"Postcards from Her Daughter"
Here I am again, trying to work off the latest ten-pound gain. Building my way from a brisk walk to a slow, lumbering jog. Slowly sitting up for thirty stinging crunches, then forty, then fifty. Ten push-ups. How does this keep happening?
By the time she was my age, my mother had given birth to four children. She gained weight with each of us, and she never really went back to that girl in the short corduroy dress and tights. I wonder how long she kept that last pair of “pre-baby” pants, before she finally sent them off to GoodWill. Was it after my brothers were born, after me? Did she cringe every time she went up a size, as I do, or did she just chalk it up to motherhood? My mom was not a woman so slender that you’d hardly know she’s pregnant, save for the adorable little basketball bump at her belly. Anytime I’ve thought of having children of my own, I am reminded that I am, after all, my mother’s daughter.
Looming even larger though, than what will happen to hips, belly, and breasts, is the impact a child would have on my life, my freedom, my choices. I would have no more afternoons spent lingering at the bookstore with a caramel latte and a stack of magazines, or staying later than planned at a lakeside picnic to watch the sun set. Instead, it would be bottles, diapers, sleeping schedules, and later, teacher conferences, baseball practices, piano lessons. The complicated art of making holidays come alive, or of being permanently available to everyone in the house, forever. And ever.
The truth is, I’ve never been in a situation where I thought, “Yes, a baby belongs here.” I have never been in love with someone in such a way that I wanted to create new life with him. With the men I have known, we could never even get our own lives in order. When I scroll through the portraits of my former relationships, I try to imagine the traveling, the drinking, the sleeping till , all being replaced by crib-building, school plays, checking of homework. In my imaginings, there’s not one man whose face I can see there next to mine, beaming up from the best seats in the high school auditorium.
These days, my life is centered on me. I’m a work-study student at a folk art school, spending my days planting marigolds, pulling poison ivy, and harvesting the last of the season’s spinach, or trying my hands at playing the harp. I meet interesting and creative people every day. Before summer’s end, I will be heading northwest to live and work on an organic farm with chickens, sheep, and bees. Along the way, I will purchase plenty of stationery and stamps to relay stories back home to my mother.
As I write my letters and postcards, I wonder whether there were things that my mother wished she had gotten the chance to do. While she gushed with pride at baby steps, and created clown costumes for Halloween, did she dream of going back to school for fashion design? Or of spending months traveling through Europe , sketching scenes along the Seine , or sipping espressos with strange men on cobbled-street bistros? Checking the temperature of a running bath full of plastic toys, perhaps she wondered about where that handsome sailor she used to know went off to.
But I know my mother does not regret her choices—she has us—my brothers and me. And I believe her when she tells me that even all the coffee and art in the world could never hold a candle to being our mom.
As a woman in my thirties, thoughts of motherhood naturally dance in and out, with each friend’s baby, or each inexplicable twinge I feel, as the moon makes its way from winking crescent, to blue ball of marble, and back. I wonder what it would be like if I were putting my children to sleep instead of trucking my way around the country, if I were playing tooth fairy and Santa Claus, instead of wandering gypsy.
But for now, I mostly wonder about what these blue mountains hold for me while I am here or what back roads I might take when I head up north. I wonder what it will be like to go to sleep every night when the chickens do, and wake to the buzzing of the bees.
And always, I will stop along the way to give my mom a call, just to tell her what I have seen that day.
