“The world doesn’t revolve
around you.” It was one of my mom’s
favorite reprimands. I was five and had
long past hit my wall; we were at the fourth and final errand, but the worst of
them: the shopping mall. The first two
weren’t bad; waiting in line at the post office and the bank are boring, but
quick enough, and I could watch the line to see there was an end in sight. The pharmacy stop was the best: a little more
interesting with some stuffed animals and stickers; my mom knew what she
needed; no line. But she saved the best
– for her – and the worst – for me – last, with the shopping mall, with its
scary tall ceilings, bright lights, noises of music and talking, and, worst of
all, endless rows of shops to tempt an eager young mom.
I had become accustomed to my mom’s
two favored phrases, “Quit whining” and “The world doesn’t revolve around
you.” At five, I didn’t know her world,
as a housewife and mother, really should, at least with appropriate
boundaries, revolve around me, her only child.
Not knowing this, I accepted the reprimand, but felt like collapsing to
the floor, right there in the mall walkway, ready to trip any poor oblivious shopper.
Sea-Tac
Airport, late May, 2005
The sight of my husband holding our one
year old little girl and our four year old son, standing next to them, meeting
me at the airport upon my return from my three week mission to Venezuela will
sit indelibly in my mind as one of my most precious memories. My husband’s face and glowing smile was
filled with pride. My four year old was
shrieking in delight, jumping up and down, and clapping. My little girl was the last to see me, and
when she did, she burst into a full mouth beam, squealing in giggles. Who do I hug first? My four year old. He had seen me from a long ways off, was
bursting with excitement, and holding himself back from running straight into
me. I bent down, put down my luggage, gave
him a big hug, picked him up, held him tight, swirled him around, and kissed
him on the cheek. Then I hugged both my
husband and little girl in one big hug, kissed my husband on his cheek, reached
out to take our little girl, who was leaning toward me with both her arms stretched
out, and pulled her into a tight hug, swirled her around, and glowed in her
giggles and exclamations, “Mama! Mama!”
San
Jose, CA, late 1970s
Swirling my children came
naturally. Dad had done so with me. I remember that more from São Paulo than San
Jose, partly because I was littler there, but also because Dad worked so late
once we were in San Jose. As busy a
metropolis as São Paulo is, at least it’s in South America, where family is
placed at a premium. Dad had settled
into Brazilian culture and its language like a baseball glove made just for
him; he was nine when his father moved their family there for engineering
work. Mom was twelve when her family moved
for the same reason. In part for their
ages, but more for their temperaments, Dad assimilated more deeply into Brazil. My own family was now in San Jose, and I
didn’t get to see Dad much during those early years there, where he was building
a prominent place for himself as a computer engineer at IBM. At least when I was older, I could see him
when he came home from work, but when I was five and six, he often didn’t make
it home until after my bedtime.
Thankfully, Mom and Dad made an exception for his schedule and my
bedtime for favorite TV programs: Wonder Woman, Love Boat, and then once
I was eight, Dallas, when I’d get to sit in Dad’s lap. As lonely as I was, I soaked this time in.
I shouldn’t have been quite as
lonely, but I lacked friends and had a mom who was present, but absent in that big, overwhelming three-story (though split-level) house. I’ve teased her for being a “race horse with
goggles.” She can easily see directly in
front of her and move very fast in that direction, but she has a hard time
seeing around her. She had played with
me and read to me when we were in São Paulo, but not when we were in San
Jose. Colin, the brother people called
“imaginary,” still visited me when I was in Kindergarten and occasionally also when I was in first grade in the playroom (an advantage to an overwhelming roughly 3o00 square foot house).
But his visits were becoming more sparse. Colin was a year younger than me, had spikey
brown hair, didn’t say much but made funny noises, and loved to play in
curious, creative ways. He could
transform our playroom toys into all sorts of other things. Pick-up sticks were also drum sticks or antennas
on buildings of blocks; toy cars were also airplanes, submarines, or objects
useful for crashing into those buildings of blocks. Both Colin and I could get pretty upset, so
we built up a lot of buildings, and then we took those cars and crashed right
into them.
