See You On The Other Side

I have gone back there a few times, to the house where we last lived. Most times, I would just pull up to the curb in front and wait for a few minutes. I would observe the scene and try to imagine my life as the version that included her. The first several times I'd gone, I was 16 and had just begun to legally drive. The house looked the same, with white-washed brick and stellar gray wood trim, charming prep school shutters. That magic-appearing octagon window I remember her calling the professionals in to install, just because she loved it and wanted it in her bathroom. It was stained glass, that STOP sign window, and it looked magnificent, just like anything appeared that she ever had a hand in. Her Clinique there on the sink in the master bath, lined up according to size rather than just the 3 steps, just like steps leading to...somewhere. Anywhere. Plush nude carpet beneath, it was warm beige sand and I'd laugh and dig my toes down deeper. It was, after all, high pile and glorious. A step up from the last place we lived. And then, the typical smell of my mother: Redken hair spray, the Cover Girl camphor aroma, and some hint of L'Occitane en Provence that could never quite be pinned down. A can of Tab on the nightstand, always with a straw because she was a lady and that was how ladies like my mother drank Tab, with some level of abbreviated caution. She'd had the sod laid in standard lined notebook fashion, evergreen and evermore. It was the yard where we would later park our bicycles and run screaming through underground sprinklers, her with her Flashdance off-shoulder tops that let her shoulders be kissed by the sun. In her closet, Mary-Ruby business suits tailored just for her, in her signature color of any purple one can imagine. Lilac, lavender, orchid, plum. Why, the Color of Royalty, don't you know, purple? We even had one matching linen dress suit complete with pencil skirt and fitted blazer. She was the Mom, I the Daughter. We were going to take on the world, right after she french braided my hair. We had a bay window in the kitchen, and I loved to perch on the cushioned bench there and look out at the birds as she made breakfast or thumbed through Enquirer as we shared a bowl of popcorn and ate M&Ms.

My bedroom was a real little girl's retreat - white wooden furniture with golden trim, canopy bed, desk and chair for when I would start first grade in August, and a bureau for all my husky clothes, all for me, just waiting. The women at Sears and Dillards liked to ask my mother what size I wore when we would go shopping for jeans. 'Size 7,' she'd say, and they would immediately come back with 'Okay, size 7 husky. Be right back,' and wander off to fetch me something that would fit. 
I had a Dream House where Barbie lived, TV, and stereo with an 8-track where I'd pop in Alabama and put on lip sync shows just for her pleasure. Never mind that it was only men in that band, I did not care. We also had Michael Jackson's Thriller and of course, Crystal Gayle and Silvia! The world, it seemed, belonged to us and it was there for the taking. She was the Mom, I was the Daughter.

Fearing I would mess up the magazine-styled appeal, I never wanted to sleep in my own bed. During the day I'd play in there, but come bedtime I would falter and convince myself there was a clown in my closet, a scary clown. I knew down deep that if I messed up the blankets they would never be quite as perfect, ever again. So, I slept with my mother. She never seemed to mind really, and to this day I still wonder if she had intuition about what was to come. You know, The End. After I was sure she was asleep, I'd quick! match my breath with hers and put my leg gently up against hers so that I would know when she woke up and left my side. That blessed reassurance of all that a mother is supposed to be and what we, as women, were created to be to our precious babies. If she moved, I figured I should by golly know about it. My measures of air matched hers, and it comforted me greatly to think we paralleled also in this most basic physiological process, breathing. She was the Mom, I was the Daughter.

Then, it happened. On my last visit there, I did something dangerous, like a sin. Feeling new legs emerge, I fumbled out of the white convertible paid for because of her tragic demise, a short-changed trade-off. I stumbled over the concrete curb there, marked with our address, 185296, painted and weathered again. I knocked, noticing gnome statues and a yard flag in the flowerbed, nothing at all that my mother would have allowed. Easter eggs in pastel suggestions of the rainbow and glued to a skewer, stuck into the soil between the small white rocks. Indeed, a stark contrast to her black wrought iron chairs and chaise out back on the deck, a rather obstinate and final choice of furniture for such a young woman to own. Soon, she appeared before me, this woman of about 50. She smiled. 

I smiled, held out my hand. Please, I thought. Please, trust me. Let me trust you. It was now or never. I braced myself, took in a deep pocket of air, smiling even wider. Even as I smiled, all I really wanted was to collapse into her arms. 'There, there,' she'd say. 'Sweetie, your momma is in the kitchen now, making that tuna casserole she loves. Come right on in here.' 
***To be continued***