28
The last time I saw my mother was the winter of my twenty-fourth year.
I had long since moved out of the house; and didn’t stop by as often as I should have. Ma called and wanted to have dinner before she and my father left for the weekend to visit his dying uncle. I hadn’t visited home in quite a while, but Ma and I had gone for a frigid walk through the winter pathways of Johnston the week before and talked about the ins and outs of everything, so it wasn’t as if we weren’t staying in touch. That wasn’t an option for her. She never once wavered in her devotion, from my birth on up she wanted to be by my side, to help and protect me however she could. We would get together from time to time just to touch base and I’d tell her about my schemes and happenings. She knew I had no fucking clue where I was heading either, but always had faith in me somehow. I’d keep her in the loop, detailing what the gang was up to and if there was a woman or anything filling my heart. She’d always, always ask me about God and if we had spoken recently. I always told her yes though that wasn’t always true.
“Good, Cash, good,” she’d kind of whisper to herself, and she could breathe easy once again.
I spent a great many years growing up wanting to return the favor of her love. I wanted to defend her and shield her from things as she had always done for me. I couldn’t stand anything negative happening to her, or seeing her sad or upset and I always hated the way she served my father and everyone else around her, so graciously, with nothing in return. She was always sacrificing, always taking the high road. Whenever I got angry at the injustice of it she’d look deep into my eyes and remind me, “We’re called to love.”
Ma talked a great deal about love and Jesus, and I mean a great, great deal. And so, she served my father and everyone in Johnston as Jesus would, and loved them all the same. I knew my father didn’t deserve that love but then again, did any of us?
Anyway, Ma called me up and said it’d be nice if I stopped by for dinner. She said my father wanted to see me, and that she was going to make spaghetti. I knew the first part wasn’t true, but I agreed to go all the same. Home I went, half expecting it to just be the two of us.
Utterly freezing, I knocked on the front door and remembered all the times I heard that wooden echo from the inside. Every time I came over, I still knocked as if I was a stranger or something. I suppose I was just announcing myself before walking in regardless. Muffled from behind the entrance I heard my father bellow, “come in,” so I did. I took my boots off at the door and wandered around the staircase to my left, turning at the corner. My mother stood in the kitchen finishing her preparations and my father was reading the newspaper at the table. He didn’t even take his eyes off it as I passed and kissed my mother on the cheek.
“Hi honey,” she said.
“Smells incredible, Ma.”
“You’re just in time.”
So, I walked over, hung my jacket on the back of the chair, and took my seat across from my father, just as I had done a thousand times before. His eyes still glued to the paper, I said, “Anything good?” And he ruffled the pages a bit and just grunted. Ma brought over a piping bowl of fresh green beans and set it down.
“Need any help Ma? Suppose I should have asked that right away, huh?”
“No honey, that’s okay.”
And I think what a shame. Her taking care of my newspaper grunting father and a son who doesn’t call enough. My dad took a big old swig of Budweiser and set the can back down with a clink while Ma brought over the bowl of spaghetti. Her homemade marinara sauce and all the works were on the table, ready and enchanting. She finally sat down and offered a prayer.
“Heavenly Father…” and I admit my mind wandered but I knew that she thanked him for me and my safety and health. She prayed for the hungry, the sick, for the hurting families, and more. God, if everyone prayed for one another like my mother did then we’d have a much better world, that’s for sure. Either God would answer, or the people would, but wasn’t that more or less the same thing?
She served up the beans and we passed the food around. I buttered some bread and my dad said, “Got any work?” by which I know he meant have you found a serious job ?
After I had given up my job working at Sureland with Leon, I had only been painting and collecting odd jobs around town. I wasn’t worried about it.
“Nah, not yet. No. Here and there though.”
His eyebrow twitched while he spun his fork in slow disappointment but that was all he could muster.
“So, you’re visiting Dave, yeah? How bad is it?” I asked.
