_.png)
“If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully.” —Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
My grandmother, Ruth Lorraine Bowes (1938).
Although my mother’s mother was alive for the first 15 years of my life, I never really knew her. She must have been lucid at the beginning. She must have held me and wiped the spit-up from my mouth and kissed my forehead. She must have whispered wisdom, her nose nuzzled against mine, the same nose I’d grow to inherit.
I just haven’t got those memories inside of me.
Growing up, my brothers and I took turns pushing her in the wheelchair through the zoo and down the boardwalk. We’d cackle and match the pitch of her scream as we sprinted, her chair in full throttle, through flocks of seagulls. We’d spin her in circles, attempt wheelies into elevators. When our mother eventually returned to take over watch, we’d hang down our heads sheepishly and run off into the chaos of childhood, unbothered.
On special visits, my mother and I tucked my grandmother into a worn out red booth at Marie Calendars. Her blue eyes smiled as my mother spooned bites of chicken-pot-pie into her mouth. We’d dab the corners of her papery lips with a lace hanky. We’d order a slice of coconut cream pie even though our family never got to eat dessert in restaurants. I’d scrape the leftover whipped cream off the plate with my index finger and stare at the floor when my grandmother asked, over and over, where her purse was. She’d clutch the bag with her long bony fingers, wailing that it had been stolen. My mom would soothe her, patience unwavering, as the blurry faces of the restaurant glared back—the interruption ruining their middle class meals. But no amount of whipped cream could soothe my shame.
There’s one phrase that my grandmother repeated methodically like a mantra. When I close my eyes now I can still conjure her fretful voice, its steady rhythm pulsing within my ribs.
"Mm take it, take it.” Her blue eyes looking out towards the window. “Mm take it, take it.”
It wasn’t until the end, when only my mom and I could bear the pain of visiting her in the home, that I heard the full phrase.
“I can’t take it.”
Her voice, a quiver. A crack in the sidewalk. A plea.
Ruth Lorraine (far right) with her sister (1926).
At some point my grandma started calling me by my mother’s name. She didn’t know who my mother was, but she knew me. That’s around the time when she had to go into the home. I didn’t like visiting her there. Holding in all that adult sorrow made my throat sore and raw. Too many wrinkles and white eyes and waiting overflowing in a small blue house on a normal street. The boys couldn’t handle it—they’d drop off my mother and me, then pick us up two hours later. I envied them for their two hours of milkshakes and freedom, while I had to sit in a soup of too-sweet prunes and medication seeping through skin.
"Go away!” Grandma would shout at my mother as she attempted to brush her thin hair and paint her nails with pink polish. “I want to be with my daughter now.”
She clutched my hand and rocked one of my baby dolls to sleep, her fingers tracing over its eyelashes with intimate delicacy. She didn’t say her mantra out loud any longer, but she did hum it mechanically until her eyes closed and her glasses slipped off. We’d swaddle her into bed and wait on the curb for the boys to come back. I didn’t want them to know how I was feeling, so I pinched the skin on the inside of my wrist until white crescent moons gave way to relief.
One night my mom stood up in the middle of dinner.
“I have to go,” She gasped.
She left her plate of spaghetti unfinished and began the six hour drive up north to the place where she came from. She made it just in time to hold her mother’s hands in her hands for the final ten minutes. I knew grandma had passed before the boys did. I’d been waiting by the phone long after the spaghetti went cold.
I don’t remember the funeral. Or the battle over the wedding ring. I remember her eyes, my eyes. Her hands, my hands. I can’t take it. A baby doll in the crooked arms of a woman who was afraid and anxious, but not alone. A high school yearbook tucked in the corner of the house, a secret lover lost at war. A younger man. A baby eight months after marriage.
My mom never knew how old her mother was until the death certificate was signed. There were so many secrets sequestered deep inside my grandmother, then lost for good within the dark sea of her brain. It wasn’t until many years later, a grown woman myself, that I wondered who my grandmother really was. Before my grandpa. Before the children. Before the grandchildren. Before the disease that stole away her mind.
My grandparents with their firstborn child, my mother (1959).
We teased my mother when she started slipping into the same panic, her voice altered and painfully high as she searched frantically for the purse resting against her hips. I’d roll my eyes and snark, annoyed that she couldn’t control her anxiety in public spaces. I’d blush red at the wide eyes on us, the curiosity and the spectacle of a scene in Souplantation.
They say we turn into our mothers as we grow older. My mother's relationship to her mother was full of skeletons and closed books. My relationship with my mother was slamming doors and crossed arms and sewing my mouth shut until I left for college. Even now, we struggle to communicate the truth with each other. As teenagers, when my brothers and my cousins teased me about becoming my mom and grandma, I swatted them away. I declared that I’d never be like them. I’d be strong enough to protect my brain. I’d be fit enough to safeguard my dignity from the public attacks, the blatant answer to my worries strapped against my chest.
Life seems to pull us out of our hubris. It humbles and reminds us that we’re not truly in control. Nature is stronger than humans, and I’ve been nurtured by the DNA of the women who’ve fed me.
I can feel it happening to me. I’ve sensed it slip inside my throat and wrap around my lungs. I’ve felt its hand on my neck, clasping its fist upon the violet strings inside —one slow finger at a time. During the attacks, you can’t see the shapes of the objects around you. You can’t feel the weight of the bag in your shaking hands. You can't trust the voices of your loved ones saying it’s alright, we're right here.
I’m afraid of what will happen if my mother becomes her mother. I’m afraid of becoming my mother. What stories will be lost that haven’t yet been told? What pieces of my life will drift away, discarded and insignificant? What connections link the three of us together besides the worrying gene? The cycle of mothers and daughters and the wisdom before our bony fingers that we can’t quite reach. The words we've been too stubborn to say to each other after all these years.
High school graduation, Pennsylvania (1938).