Melissa Cistaro is a potent writer (and friend) who captures the humming vibrancy of a moment with stark simplicity. I posted one of her essays earlier this year and I’m offering you today another of her memories––The Undertow.
I also have an ulterior motive in sharing this with you. Melissa has been selected as a finalist in KellyCorrigan's "Notes and Words" essay contest. Kelly Corrigan wrote the best-selling memoir "The Middle Place."
“Notes and Words” is running a "Like it" Facebook campaign to see which essays are most "popular." So, if you like The Undertow, please click on the link and “like” her. Melissa is a dear friend and I am unabashedly biased; however, I can’t imagine why anyone would not “like” her writing!
My sandals clap across the hardwood floor and into the blue room where my children sleep. There are school art projects that dangle from clothespins, Legos in every color, stuffed animals of every breed, and shelves full of books. My son is asleep on the top bunk. My little girl has called me back in for the third time. I remind myself to be both patient and firm. She is four.
“Yes Bella?”
“Mama, I keep thinking about the scary cat with red eyes.”
“Have you tried thinking of all-things-blue?” I ask.
“Yes. I tried that. I can’t sleep,” she says with a whimper.
She reaches out and pulls at my arm. I do not feel the patience in me tonight.
“Mama, can you stay on my bed? Please?”
She doesn’t understand that I am goddamn tired. If I lie down, I won’t be able to get back up. My mind is on the school lunches I haven’t yet made, the stacks of dishes lined up all the way around the kitchen counter, the wet towels that are beginning to smell because they haven’t made it into the dryer yet, and then there are the twenty-four shamrock placemats that I promised to cut out for the preschool class, and the haircut appointment I need to cancel.
I look out to the yellow light in the hallway. I can’t do this drawn out routine. I can’t do the twenty questions, not tonight. Okay, I think, take a deep breath and count to ten. That’s what all the parenting books say to do.
“Bella, please, it’s time to sleep.”
“I’m trying,” she says.
I watch her eyes blink, and tuck the covers back snug around her body. I place her velvet bear underneath her chin, and her shaggy cat in the crook of her arm. I lean down to kiss her goodnight. Her eyes pop open wide and stare at me.
“Mama, what did your mom do when you were scared?”
The room seems to tilt slightly sideways. I don’t feel dizzy, but heavy, like I might not be able to stand on my own two feet. I recognize it, this feeling, this physical sensation of being pulled backwards, like standing in the undertow at Stinson Beach.
In this moment, I do not recall the specifics of slipping off my sandals and laying down alongside Bella on her bed. But I am here, staring up at the ceiling with its tiny glow-in-the-dark stars.
"Mama,” she asks again, “What did your mom do when you were scared?”
“I can’t remember, Bella,” I say. My body is stiff on the bed because I am not telling the truth. I am trying so hard to do the right things, to be a good mother.
“I didn’t get scared much,” I say.
That’s not the truth either.
“I guess she tucked me in and said things to help me to feel safe. Sort of like the things I say to you,” I tell her.
My mouth aches, stings, like when the long needle of novocaine first pushes in.
I am a coward. I am afraid of the undertow. I don’t want her to know that sometimes a mother can’t stay.
“Let’s close our eyes and go to sleep,” I whisper to her.
She smiles, pleased that I am lying on her bed, then whispers a reminder, “Don’t leave, Mama.” The room tilts again, the ceiling stars go blurry.
I cannot tell her that my mom left when I was a little girl. And yet it was a simple fact, a well memorized statement when I was growing up. “My mom doesn’t live with us,” I’d say in the same way I’d say, “Lilacs are my favorite flowers.” It didn’t occur to me that becoming a mother could wash to shore the wreckage of the past. To tell my daughter this truth, is to tell myself the darkest truth. That I was leavable. Unkeepable.
I come from a long line of mothers who left their children. What if there exists some sort of genetic family flaw, some kind of “leaving gene” that unexpectedly grabs hold of mothers? What if that leaving gene is lying dormant inside of me? And what if my daughter with her fretful imagination worries that I might leave?
I close my eyes and rearrange my unbearable thoughts.
I am a mother now. A good mother. I rest my lips against her shoulder and breathe her in like sweet warm bread. I want my daughter to feel safe. Every day I build a scaffold inside of me, in hopes that she will have something sturdy to hang on to.
It’s all I can do for now.
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