Bridge Years

The day that would have been my mother's 93rd birthday passed in January. The second anniversary of her death fell in February. She is still the first thing to slip into my consciousness at waking and the last to cross the backs of my eyelids, with the good and the bad and the slights and the love, just before I sleep. 

I have two kids in their upper teens, and lately I'm comparing my mother's situation when I was a young adult to the ones I face with my children. As I write this, my daughter is taking a "bridge year," in her case, a break between high school and college. Like many young people, she’s anxious about setting sail and hesitates over her options, even though I point out - more often than is helpful - that she doesn’t have to declare a major until later. Next year, if she's ready, she'll start at community college then head to Michigan State. That's the loose plan anyway, and it's given us a lot of time together. When we laugh, we are so like my mother and I, all those years ago.

Though I lived on campus and loved dorm life, I was home much of the time. I expected my parents to pick me up on Friday afternoons and take me home for the weekend - almost every weekend - a three-hour round trip. On Sunday nights, as though for the last time, I'd hug and kiss them and shout goodbyes, and they'd be gone - until they came back five days later. If they felt even the slightest discontent at doing all that driving, it never showed. All I saw were two happy, tired people. They would ask me how my week had been, and I, a merry egotist, would spend the next two days telling them. Much of that time was spent curled up next to my mother in my parents' bed, spilling the tea about all the things my father would rather not hear. We'd lie in that bed laughing and talking until my bone-weary dad would come in to say I really should be in my own bed.    

As to bridge years, I took one, too - between earning a BA and earning an income. My parents approved, provided I used that year to develop my writing skills, skills I'd just recently discovered. I'd sit at our dining table, portable Brother typewriter before me, plagiarizing a book on Laurel and Hardy. The plagiarizing wasn't intentional, and I'm sure my manuscript contained some embryo of an original thought. Still, if they ever peeked over my shoulder while I typed, my parents must have slipped away afterward to weep.  

I landed a full-time job as an employment agent when I was 23. I had gone to an agency for help finding a job and was hired on the spot. And that job proved to be a keystone in my career, so the bridge in my bridge year didn't collapse after all, except that I didn't need writing skills until much later. 

The other night I dreamed that I was an adult living with my parents when it occurs to me that I really should get a job. My mother asks if that means I'll be getting my own place, too. I tell her that I'll live at home while I train for the ideal job, and even after, since it will take time to save a down payment on a house. Upon learning that I plan to move out eventually, my mother sounds lighter than she has in years as she chats on the phone, sharing the news with friends. Later in the dream, I'm telling my father that he is absolutely correct to throw out all the knick-knacks and curio shelves before he redecorates the house, and then I question his choice of wall paint. I honestly did dream that dream exactly as described and hope I wasn't that big a jerk in real life. 

My mother and I were always close and are even now, in our own way, since some days she feels as real to me as if she were alive. As she lay dying, I drove almost 600 miles to surprise her. When I walked into her room, it was late, the lights dim, and two aides were struggling to make her more comfortable. They weren't struggling because she was hard to please; my mother was unfailingly appreciative and expressed her gratitude generously. But there wasn't a part of her body that wasn't breaking or broken. She was so ill and trying so hard to communicate her needs, that she didn't see me slip in. I sat by the window and when one of the aides looked up, I signaled her to keep quiet. When they left, my mother lay there, eyes closed. 

"Hi, Mom," I said in my best hushed-but-happy tones. It seemed that even a voice, too loud or harsh, might tear the tender body in the bed. She opened her eyes, looked toward me and started to cry. I cried too. I cried harder when, she said, "Oh, Mom. Mom." 

I gathered her in my arms and kissed the top of her head.

"It's Teece," I murmured against her hair. "I love you. I'm here now. I'm here."

"Oh, I'm so glad," she sobbed, and I wondered if she minded that my tears had wet her scalp.  You wonder a lot of odd things when you hold a dying parent. I doubt she minded, though. Very few things had ever bothered her. It took something as big as death to trip her up. For a while, I regretted telling her it was me when she thought I was her mother, but I think for her, by then I was child and mother. Besides, this was her bridge year, and who am I to say she didn't see her mother?    

