The Seasons of My Mother

by Marcia Gay Harden

  For some reason, I could only sit on the bed and stare at the door, just waiting for her to appear again. I wanted to erase any hurt I had caused for her earlier in the day, yet you can’t undo the past. You can only fill the present with love and own your behavior. In that moment sitting on the white New Zealand sheets, with the orange hibiscus in the brown coffee cup staring quietly at me, I realized I had wanted her to take care of me, not for me to take care of her, and I realized that we were beginning the great migration of age, the moment when the children are suddenly stronger than the parents, when the children become the caregivers and caretakers and protectors for the parents who have loved them so well. My regret at needing her to pronounce the F in Whakapapa clutched at my stomach like a claw, and I sat on the bed watching the door, as if, by just sitting vigil and not being distracted, the full force of my love would fill and mix with the hot shower mist, and with each of her steamy inhalations, Mom would breathe in my love, and she would forgive me.

  I could hear her get out of the shower, then brush her teeth for what seemed like three full minutes. Then I could hear lotions applied to face and hands, and then there she was. Damp. Clean. In a new flannel nightie of cream and lavender that she had bought specially for this trip. She sat on the bed and put on her socks, since her feet were always cold. She pulled her blue cable sweater from her suitcase and put it on, then patted my hand. “Your turn, honey.”

  I showered quickly, no cigarette smoke stinky skin for this queen bed couple! When I came out of the steamy bathroom, sucking air between my newly Crested teeth, Mom was propped up on her side of the bed, looking at a flower book. She had brought so many books, magazines, and photographs, and now they were surrounding her on the bed. Even though there is no such thing as a lavender tree, she looked just like one, there in the center of a garden of books, flower magazines, and Japanese flower-arranging photos. She parted a path for me in the garden, and I snuggled in, poring over the pictures with her.

  She started talking about the ikebana demonstration she was planning to do when she returned to the States, and she showed me her favorite book, which was A Guide to Japanese Flower Arrangement by Norman Sparnon. In the introduction, I read, “Japanese flower arrangement has for several centuries provided an artistic outlet for a people sensitive to the beauty of nature.” Yep—that was my mom. Sensitive to the beauty of nature. Orange hibiscus in the brown coffee cup. Sitting right there on the counter. The picture on the front of the book was a photograph of an ikebana flower arrangement; it showed a tall, thin white ceramic vase against a red backdrop. Spiraling out of the top of the vase was a spray of weeping willow, bent and swirling like a bouncing musical note. Peeking through the center of the spiral, just cresting the top of the white vase, were two small cream roses, and shooting out slightly below them were two sprigs of dark green pine. It was so simple, so elegant, and so specific. At once I could see it was a picture of the essence of my mom. Soft roses, pure white ceramic, pliable willow branches, verdant, spiky pine, and a dramatic red background. Simple. Elegant. Dramatic. Specific.

  It seemed silly that in order to be true to who we each were, we had to push against each other in the ancient Mother/Daughter battle of independence. It was a battle of caretaking, and of aging. A battle of the shifting of roles—an unwillingness to accept that my mom wasn’t as fast as me anymore, or couldn’t see as well as I could, and that I needed to care for her. It wasn’t the first time I had been in this position with her—but it was the first time we had argued about it. I felt embarrassed again at my impatience in the car earlier that day. It felt so much more right to be cuddled up on the cozy down bed, looking at flowers and talking about various line materials that existed in people’s own backyards. Willow trees, bamboo, tall grasses, palm leaves, pine, pussy willow, cattails, fern, calla lily, eucalyptus, iris, bird-of-paradise, camellia, and on and on went the list.

  She never mentioned the car ride. She never mentioned my angry driving and domineering temper. She simply looked at me and said softly: “You will find love, Marcia Gay. Don’t worry.” My throat immediately tightened, and I had to look out the window and concentrate on the moon so I wouldn’t cry. It struck me that as a mom, maybe she was disappointed for me that my boyfriend had broken up with me. Maybe she was a little disappointed in me, too, because she could see how easy it was for me to argue and fight. Maybe she was worried that I would never find love and never have children. Maybe she was worried that I would never be happy, that I was too headstrong to ever find a man, that I would be alone forever. Well, I was worried, too. I didn’t want to be alone! I wanted a commitment! But I was tired of being with guys who let me pay all the bills and make all the plans. I was worried that no one would ever take care of me. That was probably why I had been so pissed at having to take care of her. I was also worried that I didn’t know how to surrender. That even though I wanted to be taken care of—whatever that meant—I was afraid of it. I was worried that I would never feel loved. I was worried that I wasn’t loveable, which is the worst feeling. To feel unworthy of love.

  I snuggled closer to her. She thumbed through the pages of the Norman Sparnon book, and I recognized so many of the same type of arrangements that she had for years placed in the center of the tansu in our home. It felt warm and lush, to be getting to know her so intimately through these flower arrangements in the book, with the sea crashing outside in New Plymouth, New Zealand, and the jovial sounds of the pub below.

