There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (49 page)

Grier said she did miss my mother but was not sad because every time she felt like she missed her she would just realize that she could talk to her and that she would always be in her heart. Grier tapped both her hands on her chest and mentioned that even in school if she thought of Toots she could think of her as being inside her own heart.
“Right here. And I don’t feel sad. I can talk to her from here.” This blew my mind and I promised to try to do the same thing. Mom once told me that she was trying a new therapy that when she wanted a drink she would tap on her chest bone with her fingers to remind her not to take the drink. She said it was supposed to trigger some kind of sense memory and help with addiction. Of course, she probably was just doing it at a bar and the bartender thought she was signaling that he serve her another drink. Anyway, I told Grier that that was beautiful and I would do the same from then on.

I know I have said that we keep those we love forever in our hearts, but hearing her repeat it with her little hands over her heart and in her tiny voice made me weep. I hope I can find that same comfort in my own heart that I seem to have taught her to have. Or maybe I didn’t teach that? Maybe she taught it to me?

•   •   •

Grier provided one sort of comfort to me. Rowan did, too, but in a very different way. Rowan convinced me to let her get her ears pierced at the age of ten. It was six months after Mom died. I recalled that I was twelve when my mom took me to get both our ears pierced. She had never had hers done and wanted to do it with me. I went first!

I actually had always intended to only let Rowan get her ears done when she was twelve, but walked into my own trap. She had asked me at age nine and I said no, not until you are double digits! Forgetting completely that ten and eleven were indeed double digits prior to twelve, I had to follow through. I did go to college, I swear.

She and her cousin wanted to get them done together and it was to be a special birthday event for Rowan. Her cousin graciously waited until Rowan’s actual birthday to get hers done at the same time.

My oldest half sister, Marina, lives uptown and suggested we go to her dermatologist. I had thought Claire’s would have been the better bet and cheaper, too. Not that I try to ever skimp on my daughters
where their physical well-being is concerned, but I had gotten my ears pierced at a mall in New Jersey when I was twelve and my ears didn’t get infected and fall off. The mall kiosks did countless lobes a day and had it down from my point of view. I did not yet realize that the venue would turn out to be the least of my worries. But Rowan wanted to go uptown to be with her cousin, and my sister made an appointment.

Rowan and I were rushing late as usual and her cousin had already gone in. By the time we arrived, the cousin was smiling with two wonderfully pierced ears. Rowan sat down next and the doctor came in. She drew the dots on the lobes and asked me what I thought.

Remember, when I was young my mother was never, ever wrong in my eyes. She always had a question or a suggestion when we were at the doctor’s as well as every other area in which she was completely untrained. She possessed impressive instincts in a variety of situations and I always trusted her above all. She often questioned the professionals and they often complimented her on her observations. She was also always bluffing her way through. I, however, thought she was God. Mom, therefore, could have had the lower right side of my chin and the outer left side of my eyebrow each pierced and tell me they were even and I would have looked in the mirror and seen perfect symmetry.

Unlike my mother, I usually ask Rowan her opinions before voicing my own. But in this case I spoke up first. I looked at each lobe and said that I had to be honest—I wasn’t sure the dots looked centered. I wanted them each centered in the middle of the lobe. The doctor exclaimed that that was exactly why she asked the mothers. She wanted moms to give the stamp of approval. She did not say if she agreed or not. I felt so good at the moment—Rowan must have thought that her mother was even smarter than the doctor.

What I had not taken into consideration was that first of all, I was
not
a doctor, and second, my daughter’s lobes (like the rest of the
population’s) were different in size from one another. The board-certified surgeon was, in fact, taking this into consideration. The dots were redrawn and the deed was done. I took one look at the final product and, getting instantly sick to my stomach, realized that I had inadvertently caused the holes to actually be uneven. Yes, thanks to my expertise, each lobe was pierced in its center, but when looked at head-on, one gold ball was, in fact, a bit higher than the other. I did not say a word, partially because I could not breathe, but mostly because I was terrified of my daughter’s reaction.

