Where the Tiger Lilies Grow

When I cut my bangs, I was afraid that I would look like my mother.  For some reason, I have accumulated a hatred for our resemblance, and any reminders of this cause great distress to my perceived uniqueness.  I share that adolescent craving of individuality, so any remnants of my mother that begin to manifest within me, I tend to conceal.  (I never drive with one hand, for my mother never drives with both.)  Although seventeen year olds are seen as oblivious, I am fully aware that my lust for independence is to blame for this disdain.  I do not dislike my mother, but I do not want to be her. 

About a week after chopping my hair in an impulsive sweat, a family friend told me, “Did you do something different?  You look just like your mother,” to which I simply replied, “I cut my hair.”  I can’t escape our likeness.  

I saw an old picture of my mother the other day and found myself worshiping her beauty.  Thirty-six years old and pregnant with my older sister, her hands comforting her stomach as if to hold her unborn baby’s hand.  The grain of the photo mutes her youthful glow, but her confidence is apparent and infectious.  Her lips, stretched delicately at the corners, are painted in her signature wine stain.  Her eyes, although hazel, look so green that their reflection makes me appear jealous.  I look at her and wonder how many boys have told her she’s beautiful, how many have dreamed about the way light reflects off of her eyes.  She looks quite strong, but not calloused.  I hope these boys were aware of her sensitivity, and I hope even more that they did not weaponize it.  I look at her and wonder how many boys have made her cry.  I hope, no matter what they said, that when she looks in the mirror she does not see their words.  I hope that she only sees her beauty.

I now like my bangs.  

June 8th, 2012

 I am ten years old and my relationship with death is nonexistent.  I cried when my hermit crab buried itself in the sand, and I cried when my dog was put down.  But I stopped crying and therefore stopped hurting.  (I do not yet know a silent, tearless pain.)  

 It is my last day of 5th grade.  I’m riding through evergreens in the back of my mother’s SUV while listening to bubblegum pop.  I look at the rolling hills and I am reminded of my mother’s nose, which slopes gently down and up like a j.  I decide that her nose is more of a ski slope.  I imagine someone gliding down its surface, tracing my finger along my own nose for reference.  As my surrounding scenery begins to blur, I hold my breath and imagine that I’m swimming in the swirling colors.  When I return to shore, I’m greeted by a riiiiiiing exploding from the car speakers.  “Why’s Randy calling me?” my mom says with an air of concerned annoyance.  

We’re twenty minutes from home and my fingers are pruned from swimming in the passing lakes.  My mother answers the call with contrived excitement, “Hi Randy!  How are you?”  Although I’m annoyed that this is interrupting the music, I am glad that Bluetooth allows me to eavesdrop so easily.  Randy, my aunt’s husband, is a stranger to me, and so I feel slightly guilty about being able to hear his voice.

“Are you driving right now?” he answers, strong.  I dart my eyes to the rearview mirror and am met by my mother’s fearful eyes.  This question only makes him more elusive.

“Yes, why?” my mother asks, her words like tiptoes on a glass floor.  There is a lush silence that even I know means that something is wrong.  My mother pulls the car over.  My eyes remain fixed on the rearview mirror.

“Your brother’s dead.”    

January 23rd, 2019

For as long as I have lived, I have romanticized death.  My lack of religious ideologies allows me to view death as a true end, which to some may seem disheartening, but for me brings a sort of melancholy peace.  Before I lived, I was dead—a dream in my mother’s head.  And so, having once known that feeling of nothingness, there should be no fear.  However, I have never been a fan of those young adult novels that glamorize and popularize a longing for death so let me reiterate: I do not wish to die, I simply do not fear death.  

My mother is also not religious, but her view of death is clouded by innocent imagination.  (Or perhaps mine is clouded by a morose disposition.)   She does not believe in angels but she believes in spirits—energies—that float among us like a fleeting sense of joy,  their delicate nothingness so ethereal that I have no choice but to hope for their existence.  And yet, I can’t bring myself to fully accept this possibility, for it is a fool who does not allow reality to distort her dreams.  Part of me is angry that my mom believes in an afterlife because I feel her still searching for him.  And so she comforts me,

“Luckily I believe in a multi-dimensional universe so I think he still lives in another dimension.”

I admire, or perhaps sympathize with, the fact that my mother is so hopeful.  But I wish so strongly that she would accept the finality of it all.  Her heartache pulls at me like dead weight, and I find it hard to watch her slowly wade through life.  When one does not accept nothingness, one accepts complacency.  My mother surrounds herself with complacency; she often only leaves the house for errands.  She lies in bed with comfortability, and as her child, it has caused me to retain a strange guilt.  How can I not when I am the reason for her purgatory?  Her life before me was as free as a birdsong.  Wading in and out of New York City’s mysteries, she danced with pleasure.  Her days were dictated by desire, not by requirements.  So excuse me for feeling guilty for stealing her pleasure.   