As a family of three with Mom and Dad, weekends were often special. A great quality about Mom was her adventurous
spirit; she was great at planning fun weekend get-aways, often to the
beach. San Jose was a little over an
hour from our favorite ones. If we
didn’t have a get-away, Dad usually tried to spend some time with me, playing
“Tickle Monster,” or teaching me to dance to the Beach Boys or the Beatles or,
to nuture the brasileira in me, bossa nova, that treasured type
of romantic, nostalgic, pop-like, jazz-like music from Brazil he so loved. He continued to speak to me in Portuguese,
and I, still lazy, replyied in English. Fala
en português, menina, fala en português. I loved his encouragement and his Portuguese,
which made me feel warm and cherished.
There’s something about this beautiful language that softened the lonely
desperation I was otherwise feeling, one sometimes enhanced by the heaviness of
English. I wished I was ready to please him
by speaking in Portuguese, but it was hard and I just wanted my time with Dad
to be fun, without the work of building a second language.
Had I known how Dad had interpreted my hesitation, I’m sure I
would have tried more. Years later, he
told me that I hadn’t seemed interested in Portuguese. I said that wasn’t true at all, and we both grieved
over it. By the time I returned from
Venezuela, Dad was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, so I never shared with
him the following memory that emerged upon my return: I was six. We had just finished dinner. Mom was going over the checkbook with
Dad. Something wasn’t reconciling, and
they were mad at each other. Both
considered the error the other’s fault.
Their fighting grew louder; I was scared; they decided to “protect” me
by shifting to a less familiar language for me: Portuguese. My family’s language of love and comfort was
now their language of argument. Isolation was deepened. However a 6 year old can think this, it
seemed to me that life had gone from happy in São Paulo to miserable in San Jose. Young though I was, I intuitively understood
what I would later read Jesus to have asked, For what does it profit a man
to gain the world and lose his soul?
Ellensburg,
WA, June, 2005
“Remember, if you are good, we’ll
end at the carwash.” Both of my children,
buckled into their carseats, shrieked with glee. I couldn’t believe our town had a deal so
good: get your car washed and keep your kids well behaved while running
errands, all for two dollars. If I knew
our outing might need about two hours, I planned in a carwash at the end as a
reward. Both of my children delighted in
every phase of the wash, from the thunderstorm at the start, to the best part,
the huge washer wipers loaded in suds soaping up our car front to back, side
and side, and back to front again, to another thunderstorm for rinsing, and
then the drying stage with its whirling sound and funny-looking ripples it made
on our windows.
It was at the car wash that my catarata
de recuerdos returned, but this time, they were revealing memories from San
Jose, starting with those errand days with my mom. Both pride in my own parenting and bitterness
in hers began to well up within me. The
world doesn’t revolve around you.
“Well it’s supposed to for a mother!” I wanted to scream at her, that
very moment. I wanted to pull the cell
phone out of my purse, call her, hold the phone up so she could hear the
delighted giggles of her grandchildren, and then tell her precisely what I
thought about what real parenting looks like.
How long had our outings, my mom’s with me, been? Certainly more than two hours, sometimes more
than three. Four? I couldn’t remember, just that they were
long, and didn’t end with something fun like a carwash. Thankfully, I was wise enough not to spoil
that moment for either my kids or their grandmother. The bonding Mom and I enjoyed upon my return
from Venezuela with the memories I had shared from Brazil, also still fresh in
my mind, endeared me to her enough to refrain from that call.
The good news, which my husband and
both of my children gratefully attest to, is that, to this day, I hate
shopping. My kids have been spared long
shopping trips, and my husband has been spared a sinking wallet. On occasion, I’ve groaned with my mom over
her two favored phrases of my childhood, but I’ve never reproved her for them. I try to accept what she could do as a mother,
and be grateful that one lesson I have learned, which many people never do, is
that the world does not revolve around me.
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