I paid the ridiculously large bill, we all made a big fuss at how big our girls were, and we separated. I took Rowan back downtown and envisioned my sister and the family all celebrating my niece’s perfect lobes. I was resigned to try to suppress all the feelings that were creeping into my consciousness. “This too shall pass” had become a useful mantra for me over the years, and I was reminding myself of it once again for comfort.

I continually tried to forget about it but with little success. However, Rowan didn’t seem to comment so I thought maybe the bullet had been dodged. It gnawed at me, as things tend to do, and try as I might I could not suppress my self-hatred for having marred our firstborn.

A few months passed and Fourth of July weekend was upon us. After being asked the same question every week leading up to this holiday, I finally told Rowan she could indeed put on new earrings for the first time. I took her to get some fun earrings and the choice was a monumental one. After about an hour, I was numb. She chose a small cardboard square full of multicolored little Gummy Bears. We went home and the ceremonious changing of the earrings began.

Because I could not find music associated with the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, I found Bob Dylan’s ’78 single with that exact same title and gave it a shot. As we were swabbing each lobe with alcohol and talking about how exciting it would be for her to
show off her ears to the families who were soon coming over for the Fourth of July BBQ, Rowan breezily said, “Mom, I think when you switched the dots on my ears, you actually made them uneven.”

I almost instantaneously threw up. I no longer heard any music and had the feeling that I was falling into an abyss. My world suddenly narrowed. Mustering a voice that wouldn’t betray my true emotions, I calmly retorted, “Really? I don’t know, I think they look great.”

We completed the switch and I sent her to put on her bathing suit. I quietly snuck into the next room and asked Chris if I could have a word. He’d definitely have a solution. I began deep breathing and when he arrived, I said I had something I needed to tell him and that I really needed his support and his help. I begged him first to tell me that we could fix it and it would all be OK. He had such compassion in his eyes and in the past has repeatedly met such frightening moments like these (for me) with true calm and honest but practical advice.

But his face changed with the news and he just turned and left the room to look at our daughter. Suddenly he burst back into the room and blurted out, “One Gummy Bear’s feet are sitting fine and the other Gummy Bear’s feet are dangling off her lobe. She looks ridiculous. You are not a doctor. Why did you interfere? I can’t believe you.”

I was stunned and in shock. He had never reacted to me like this. He was defending her and was so angry and disappointed in me. I myself could not believe it. I was also instantly jealous of Rowan. And after I emotionally prefaced the entire situation by saying I felt terrible and needed help to fix it. This was fixing nothing.

Seething, I silently put on a bathing suit and a long caftan cover-up. I got a fresh bottle of sauvignon blanc from a local vineyard from the fridge and brought the whole thing out to the pool, just as I had seen my mom do countless times, except with red. I had every intention of
finishing the bottle by myself, but to maintain a modicum of dignity and a semblance of being a lady, I was sure to bring a glass. Never let it be said I’m not a lady! I calmly went out to a chaise lounge by the pool and settled in for the long haul through my rambling and conflicting thoughts. Looking like the mother in
August: Osage County
before needing a binge, I hunkered down.

I stayed on that lounge chair growling inside and steadily drinking that entire bottle of wine. Maybe I was more similar to my mother than I thought. Friends began showing up for the BBQ but I did not move one limb, nor did I speak. I just lay their stewing, bottle in hand, and nodding like an old silent-film star to friends as they arrived. Everybody made himself or herself at home. They knew me enough to just let me go through whatever it was that I was going through.

I let Chris be host and invisibly watched the scene unfold. I was so hurt and mad at my husband and so enraged with myself for interfering. I was angry with my mother for always seeming to be right, in my eyes. I was mad that I could not become the same sort of maternal superhero I thought she was. I was mad at Rowan for questioning me. As the backyard began to fill with noises of screaming kids and mingling adults, my wine-calmed mind drifted to an old video. In it I was about nine years old and Mom and I were on vacation visiting with Lila in Phoenix, Arizona. She was working at the Biltmore Hotel and they had a huge pool and great pizza and frozen yogurt. Lila must have been videotaping me in the pool.

