Day #34 Writing Through COVID-19: Mother Issues

My brother-in-law Randy is having trouble swallowing, so he has been fitted with a feeding tube. His classical guitarist's hands are swollen to the point of immobility. He is confused. My sister is anxious about her husband's long road of rehab ahead. Still, we call today's progress good news.
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The second stanza of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning.

Yesterday morning I read Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" to my parents at breakfast. I love the poem, its disturbing story, its tickling language, its super-tight rhythm and rhyme. But I haven't read it for years, and I would not have read it yesterday if my parents were not living in my basement.

Poetry shared is pleasure multiplied. As my parents and I felt the frisson of the poem's final stanzas, my mother said what has become a daily refrain: "My mother would have loved knowing you!"

My mother's mother was, like me, an English teacher. She was also a librarian, a poet, a bit of a scold, and a terrible housekeeper. She died of breast cancer at age 53, three years before I was born.

For my mom to tell me her own mother would have enjoyed my company is a high compliment. That she says it daily is not just a reminder of how forgetful she is; it's an affirmation of how our relationship is healing during these weeks in quarantine.

I've alluded to the strained relationship I've had with my mother most of my life. I was a middle child of five who felt all the good roles had been taken, so I glommed onto black sheep and tore through adolescence like a bat out of hell. My first two years of college would make an excellent How-Not-To tutorial.

When I discovered the English major and decided to teach, I at last felt a purpose larger than the distractions I'd been calling "life." But by this time my relationship with my mother was frayed to a thread. I continued to feel judged negatively by her throughout most of my adult years and learned to protect my bruisable heart by limiting time with her to perfunctory, infrequent interactions.

By age 55 I had this under control. I'd stopped mourning a relationship I'd never have. I'd accepted that closeness with one's parents is not a prerequisite for a satisfying life. I had moved on.

About this time my mom's memory began to thin. She became sweeter, less critical, softer. And I had grown less defensive, more okay with who I was. My monthly visits were easier because we granted each other wider swaths of grace.

But I never expected to find myself at age 60 daily sharing deep and sincere affection with my mom.  Nor did I expect to feel such kinship with a grandmother I never met, but whom my mother assures me daily would enjoy my company.