Chapter 3 #2
“No, no, it’s okay. Your father offered, too, but I needed to do this alone.
Besides, you’ve got enough on your plate.
Speaking of which . . .” Mom scooches closer until our knees touch.
She gathers my hands in hers, silver bracelets jangling.
Fingers soft but cold. Up close, Mom looks weary.
Has she been crying? Have I ever seen her cry?
Harsh light from the kitchen illuminates the lines around her mouth, yet she’s doing that perky thing she has perfected to a fine art.
“First, I would like you to tell me something. How is your writing going?”
I grimace and steal a look in the general direction of my laptop. “Oh. That . . .”
“Yes, oh that.”
If only we could cut right to the mysterious “something” she alluded to.
What could Nana have possibly wanted me to have?
After her memorial service back in April, when our family walked through her small ranch house tucked among the rolling green hills outside Salem, Mom urged my sister, Vanessa, and me to each identify something meaningful we wanted to keep.
I felt numb. Couldn’t begin to fathom what random household item might ever contain value apart from Nana’s warm presence.
Nor could I stomach disturbing those rooms that still smelled faintly of almond and anise, rooms that had so long offered me love and refuge like no place else.
My grandmother—my namesake, Lucia Maria Graglia—never attached value to possessions. Why would I?
In the end, odd as it sounds, I’d adopted a pair of pink Dearfoams that still peeked out from beneath Nana’s bed three weeks after she passed, as if waiting for her to return. I always loved that Nana and I had the same small feet.
I lower my gaze. “I don’t know, Mom. Pretty sure it’s time to set writing aside. It’s been good therapy. Maybe that’s all it was meant to be.”
“Lucia Maria! Bite your tongue. You’ve always been the real writer in our family. And the world needs your story. Women need your story. We all need each other’s honest stories. There are too many hurting people with—”
I raise a palm. “I know, I know. With a wound in the shape of my words.” Would my mother be stoking this fire if she had any idea how entangled my story is with hers?
Does she really want me fanning old embers back to life with my keyboard?
She’d been candid with her multitude of followers about the unthinkable that struck our family.
And then kept right on marching. What if the additional details, the story told from my perspective, subjects her to ugly criticism?
I have no desire to undermine the fortress of hope and healing that is Carly Montgomery Ministries.
And then of course, there’s the bigger roadblock.
“Mom, here’s the thing. I can’t write the rest of my story because there is no rest of my story.
Yes, God rescued me. But it can’t end there.
What was I rescued for? Where’s the uplifting ending?
I’m no Seabiscuit.” Mom scrunches her forehead in confusion.
“Every good story needs an arc. There’s no arc to my story because there’s no story arc to my life. ”
“Sweetie, that isn’t—”
“No, really. I thought it was enough to have come out the other side. But for what? My story has no inspiring takeaway.”
“The Lord delivered you from the crucible of suffering. That in itself would be an encouragement to other women who believe they’re eternally trapped in their circumstances. And now you’re raising your wonderful son in this storybook town. You’re keeping him safe.”
The crucible of suffering? A bit dramatic. But not wrong. And there’s the rub. Is it possible I’m keeping Chase too safe?
“Bethany Hamilton.” Mom stabs the air twice as she says this.
“Huh?”
“You’re like Bethany Hamilton. After all life has thrown at you, you’ve managed to keep your faith intact. That’s inspiring.”
“Mom. Bethany Hamilton got back on her surfboard after losing her arm to a shark and won championships. Let’s face it.
I’m not that girl, the kind who gives readers a reason to cheer.
It’s courage we applaud, not the absence of danger.
I’m just over here trying to keep my ducks in a somewhat orderly row.
Sorry to disappoint, Mom. But until I have a great story, no one will read my book and be helped. ”
Mom’s lips turn in on themselves. She blinks a half dozen times rapidly.
Great. If my mother is stymied, I’m in sorrier shape than I knew.
For a long moment, she stares out the open window.
Into the silence floats the echo of children’s voices below.
A basketball bounces, its hollow rhythm an elegy.
No doubt, to my mother it operates more like the Jeopardy think music.
Finally, her features soften. She steeples her hands the way I’ve seen her do a thousand times on stage when on the verge of dropping some weighty word from above, a phenomenon that never fails to prickle the hair on my arms. In these moments I stop seeing Carly Montgomery as Mom.
