In the week after Mom’s death, I had a deep longing, an obsession actually, to understand what my mother’s life was like through her eyes. In the past, when I would ask about her life before her children were born, her response was always the same: “The past is the past and I don’t want to talk about it.” I got different variations of the same theme: “Wendy, it was so long ago. Forget it.”
I asked God, “How can I have meaningful conversations with someone who keeps silent about her own life?” As a young adult, there were a few times when I shared difficult situations with my mother. Her advice was, “Hold your breath and it will all pass.” I knew holding your breath was ridiculous. Her response alienated me and pissed me off. Because of her “stone-walling” I had to learn about life, not through the loving wisdom of my mother, but through the school of hit and miss. Now I wanted to know what was behind the silence.
All I had to piece her life together were her many photo albums, all neatly organized. The photographs were very small, so I used a magnifying glass to see each photo clearly. One album had a 1933 photo of her at age 18. She had captioned all the photos in her album but this one in particular caught my attention. She was standing in a garden and she looked lovely. But her handwritten caption read: “A thorn amongst the roses.” I felt very sad reading her comment even though I believe she thought she was being clever. Humor can hide pain.
As I reflect on my relationship with my mother I realize we both have thorns in our lives. Because I am an artist, I need to immerse myself in the dark, messy, thorny side of life in order to emerge and smell the sweetness of the rose. Mom wasn’t an artist. She was a secretary and happy to be one. Perhaps because she didn’t have a creative nature, she didn’t have a need to embrace the dark, ugly aspects of life. She knew it was there and that was sufficient--even if it made her feel like she was the thorn. Life for her, Ethel Rose, was sweet enough without having to deal with the mess.
If I had just one wish, I would wish this: I wish Mom enjoyed seeing me indulge in my dark, messy, creative process. I wonder how my creation myth would have been different and how my art would have looked if I didn’t feel bad about being dirty and messy.
