Motherly Love Never Departs

The Boston Herald

Their images come to me by day and by night. I'll look in the mirror and see not me in the deep plum dress that I will wear at my daughter's wedding, but my own mother in the teal blue dress that she wore at mine. Sometimes I see the three of them: my mother, my aunt and my mother-in-law. My own holy trinity. They were the three women who loved me and mothered me and were there for me, one or the other, or all of them together, for too short a while a very long time ago.

Now, when they come to me at night, in dreams, I ask them things and they tell me what I need to know. In the evening, while I sleep, I am content in their presence and comforted by their words. 

But in the morning when I awake, they and their words vanish like steam on glass.  And I know that I am alone again.

I don't want to be. I want them here with me, all of them, at least one of them, to go to the bridal shop, to stand beside me as my daughter tries on her wedding gown, to meet their eyes and see in them what they would see in mine.

"Koukla," said the dressmaker as she worked on the final fitting of the wedding gown. "It's Greek," she explained. "It means like a doll. Like a doll, your daughter. So beautiful.” 

I want my mother to say this. I want to lean on her and ask her what she thinks about the bustle and the veil and what she felt when I was the one in the wedding dress. I want her to come home with me and sit at the kitchen table and talk to me about nothing and about everything. I want her to be with me as I pick out shoes. I want to sit with her at Brigham's and eat ice cream and talk seating arrangements and flowers and scripture readings and songs.

I should be used to not having a mother by now. I haven't had one in a long time. But you never get used to it. You accept it and you don't dwell on it and there are times when you don't even think of it.

Then there are times when you do.

My aunt was always a fill-in for my mother.

"How do you make beef stew, Lorraine?"

"And spaghetti sauce?"

"Lauren has colic. Did your kids have colic? What should I do?"

"Isn't she too young to date?"

"Which dress do you like best?"

"What's the name of that movie where Bette Davis played twins?"

"I need a new dentist. Do you like yours?”

When Lauren got engaged, my aunt said, "Everyone makes such a fuss about weddings. What's the big deal? You hire a band, a photographer, a florist, get a priest, a church, send out the invitations. And then you show up."

She would have little tolerance for my worries today. She would tell me, "If it rains, it rains, and if someone doesn't like the meal, that's their problem, not yours."

And I would laugh. I laugh now hearing her say these things, hearing her voice inside my head. 

But I want more than this. I want to talk to her on the phone. I want to walk into her house and have her be there. I want to ask her questions only she can answer.

My mother-in-law, "Grandma" to all, would tell me that I have all the answers, that I know more than I think. "You know what you're doing," she'd say. "And you're doing just fine.” And she's right. Sometimes I am fine. But sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I miss too keenly all these women who guided me. I stand on the threshold of change and I stand alone wondering what's it like when a daughter gets married. What will I feel? What should I expect?

"Expect that your makeup will run," I hear Lorraine saying.

"Expect that everything will be all right," Grandma adds.

"Expect to be a little sad but very proud," my mother assures me, all of them mothering me still, but from way too far a distance.