Instead, I behold something transcendent, a penetrating truth wrapped in love and light come to rest on us.
I haven’t always been a fan of my mother’s celebrity, but I’ve never been able to deny the power of God working through her—because it has touched me time and again.
This time she offers a clarifying question. “Lucy. Sweetie. Now listen. Can you say for certain that you aren’t meant to finish writing this book? Does the idea of setting it aside bring you peace?”
I can’t, and it doesn’t. Tears press. I blink them back. Dang it. I need to have something to show for everything that happened. Something . . . redemptive. Doesn’t God want this too?
“Sweetie, please hear me out. There are always plenty of good reasons not to do something. Just please, please promise me you won’t let fear be one of them.”
“But Mom, I’m . . .” My stupid chin quivers. “I’m stuck. I don’t know what comes next.” In my life, let alone in my book. And I hate that I’ve allowed my mother, of all people, to see me so vulnerable. I stare at my hands.
“Oh, darling.” Mom squeezes my shoulder, then tips up my chin. “Sounds to me like the perfect place to start. Because you know the One who does.”
Warmth mushrooms in my chest. All these weeks I’ve wrestled against my restlessness, but what if God is its source?
For a fleeting moment I face dead-on the unsettling reality I’ve been running from.
What if the reason I feel so adrift lately is because the story I belong to is better than the one I’m living right now?
Maybe the reason I’ve been too afraid to ask God to show me the next step is because I know he will.
Picture a squirrel on Red Bull. That’s Chase, bursting through the door, flushed, chattering a mile a minute.
I release my pent-up breath.
“Mom, Mom, Mom. Paige’s mother said I could come with them to dinner.
But they’re going to the Trading Post, and I can’t go.
I have to do my homework.” He angles toward his room, as if his Tennessee grandmother is just another alternative-down-stuffed throw pillow.
“She texted you. They’re waiting down there in the car.
But I can’t go. I have to go change, and I have to do my homework. ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—Chase, honey, let’s slow down just a teeny bit. Come here first, please. Good. Thank you. Now, let’s take a breath. Whatcha got there?” His fingers grip a folded-up paper. “Is that for me?”
My son manages to come to a full stop but appears on the brink of self-combusting.
His round chocolate-brown eyes dart back and forth between me and Mom.
“I have to change.” Blessedly, his mouth tips into a hint of a smile for his grandmother.
Meanwhile, my mind goes all worst-case-scenario on me as I set the paper, presumably from Master Yun, aside.
Had Chase been disruptive? What if this activity, like so many before it, doesn’t work out? Not without a fight this time.
“I know you want to change,” I say. “And that’s fine. But you can take a minute to say hello to Mimi.” Smiling, my mother opens her arms. Chase steps into the hug with characteristic stiffness.
“Look at my big boy,” Mom coos while I fetch my cell.
I’ll ask Nina for a few minutes to settle Chase, then go from there.
From the kitchen, I watch the way Mom strokes my son’s walnut waves, searching his features with a bizarre intensity, glassy-eyed with longing.
Thinking of Mikey, I’d have to guess. Everyone who knew my little brother is taken aback to spy his doughy cheeks and dusting of cinnamon freckles come to life again on my son’s face.
Low in my belly, that sharp-beaked crow that first made its nest there twenty years or so ago nips at my insides and twists.
Halt. Hold up. No longer am I the child who internalizes everyone else’s agony as her own.
I know how to shut that down now. These impenetrable boundaries I’ve erected trump the days of having none at all.
Don’t they? For better or worse, I’m bulletproof.
Still, ancient sorrow hangs in the room like dripping stalactites.
Drip.
Drip.
Grief has such a hollow sound.
Mom’s cheek twitches as she fingers the hem of Chase’s white cotton uniform. “You look so handsome and so, so strong. What do you call this?”
Chase stands straight and proud. “I’ve heard grownups calling it a gi. But they shouldn’t, because that’s a Japanese word and tae kwon do is from Korea. It’s called a dobok. It means ‘clothing of the way.’ That’s what they should call it, a dobok.”
Mom’s lips form a wobbly smile. “Well, that is so interesting, Chase. Thank you for explaining. I will be sure to call it a dobok.”
Chase responds with an eye sparkle so fleeting it would be easy to miss.