Third Time's a Charm by Summer Hammond
I.
“My mother is sending my room back.”
I gaze at my hands, twined in my lap.
My hands have aged. The blue veins, risen.
I am forty, and my own hands pierce my heart.
This should not be my first time in counseling.
My first semester of grad school in North Carolina.
Free visits through student services.
I came to talk about my dad’s death.
But here I am. Talking about my mom instead.
Go figure.
My first therapist poises his pen to write: “What do you mean, she’s sending your room back?”
The predicament is always, how to explain. Stories like this sit in darkness, untold, gathering dust and shame, for this very reason. “I left home fifteen years ago – after a blow up with my mother. I threw some things in a garbage bag. Whatever I could grab quickly. Books, some clothes. I left everything else, everything, my desk, my journals, my photographs – even my cat. The following month, I eloped. She cut me off. Stopped speaking to me. I could never get the rest of my belongings. She asked my dad to change the locks…”
My therapist sets down his pen. “A mother doesn’t do that for no good reason. Are you sure you’re telling the whole story? Sometimes we forget the part we played in a grievance.”
What he means is, what did you do to make your mother do this? A question I’ve asked myself my whole life. I’m afraid of this question. I tell him, “For years, she didn’t want me to date, or move out. Any independence seeking was a threat. I had a habit of giving in. So I was still at home in my twenties.”
“Sounds to me like your mother had some issues.”
“An abusive alcoholic father.” She might have endured other abuse, too, even worse, from someone else. She didn’t tell me that. Dad did. Not long before I fled. When he saw my fear of her, of what she might do next, taking hold, rising, and he tried, once again, to stir in me that potent adhesive of love and pity mixed with duty that kept him there.
“Ah, I see.” My therapist collects himself, gathers and organizes the pages of his script. The script is titled: Your Mother Was Traumatized.
He says: Have you tried seeing things from her point of view?
He says: Have you forgiven her?
He says: Have you made a sincere effort to reach out, make amends?
He says: Won’t you regret it, if she dies?
I say: “I don’t want to return to a****.”
The taste in my mouth.
The sour bitter blend of that word.
The packages.
Pink tissue paper. Lavender. A baby book, swaddled in cloth.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
All the good things. Her gardens. The pies. Shopping trips with our arms hooked, leaning into each other, giggling, and badminton games, the times she made me stop, right in the middle of a serve, look, she said, taking my shoulders, turning me. Look at the light, the clouds. The angels, she said. Do you see them?
How could you. How could you. Wild-eyed, she stares me down. Saliva froths at the corners of her mouth. I trusted you! She beats the space between her breasts. Terrible, desperate, sickening thuds.
My first therapist stares, aghast, like he can see her, too.
“She’s your mother!” He says it with fury, with protectiveness, smacking his hand down on his knee. His bottom lip trembles.
He is tall and swarthy, built like a football player.
Yet at this moment he looks and sounds – just like my Dad.
II.
“My mother is sending my room back.”
My second therapist pauses while writing, tilts his head, face bemused. He is an older man, elegant but weary. I think he might be burnt out, the way he teeters between seriousness and sarcasm. In our first few minutes, he offers a stream of withering commentary on the town, the university, slyly informing me about the “craziness levels” of the various departments. Guess who takes the lead? He winks. Creative Writing, twirling a finger beside his ear.
I’m afraid now, I am about to contribute to the legacy.
I tell him the fractured way I left home, fifteen years before.
“This past April, I found out my father was dying. I didn’t go back. My sister did. But I didn’t. After he died, I didn’t even go back for his funeral. My mom tried to call. I wouldn’t pick up. She wrote me letters. She insisted I drive to Missouri, come pack up the room I left behind when she – “
Scared the shit out of me, I’m about to say.
But he holds up a hand. “You didn’t go to your father’s funeral?”
“No.”
Maybe he tries not to. Maybe he can’t help it.
That really? wow head-shake.
He doesn’t ask for explanations – but there is a void, and when a void opens, I jump in. “My father didn’t want to see me when he was alive. And he didn’t ask to see me when he was dying.” I wish he would have. I wish he would have rebelled against my mother just once. I wish we could have met in secret, at a lake, in some pretty backroad town between Missouri and Texas. One last fishing trip, one last sunset, one last talk. “I understood that my presence would upset my mother, and cause him more distress.”