In the video, Mom is teaching me to dive from a diving board and swim the length of a pool. It was in the early afternoon and already blistering hot, but there she was, sitting on the edge of a metal and plastic slatted lounge chair in blue jeans and a button-down blouse. Just like a coach training his Olympian hopeful, Mom was calling out instructions to me with the utmost confidence.

Mom kept declaring, “Brookie, think out, not down, when you dive. Think out, always think out and to the other end of the pool.” I
can see her left arm swinging up and out, indicating a forward fluid motion all the way to the far end of the huge pool. I repeatedly dived off the board and resurfaced with the same gasp, spitting out the important question “How’d I do, Mom? How was that?”

It was seemingly very sound advice and made a great deal of sense. I guess it is important to always aim in the direction of where you want to end up while diving or doing anything else in life. However, I am not quite positive that her directions were founded on any true knowledge of how to dive. And she was so sure of her own advice, I took it as absolute truth. I just breathlessly continued on in my pursuit of the out-and-far dive, trying not to throw up from the inevitable belly flop.

It wasn’t until years later, while watching this video, I remembered that my mother never learned how to swim! Mom avoided water—her uncle had drowned and I’m sure her mother never taught her—but I never knew any of that until I was an adult. I always just thought Mom didn’t like being in water. She would wade in the shallow end at times or I would hang off her legs as she sat on the edge. On a cruise ship once, when I was about five, I went swimming and the water started sloshing around. I began to flounder. Mom didn’t jump in but grabbed a server and he pulled me out to safety. Looking back, I never had any real evidence that she could swim. I had pictures of her frolicking in the ocean, but I don’t remember her ever actually swimming, let alone doing a dive.

What struck me was how convinced I was that my mom knew of what she was instructing. I never doubted my mother’s ability in anything she did. Why would it ever cross my mind that she could not have been able to save me were I to have begun drowning?

Back on my chaise I was wakened from my daydream by a loud cannonball in the actual pool in front of me.

I looked at Rowan frolicking around and thought,
How come you question me so much?
Why am I not your queen?
Suddenly, after years of
professing that I wanted and planned on nurturing my daughter’s independence and raising her as a healthy, secure, and unique young girl, I now wanted to take it all back and instill in her the same blind faith I held for Mom. I had always professed that I wanted to nurture my girls’ independence and help thwart inevitable insecurities. Yet as soon as I became threatened, I changed my tune and wanted her to be as dependent on me and reverential toward me as I had been on and toward my mom. I wanted my daughter to look up to me with that vintage, unconditional love I had always had in my heart and mind for my mama. I did want her to believe I was always right. Of course I hoped she was self-confident, but I sure as hell didn’t want her to challenge me or think me fallible.

I realized I envied her independence. I was threatened by the fact that even at such an early age, she had begun to individuate. I ached from loving her and all the feelings that brought up.

In that doctor’s office I had just wanted to be right. I wanted Rowan to think me smarter than everybody, including the trained professional. In recounting the earring story to her friends, I wanted her to say, “My mommy is the best; she knows even more than the doctors do.”

After yet another cannonball the dog started barking. It was a signal to shift my focus back to the present. No more time to wallow in my self-pity and anger. I was beginning to get self-conscious alone on the lounge chair, and I shifted my thoughts. I had the reality of the uneven holes with which to contend but could not immediately do anything about them. In my defense, the corrected dots were clearly centered in the middle of each of her lobes. However, one had to look at only one lobe at a time to see that. Look at my daughter head-on and it was another story.

Fortified by the haze of the sauvignon blanc and renewed by the desire to fix what I had broken by myself, I settled the dog and
resolved to contact the doctor the next day to review the options. Just as I experienced a hint of relief and renewed focus, a game of chicken was loudly being assembled in the pool.