the point of
The Contract?
Pulling against the reins of married life and convention; not fitting in.
Maybe that was in your Contract, too... Maybe you said:
"I'm going down there and not fitting in. I'm going to feel out of place, unloved, lonely. I'm going to feel the deepest love of my life for my children, but will also feel jealous and unworthy and I will run away into the bottle. I am going to almost die from disappointment and the feeling of being lost. I won't ever really fit in, and then I will come to find my true self at full stop in an alley in San Antonio, drunk and alone. As I always planned. Every piece of my structure torn down, but the essence of my soul still intact. Then I will come back, brick by brick....not to perfection, but to myself. Authentic. In a world of humans who never take the deep dive, I will...and I will swim to the surface anew."
Momma,
Our contract was sound,
Sharp edges and all and
I am the better for it.
It was preparation for my current season.
I thank you for showing me how to go deep.....
Then swim to the surface and breath.....
And to know in my heart the softer song
Of the gypsy way.
