A Book, A Watch, A Ring

She gave me up.

I was 6 days old.

Did she cry when she said goodbye?

Touch her hand to her face to breathe in the last fragrance of my babyness

Still clinging to her hand?

I would be the Only, the First, and the Last she would ever know.

Did she think of me on Mother's Day? My birthday?

Wonder if I was loved, happy?

I thought of her often, and inquired ......with guilt...... of this mysterious woman who gave me Life.

Life and really, Everything.

The answers were locked, buried deep, six feet under and protected.

I was given the jeweled nuggets, dealt out in tiny, unexpected, unguarded moments.......by mistake:

She had written a book of poetry.

She was unmarried.

She was a Christian.

Measured drops of information landed on my tongue and were absorbed quickly and safely inside of me, became part of me, where they could not be taken away.

Sublingual incorporation on a cellular level.

At 40, I began my search,

Slow and agonizing, dead ends, wrong ends, no ends.

A man said he was my father

But it was a mistake.

Then I found Her.

Fragile, alone, a broken flower.

We met.

She stood at the top of the stairs, silver-haired with open arms,

This Mother Stranger.

Welcoming me, embracing me, she told me that she loved me.

I felt nothing.

Her eyes and mine, the same shape.

She moved slowly, and with great difficulty, a gait acquired from years of ingested psychotropic medications.

Her breaths were audible, in and out with the clicking rhythm of her oxygen machine.

Inhale..............silent resignation, surrender to her circumstances, mindless detachment

Exhale..............vapors of aristocracy, stale elegance, forbidden mystery.

Her room was small with an off-balance oil painting clinging tenaciously to the faded paint on an otherwise blank wall.

Empty, devoid of any hint that a Life was being lived there.

A hot plate, a tired,small couch, a TV.

I brought along a photo album to show her My Life.

But she could not give me her full attention............Jeopardy was on.

So was My Life. Here. Now. On these pages. A life that had been pre-empted for 40 years, and now I wanted to show her the reruns.

See my kids? My husband? My house?

See what you have missed.........My Life?

.........................And then I noticed.

She was wearing a turquoise ring. I was wearing a turquoise ring.

She was wearing a silver watch, as I was.

And then there was The Book.......poetry, her love as well as mine.

We did connect, however remotely, Mother Stranger and I.

She showed me pages of unbound poetry that she intended to throw away.

But I asked for them.

Rescued memories and feelings with answers that still needed to be examined and named.

We met twice more.

And then, without explanation or my permission, her tired heart stopped and she quietly died, as she had lived...............without me.

A Book, A Watch, A Ring............promised to me, they were all that she could give me, yet they are not with me. ..............they remain lost to this day, a heartache resting on a heartache.

I do have her pages of poetry, revealing her very heart committed to paper, and through these pages I have come to know and understand..........a life that she was unable to share with me.

I do have her eyes, the eyes of my Mother Stranger.

A Book, A Watch, A Ring.

She gave me Life,

Life,and really everything.

Created & Owned by ExoticHippieQueen 6/11/11