Now that I've thrashed all this around in my head a few thousand times, I've vowed that the next time someone tells me about their kid who's studying abroad, nailing down a second master's, I will proudly share that my child might be living with me for years. 

Me and Martha and Stan and Ollie

It once appeared that I was on a Martha Stewart-like career trajectory, the likes of which have not been seen since - well - since Martha Stewart. 

The birth of my daughter seemed to trigger a hormone-fueled artistic binge and I started painting, took up photography and, most amazing to me anyway, started designing my own hand-painted pillows. When I was making the first two or three, I didn’t even know what the sewing term, “right sides together” meant. I just happened to trip into an explanation of it while watching a craft show on HGTV, to which, now that I was both wife AND mother, I had become doubly addicted. 

In case you’re not a sewer, putting the right sides together means that, in effect, you’re sewing something together inside-out, then, just before you’ve stitched it all the way around, you stick your hand in, turn the item right-side-out and then sew up the last little bit. That way, your stitches don’t show. 

Hearing that explanation of right sides together came as a huge epiphany and explained why most sewn items look the way they do. Who knew? Most people, probably, but that was beside the point because now I knew, too. And now my pillows would be a lot more professional-looking and there would be no stopping me. After I'd made a few more pillows, I asked the opinion of an interior decorator who told me that they were worth over a hundred dollars apiece. Could she have been drunk, I asked myself later. No, I didn't think so. 

I am a great lover of the comedy team, Laurel and Hardy, and one day, I took a piece of cloth and painted onto it their likenesses as they had appeared in The Music Box, a short from 1932. In it, Stan and Ollie struggle to haul a clunky, crated, upright piano up a seemingly endless flight of steps. I never did perfect my Stan, but my Ollie looked just like him, even if I do say so myself. When I finished painting the cloth, I put it in the dryer to set the paint, then sewed it (right sides together) onto another piece of fabric and stuffed it. I really liked this pillow.

One day, I screwed up all my courage, tucked that pillow under my arm and walked into a shop that specialized in movie memorabilia. Timidly, I asked the owner if he would put it up for sale. He looked at the pillow dubiously – I mean, who could blame him. After all, people aren't exactly clamoring for Laurel and Hardy-themed pillows. If he put it in his shop window and a crowd gathered, it would have to be because the pillow had spontaneously combusted. So, he wouldn't buy it from me, but he would display the pillow in the store and give me most of the money if it sold. 

I left the shop feeling as victorious as Martha Stewart must have after her first bake sale because now a new Martha had been born! One day, I would be a guest on Martha's show where she would complement my pillows and I would gush over her edible gold-, silver- and copper-leaf hand-dipped Christmas cookies. Yes I would. Oh, my head was filled with visions of pillows and Martha, of Martha and pillows. 

It wasn't long after, that my then-husband, Michael and I celebrated our wedding anniversary and when Michael presented me with a wrapped bundle, he was apologizing.

“Teece, I hope you’re not insulted or upset. Believe me, I had all the best intentions.”

Now, Michael always said Teece-I-hope-you're-not-insulted-or-upset-Believe-me-I-had-all-the-best-intentions any time he'd just done something insulting or upsetting - or potentially divorce-worthy. But when I opened the gift, my heart filled with love. He had paid $90 for that pillow just so he could give it back to me for our anniversary. 

But wait a minute, that was sweet and touching and all, but if launching my Martha Stewart-style business empire meant my husband was going to be buying back the product line piece by piece, the future of my enterprise looked bleak. But I was fine with this thoughtful gesture. After all, it was a sign of a strong marriage when one spouse cared enough for the other to ruin that spouse's chances at a billion dollar hand-painted pillow empire. And I'd have done the same for Michael. So yes, I was okay with it. 

Anyway, I got the pillow in the divorce. And these days, like the artist who created it, that pillow, as you can see, is a little worse for wear.  The paint is worn and smeary-looking and the pillow itself is now flat and lumpy; again, a lot like the artist. But the pillow has become very special to my daughter who keeps it on her bed. So yes, I am still okay with it. 

And I guess it really is the thought that counts – in this case, all the way up to ninety bucks.