I do not want children.  I feel no need to relive my youth, nor do I feel the need to be cared for at some later date.  I do not want to burden a child with the responsibility of my forever, of my legacy; I know that weight very well.  Being a child is as tiresome as summer heat and as lonesome as a starless sky.  The pang of guilt that strikes me upon realizing my mother’s dependence on me is enough birth control for me.

June 8th, 2012

 I am ten years old and seeing my mother cry for the first time.  I am ten years old and speechless for the first time.  I am eager to comfort but too scared to offer any.  I am holding back my tears so that the sound won’t overshadow her grieving.  As I lie wrestling with the idea of forever, the idea that he is gone forever, my mother is facing reality.  

She keeps driving.  I tell her a couple of times to pull over, but she doesn’t hear me and she keeps driving.  It’s raining, although I don’t know if it’s actually raining or if my brain has been conditioned to connect sadness with rain.  I am drowning in the passing colors.  My mother is still crying.  I am silent, why am I silent?  My mother is crying and I am silent.  This is the first time I wish to escape.

I only met my Uncle Rudy once.  He had visited my family that year.  I remember being scared of his leather jacket but liking its robust scent that greeted my nose when I hugged him.  His rough hands brushed hard against my naive skin, but I remember still wishing to hold his hands.    

I had asked him what his favorite song was and he told me it was “Take On Me” by A-ha.  My mother laughed, “...‘Take On Me’...really?”  

He asked me to learn it and so I learned the chords and played it for him.  He applauded and I felt a great sense of pride well in me.  I remember watching everyone cling to his words as he told us stories of Erik the Red—our ancestor who enjoyed pillaging villages and founding Greenland.  His strawberry locks curled delicately, quite like mine when I was a baby.  The dimple in his chin made me laugh, and his crystal eyes made me comfortable.  I look over his memory and decide that I will miss him.

January 23rd, 2019

 My uncle’s leather jacket is hanging in the closet of the guestroom.  Dust dances with dead skin cells among the worn wrinkles of its exterior; forgotten warmth lingers within the lining.  My uncle’s Doc Martens guard the entrance to the guest room—where he stayed.  I got my first pair of Doc Martens when I was eleven.  When I asked my mom about Rudy she said that, in a lot of ways, he was like me.  In other words, he had been a “trouble” child.  I may have been infected by that same rebellion for I often feel troublesome—but you probably figured that out when I said I do not wish to be like my mother.  Or perhaps you figured it out when I said that I’m not religious.  I am quite the modern stereotype after all, and my age calls for some angst.  

Just as my dad failed to recruit me into his athleticism, Rudy had done the same, rejecting his father’s wish for him to play baseball.  His independence must be another factor of our resemblance.  But whereas my rebellion stems from a sort of suffocating existence (the youngest child with soon-to-be empty nesters), Rudy’s came from neglect.  My grandmother left Rudy with his dad after the divorce in an effort to expedite her new marriage.  And then my grandfather moved in with a new girlfriend.  And then Rudy was alone. 

He began blackening his lungs with a temporary serenity and escaping every weekend to friends’ houses.  I crave release from routine and so I often find refuge in crowded basements.  At thirteen he crashed his dad’s girlfriend’s car after a drunken joy ride, causing my Aunt Debbie to take him in.  At fifteen I crashed my boyfriend’s car.  I am flattered to be his mirror image but scared that my mother is so aware of our sameness.  However, whereas my grades remain in good standing, Rudy’s began to drop.  Eventually, his days turned into nights and Rudy began swimming in a never-ending haze.  I am currently preparing to start college.  Rudy flunked out after his first year.  Upon realizing his steady decline, Rudy joined the army: self-preservation.  The army affected Rudy with a certain toughness, easily seen in his fascination with Harley Davidson motorcycles.  But despite his black leather, he was a light.  

I remember my mother telling me how guilty she felt when Rudy had to go through his parents’ divorce alone.  She had been at college and couldn’t be there for him.  She felt guilty.  But my mother doesn’t talk about him much, which proves just how similar we are.  Being aware of our sameness allows me to understand her sensitivity as I share her endearing fragility.  But sometimes I worry that her heart is too heavy since her love for others seems too dense to contain itself.  Sometimes I worry that she needs to talk about him.  I often feel guilty for not letting her talk to me.  

Before writing, I asked my mom about the details of June 8th, 2012.  She remained studious in her answer, providing the date and location.  I didn’t prod for emotion for I would not expect her to put that into words.  The only melancholy she left me with was this: 

“Interesting memory. When we pulled over to take the call, there were tiger lilies alongside the road. I have always been drawn to roadside tiger lilies.  When I went to the place where Rudy died, it was a roadside ditch filled with tiger lilies. I remember being really struck by that.”