A life of teaching high school English, drama, Shakespeare, and piano.
I enter my house, after being gone for a week. I am expecting nothing but the signs of familiar objects left behind after a week away…the covered piano keys, the toss pillows on the couch, the oil lamps on the dining table, the dish strainer, treadmill, neatly-made bed upstairs. Instead I am rushed with a welcome I didn’t expect. The scent of my Mother’s things. It was the scent, without the things. How different that was — all her belongings kept in the corner of the creekside guest room, only the piano from her Tenino house in this room I enter from the garage. This room filled with my husband’s and my belongings, but also containing the beautiful aroma of items not even physically in this room — oak furniture, stationery, books, vinyl records, clocks, ink pens, clean towels. The heady perfume that isn’t perfume, but is to me the smell of the beginning of time, my time, my life, from Avon sample lipsticks, to thick, pine-green bayberry candles, to homemade pizza, to fresh-cut lilacs. That no-thingness that greeted me when I stepped into my own house, as an essence of Everythingness; and was meaningful to the bone to me. I decided it must be her piano in my house now, the 40 years of her giving lessons with it. It still held all the molecules of her world. It was what laughter and singing smell like. It was happiness, unbridled and unbroken. It was the smell of a great big hug, of a hand holding my forehead, of a kiss on the bandaged knee, of duets played on the piano, of a game taking turns drawing silly hilarious things: “The Butt Family,” with funny characters with funny butts. Susie Sissors Butt, Barney Bumpy Butt, Terrance Turkey Butt, Baby One Bun. Laughing at ourselves laughing. The soapy smell of purple oil base ink pens, covering pages and pages of letters to me over thirty years and about as many addresses I’ve had…Mother’s envelopes containing swatches of fabric from dresses she was sewing, envelopes containing generous sharings of her personality, containing her remembering me so far away, across the continent from her, both of us keeping very close touch through the mail, wishing each other well. That no-thingness was all of this and something even more — something boundless. Unconditional love. As Everythingness as anything can get. That scent that greeted me into my own house carried no negative tones, no sadness, no destruction, no anger, irritation, craziness, fault, fear or dismay. It was pure love. I am amazed about that.
All of this from opening a door and stepping inside a scent so indescribable that I think I can never finish describing it. ~~ Diana J. Legun 3/20/2014
You have described your relationship with your mother so very well that I feel almost as though I lived with you through all of those very personal and close shared experiences. I was close to my mother very well and she proved it with all of those letters with sometimes, newspaper clippings, that followed me to my many addresses when phone calls were few and expensive. So grateful when she could call me with her TTY phone at 4 PM on Mondays and then giving me what was going on in her assisted living space, giggling while she said it like a schoolgirl, until they took her phone away upgrading their Internet system.
You can pack more information in a short story than anyone I know… Kiddos.
Our mothers, whether or not we were close to them, were always in our lives for the same as long as we had lived in theirs. When they leave us, everything will change and nothing in our world will ever be the same again.
That was how I felt when my mother left us. I was very close to her during the last 15 years of her life when my mom and dad chose to come to Canada to live with us. I was overjoyed to have them. We grew so much closer together than the time when I was in Hong Kong.
A very intriguing story! So full of well-expressed emotions. Thank you for sharing, Diana!
Your poem is an identity check for all of us. Often, parents are caught up in a child's rollercoaster of impressions as they go from childhood into adolescence and hopefully, adulthood. Having dealt with this for 60+ years with teaching actors and directors, I can attest to its reality of ups and downs. Your take, is one I would hold as a sample of adulthood understanding that musters up the 5 senses creating behavior that words from a script can't hold a candle to. Your choice of emotional words here is perfect, never delving into the sentimentality that so often accompanies less talented writers. Bravo.
The poem, touchingly, lovingly described. No one can replace one's mother. She lives with each of us forever, as long as we live and is sometimes resurrected by a scent. I know this happens to me all the time. My mother's hand lotion, my father's cigar. When I smell these things, they are alive again, as if it were true. Lovely sentiments here.
I wish I'd felt that way. The grief was so overpowering that I couldn't get rid of her things fast enough. Looking back, it's not how I ever thought I'd feel. Perhaps it's the only child feeling as though the last vestige of our tiny nuclear family was gone. Perhaps it was knowing that I'd never get another powerful bone crunching hug from her slender body on this side of the veil and smell her cologne, shampoo and whatever her latest baked goods were lingering on her clothes. I thought I'd never recover, never feel a thirst to live again. It's slowly returning but it's been a long, painful recovery. I love how it seemed as you though you didn't miss a thing. Avon lipstick samples, molecules from years of small hands taking piano lessons, larger hands telling them how. The Butt Family, piano duets. Yet the question mark on her face. I saw that more than once at the end. Too many drugs, too much treatment. She forgot that my dad died first and came unglued when she asked me where he was and I told her. Dear God, does anything prepare us for this? Daughter to daughter, thank you for posting these deeply personal feelings. Michelle
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