“Blood clot,” he mumbled.
“Well, we’ve been meaning to visit for a while now anyway,” my mother added. “We’ll leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s pretty nasty out there,” I said. It was far below zero temperatures with a fierce wind.
“I’ve seen worse,” my father retorted under his breath.
Some people in Johnston, and I’m sure other places too, had this bad habit, this way of comparing experiences saying shit like in my day or seen worse or been better and mostly it was harmless but mostly it annoyed me. It was just something to say. I don’t know. Maybe it was just him saying it.
It was downright treacherously freezing fucking cold in Wisconsin come winter, especially in late January. Out there in the wilderness was the kind of air that iced the hair immediately and forced you to fits of coughing. We were in the thick of frostbite days and nights the whole of that week, and the weekend had forecasted storms. So, when my father said he’d seen worse, I knew he was full of shit. But, I kept my mouth shut.
For my mother, mind you, I said nothing apart from, “This is so great Ma, thank you.”
She smiled.
“You’re welcome honey, so glad you could make it.”
And it was true. My mother was a sensational cook. In between bites of noodles and red sauce and bread, I watched her twist her fork clockwise in the sauce and wrap it all wonderfully clean into a bite. God, she looked so exquisitely Italian and elegant when she did it. I could never hope to make anything look that easy. She was exhausted, though. She was getting these creases in her forehead, and I really could have wept right then and there thinking about it—her being tired, yearning for love and affection and peace. Nobody with enough love and affection could get creased, I thought.
In between bouts of silence, Ma asked a few questions about Prince and Leon, and I answered best I could. That was the thing about Ma, always caring, and genuinely curious. She wasn’t asking just to ask. She had real love for my friends, just as she did for everyone. God the Mother. I’ll never forget, on that evening she wore her blue and red Christmas sweater that she had hand stitched. It was about as endearingly spirited as possible, growing old with a few seams running out of time. Ma, I will buy you more sweaters someday, I may even sew them myself. My father finished his meal quickly and said, “Thank you.” He cleared away his plate, dropped it in the sink, and then shuffled out to the garage for a smoke.
Just Ma and me. She let out a deep troubled breath and I knew what was coming.
“It pains me to see this between you and your father.”
“What do you mean, Ma?”
And my mother’s eyes grew anguished. She couldn’t hold her sadness back and it nearly killed me. No woman like my mother should have eyes so sad. She looked at me a bit longer, tearing up, searching for the right words to say.
“Cash, he’s your father.”
And that simple sentence cut right to the core. That simple sentence could have broken my young heart straight in two. There was so much to say, a lifetime of rebuttal. Poetic explanations and tragic tales of father and son, but I let none of it sail through the air. I didn’t need to. She was in the room, and she knew. She was there for it all, by my side. She raised me and saw the whole story unfold. It was my time to be there for her.
So, I swallowed my pride and said, “I’ll try harder Ma, okay? I will. I promise.”
And she believed me, though I didn’t fully believe myself. All I knew was that I owed her my life, and for her, all was possible. She smiled, wiped away a tear and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Ma. Don’t you ever be sorry for a thing.”
“I just—I want to get on.”
“I know Ma.”
“I want to love one another.”
“I know Ma. We will.”
And with that I could tell she felt better. An emotional woman, my mother. She had oceans of love inside her. She was so damn strong she didn’t cry half as much as she probably should have. I watched her closely as she took a few bites of her green beans. I reached over and took her hand like she had taken mine so many times when I needed it most. We always held there, hand and hand, for a long moment, until one of us squeezed tightly the other, and that was the signal to end it. And it was always me ending it. I looked down as I held her and thought, with these hands she has served so many. With these hands she has loved. Working, giving hands, perfect in age and grace. And for maybe the first time ever, I didn’t squeeze to end it. I had tears in my eyes.
“I love you, Ma.”
“I love you too, Cash, more than all of the stars in the sky.”