Dust Bunnies

   Being raised by a single father was an intensely difficult experience for me.  It was certainly hard to go without knowing what all the other little girls knew, but even harder than not knowing which shoes matched which dress, was the fact that the woman who was almost contractually obligated to teach me these things was purposefully absent.  I have very few memories of my mother, and she was mentioned rarely in my household.  The voices of bill collectors constantly snaked through our telephone lines, and my father had little patience for dragging ghosts from the past when faced with an ever increasing pile of debt, especially since it was for my simple pleasure.  I've often in my life confused this curiosity with an absolute need, feeling it was completely necessary to know where I came from.  As I've gotten older, however, I realized this puzzle piece I’ve been trying to find a place for simply doesn't fit into my life.

I grew up with a great deal of shame at having lost her so early on.  I felt strongly at fault- perhaps more so than if I had known her.  She could have been anything I wanted, and I made her fantastic and enviable in my tales of her to schoolmates.  I recall having a friend over to my house, asking why she had never seen my mother. I replied forcefully that she was in the bath because she had just gotten back from a long adventure in Africa, and she needed to rest. I’m sure this wasn’t the most ridiculous of my claims in regards to her.

            I tried out all sorts of personas to grace her with, though each was more implausible than the last.  The only image of her in the house was an old employee badge, and though I spent countless hours staring at the mirror image of myself, her expression was indecipherable and I learned no great secrets.  I had only two clear memories of her, and they revealed no more than the cracked plastic image.

  I replayed fitfully the first event as though it were a movie- constantly rewinding and searching for lost details.  It was a blur- warped and cubic, the way only children’s memories are.  The sky was supremely blue, and the sun shone brightly enough to blind me as it reflected off of still waves.  I was actually blinded, as my half-brother flung sand in my eye, and circling unseeingly in the shallow water, before stepping on a fishbone.  Hardly eventful, and the only interaction with her that I remembered was her telling me not to eat a potato chip off of the ground.

            My second memory was more linear, but much shorter and equally useless.  I was standing outside of a car, and a feminine hand extracted a stuffed rabbit from the depths of the trunk.  It was ragged and filthy and my constant companion throughout my earlier years.  As I got older, it started making less frequent appearances-it found a place in my room that it almost never moved from, and eventually, was lost to time.

            Long after the pain and confusion of elementary school and even after the frequent awkward moments in high school caused by her absence, she finally attempted to contact me.            

At first, there admittedly a flicker of the exuberant joy that I’d expected to feel.  It quickly faded into confusion, and even a bit of anger.  She’d called me from a sad form of curiosity and pity mingled, not from the gaping hole that I hoped we both had in our lives.  Our encounter was brief, uninspiring, unenlightening, and, above all, excruciatingly awkward.  There was no connection like the ones you hear about in movies- no inescapable bond.  It was nothing more than two strangers sitting across from each other from the obligation of a mutual acquaintance, and even that realization barely pained me and didn’t faze me.  I had outgrown the childish thought that she had to be there for me, and had long learned to live without her.  I left our meeting with her promises echoing behind me- promises to be a good mother from that point on, promises to meet and get dinner weekly.  She never called after that, and aside from Facebook messages making halfhearted plans that never came to fruition, I never heard from or saw her again.

  I found my vision of who I wanted to be as a woman without her, and despite being gleaned from television as the image of a 1950’s housewife, I’m  happy in the role I’ve discovered for myself.  I have the closure I’d always dreamed of, and she’s finally gone from “Mother”- necessarily cold and equally hopeful, to the detached, more human “Margaret”.

Author's Note

Trying to appease my English teacher-he's constantly telling me to 'tone it down', though never explaining what that means. I've pruned the soul from this essay, we'll see of the grade. I MADE A 45/100. GREAT.

Reviews

[TLK]

I thought the opening paragraph was full of the sad, cracked bell of loneliness.
Obviously, the point you are driving at is your meeting with Margaret:
I left our meeting with her promises echoing behind me- promises to be a good mother from that point on, promises to meet and get dinner weekly. She never called after that, and aside from Facebook messages making halfhearted plans that never came to fruition, I never heard from or saw her again.

You manage to deal with this using both a detached, almost journalistic quality -- but also a humanity that leads you to not quickly assign blame.

Overall I'm impressed, and enjoyed reading.

[Aaron]

I'm amazed by the depth of the writing. I'm assuming this is a true story based on how heartfelt it is. It really took me through the emotions. (If it's fiction then consider that an unbelievable compliment to your writing.)
It's rare to see someone writing with such an open heart. It was a treat to read your story. Thanks for posting.

[Richard John Davis]

Excellent. It was great to hear your voice in it. "The voices of bill collectors constantly snaked through our telephone lines" -- well done