The 17th generation of hummingbirds that nested in the redwood trees outside our sunroom window moved away. More accurately, they were forcibly relocated, by the felling of redwood trees blocking the neighbor's sun. The ache I feel when standing at the window with my coffee in hand is not unlike the ache I feel with every other loss. Though reliable in its lack of mercy, impermanence still baffles me. Each breath we draw from birth on forward teaches us that nothing lasts but not how to cope with that hard piece of fact. The bewildered hummer moms hung around for a day or two, then most likely rebuilt their nest elsewhere. The sugar water altar they prayed at for seventeen years now stands abandoned, like a chapel in a war-ravaged town. When I cleaned up the tree debris, a salamander scuttled away. I planted a rhododendron and went on with my life.
23 years ago this week my mother died. I have been telling her some things in my mind that I should have thought to say before she was ashes scattered, earless and presumably in a Better Place. Gratitude for being there for me, and for letting me spread my wings. Apologies for my lack of interest in her as a fully formed human in her own right. I am now in that position of being less than visible, as all Moms are throughout time and will be. When my nest empties, I wonder if I will disappear altogether.
"If I could do it over" is a recurring phrase that makes that ache, like how I feel when I look out where the hummingbirds always were. I can no more do parenting over than I can reverse the redwood stumps back into towering giants. It is true there is more sun now that those trees are gone. Loss brings a certain clarity, a light trained on imperfections and sins. Loss is like an interrogator who has you tied to a chair, terrified and trying to decide what you can admit to and what you must keep locked inside no matter what blows fall.
When I sit next to people with dementia, they often talk about their mothers as if they were still around, and coming by in a bit to "take them home". This limbic link to the woman who was once dispensable and considered an irritant is neuro-ironic. Even the damaged brain has saved some space for her, in the back closet, behind the dust pan and broom. Its possible I too will receive limbic visits to my Broom Closet Better Place someday from some grown child who just wants to tell me this or that. Or who has forgotten everything else but me and is waiting for me to come pick them up and take them home.
A story about a mother frustrated:
One day our hen seemed sick. She sat so motionless I thought she had died. Then she stirred and moaned and did that world-weary cry that only hens can do. We thought perhaps her egg was bound. We brought her in, fascinating the dogs. We placed her on an oven rack over gently steamed water, a towel wrapped around her. She clucked and looked at us like we were idiot farmers. Smart hen. Then I tried a lubricated finger in the cloaca to turn or dislodge the egg, my dusty obstetric skills asserting themselves. Her cluck became more of a what the f:#%? No egg. Back to the coop. We finally called a wiser hen-keeper who said, why she is just brooding! She wants her egg to become a chick. She does this regularly now, the only one in the brood to be such a broody brooder. Maybe someday I will slide a chick under her, all warm and real and fuzzy feathered.
When my nest empties, perhaps instead of disappearing altogether, I will become solid once again. My brooding might turn to staring at the back of my hand which now looks exactly like my mother's hands which used to freak me out with their veins and age spots. They will try to tell me the story of me, little hands that once climbed trees and were enamored with the piano at the age of three. Bigger hands that practiced piano for hours then decided to hold a scalpel in gross anatomy instead. Hands that felt the swell of my pregnancy. That held the hand of my husband. That rested on the top of the heads of my three children in turn. That extracted splinters expertly. That played catch and held every Harry Potter book, each heavier than the last, for night time reading-out-loud sessions. That flew to my mouth when I heard terrible news. That gripped the dashboard while teaching the mysteries of driving a stick in the parking lot of St Mary's School. That touches the back of my teenager just to have some contact before they roll their eyes and walk away. That write things down and paint a house and palpate joints and abdomens to diagnose. That make me feel I have everything in hand.
A mother in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I do miss my mother's hands.