“Okay then. So your mom is – ?” He tries to get us back on track.
“She’s been boxing up everything in my old room, and sending it to me, in parts.”
Every week, since I started grad school, there’s a new package waiting for me on the welcome mat. There, as I step out the door to go catch the bus, trying hard to carve out a new life. My old room, everything I tore away from, a brutal rupture, the threads still hanging. My old room showing up, like a haunting.
“Have you spoken to your sister about this? Can she get your things, bring them to you, or meet you somewhere?”
“My sister and I don’t speak.”
This time, I don’t think he even tries.
His jaw drops. “You and your sister are estranged, too?”
My eyes well up.
“But that’s so sad!”
And then: “Have you tried reaching out? Writing her a letter?”
I say nothing. Don’t move.
“Don’t give up.”
“Keep trying.”
It is better to go still and silent, when the stones pelt.
“In order to heal, repairs must be made.”
“With your mom, too.”
“Someone has to be the bigger person!”
III.
“My mother is sending my room back.”
My third therapist is an older woman. She asks me about grad school and tells me that she, too, was the oldest woman in her Master’s cohort. Then she brings me a square of paper held in place by a clipboard. She calls it the ACES, or Adverse Childhood Experiences quiz. I have never heard of it before. I think it’s funny, laboring over these few questions like it’s a midterm. And then – it’s not funny.
What about a mother you love who –
Swears, insults, puts you down, humiliates, acts in a way that makes you afraid…
I am numb with both wonder, and horror, to see it there.
Emotional A****.
My pencil hovers, and hovers.
I sweat. My stomach churns. What is the answer?
No midterm was ever this hard.
Afterward, my therapist says, “Tell me about your room coming back.”
The fifth package: My baby book. Photo albums. My writing. All the notebooks from childhood I’d filled with stories. All the sloppy, stapled together pages, drawings of cats and pumpkins and trees, some of them, inscribed. Dear mommy, this story is for you, I hope it makes you smile. My mother has highlighted some of these childhood love notes, as if to show, prove, emphasize, make me remember that – I love her.
I always have, even when she was hurting me.
The sixth package: My most prized mementos. Favorite childhood books, old flowers I’d gathered from long ago lawns and fields, pressed inside, crumbling, falling out onto my floor, my knees, like time. My collection of Belleek Irish cups and saucers, the daintiest, most fragile things, broken by the too swift movement of a pinkie finger. My mother has wrapped and wrapped them in bubble wrap, showing them the most exquisite care.
How I wish she’d wrapped my heart, our connection, in bubble wrap.
The seventh package: Earrings, bracelets, necklaces, I remember buying at Claire’s, my girlhood, braces, the sound of crinkly little bags. The jewelry tarnished now with time and age. The clothes I left behind, a young woman’s clothes I’ll never fit again, washed, pressed, folded by my mother’s hands, with little silk sachets of lavender from her garden tucked inside.
How well and how gently she takes care of – things.
“Did you ask your mother to send your belongings?”
“No.” Goosebumps river down my arms.
“Do you want her to send your belongings?”
The chills give way to a nightmarish swampy sweat.
My mouth is parched, metal, like I’ve been sucking on pennies.
My old room – is killing my heart.
“You don’t get it!” I cry with such force, I almost stand. “If I tell her to stop, she’ll get mad. That will be it. I’ll never hear from her again!”
Ahhh, I hug myself. Ahhh, the rib-cracking weight of anguish. Another goodbye! More ripping and tearing of threads! I didn’t know I felt this. I had kept it from myself. The inner war I thought I had escaped, so long ago, between having my mother and having peace – reignited and flaming inside me. Far more painful than the room, is this!
My old hope coming back.
My therapist asks, softly, “Has she offered an apology? Tried to have an honest talk about what happened in the past?”
I shake my head, taste the warm, wet shock of grief on my lips.
My therapist takes a minute, rolling her pen between her fingers. Then, she stands. She heads to her desk, opens a drawer. When she comes back, she places something small and cool and shiny in my hand.
It’s a charm.
A golden fence.
Two solid posts, and three sturdy, gleaming rails.
I rotate it in my palm, trying to make sense.
It’s not forgiveness. Or amends. Or what we wish for – redemption.
My third therapist says, “Honey. What do you need to do, to protect your heart?”
She looks me in the eye.
Direct, kind, and not ashamed –
of my answer.