  She was a master of her craft, but a quiet master, and as I was looking at the photos she had brought, I began to realize the immensity of the gifts she shared with her Dallas–Fort Worth community. There were pictures of her students arranging with her, and I regretted that I had never taken a formal class with her. I was a bit jealous in fact that I had never, and would never, know her in quite the same way as her students knew her. We looked at the photos under the bedside table lamp, and always there was Mom, dressed monochromatically, which she reminded me was because she didn’t want to draw focus from the arrangement with the patterns on her clothing. Usually she was in earth tones, standing behind the arrangement, facing her class. “Oh my gosh!” I realized. “You are arranging from behind!” Now I was almost in awe of her.

  “That must be hard, Mom, to arrange backwards?”

  “Oh yes,” she agreed humbly, “which is why I first arrange the flowers standing in front of them, and then practice replicating the arrangement from behind, so it will go smoothly for my class.

  She had a notebook in which she kept her class lesson plan. It was an old black three-ring binder with the words “Battlefield Automation Appraisal IV” written in blue, yellow, and red on the front. I couldn’t believe how incongruous it was, that Mom had her lovely ikebana lesson plan in this old battlefield appraisal notebook. It must have been something of Dad’s: There were sketches of tanks and helicopters, trucks and men on walkie-talkies in the battlefield, all talking to a communications person in the middle. Had she chosen to use it, years before, because she was frugal and it was a perfectly good notebook? Or had she chosen to use it because it made her feel a little bit closer to Dad?

  On one of the first pages of the book, she had written “Sogetsu Basics, helpful hints by Beverly.” She had jotted down easy ways to help her students remember the rules and ideas of ikebana, and she started the list with A, B, and C:

  A: ANGLES: There are three angles in the ikebana triangle, 10 to 15 degrees, 45 degrees, and 75 degrees. These are repeated in all the basic arrangements, simply move the three main lines around creating an asymmetrical triangle.

  I had always shut down at the math of ikebana, but now, cuddled up next to her, I forced myself to concentrate. “Okay, so, essentially, we are creating a triangle with two branches and a flower?”

  “In so many words, yes.” We turned the page. B.

  B: BASICS: Think B—just as the capital B has both loops on the same side of the perpendicular line, the Basic upright arrangement and Basic slanti
ng arrangement have Both main lines on the same side of the imaginary line.

  I was beginning to understand. “So the shin and the soe are on the same side of the vase, Mom? If there was an imaginary line up the center, the shin and the soe are on the same side?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “But at different angles?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  The “B’s” went on:

  B: BENDING LINE MATERIAL: Always bend in an S curve, not just a single direction curve. This gives softness to the line.

  How many times had I seen her bend a branch, or a gladiola, or a pine bough? In just this same gentle caress, creating an S curve. “Like the forsythia, bending and arcing between the vases? Right, Mom?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  More B’s:

  B: BASKETS: Grasses are good in baskets. Show the beauty of the artist’s basket—don’t let your work dominate it. Use a utility basket as a background for your arrangement.

  “You always used baskets at Easter time, Mom, and made arrangements in them.”

  “Yes, but women weave baskets all over the world, and I like to use them for arrangements, or as a background to an arrangement, to acknowledge their art. I find the baskets exotic, and I like to support the women.”

  Then there were the C’s:

  C: CRITIQUE: Always say what’s good first, then suggest changes.

  I laughed. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, right, Mom?” She had said this so many times in our youth, and it was a phrase I both hated and loved. I hated it, because when certain presidents would be in office whom I particularly despised, or when policies would be put forth by Congress or the Senate denying art in the schoolrooms, or when someone said or did something that seemed mean, or when anything would happen in the world that didn’t seem right, I would typically want to expound upon the problem, dissecting the injustices and “speaking truth to power.” This discordant discourse made Mom uncomfortable; she would rather not engage in conflict, and with that phrase she often tried to turn the conversation to something pleasant. To me it seemed a passive way of avoiding the sometimes necessary confrontation with power and abuse. But I also loved the little phrase, because if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all was of the school of positive thinking. Mom and I had spent much time at Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City in the early eighties, and had been fortunate enough to witness Dr. Norman Vincent Peale preach. We were instant acolytes of this philosophy, and we bought the books and tapes and practiced the enthusiasm and positive language and thinking that were at the core of Dr. Peale’s teachings: sayings such as “You can if you THINK you can” and “To make your mind healthy, feed it powerful nourishing thoughts” seemed to be of the same school as “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” or another of my mother’s favorites, “Pretty is as pretty does.” What we say influences not just what we feel, but what others feel about us. It influences the outcome of events. It is what we put out into the world. It is the quality of light we shine on our path, and determines our happiness in the moment. We have a choice—be positive or be negative. Mom was always an advocate of the positive frame of mind, and in that way she made the world around her better.

  C: COLOR: Do not always coordinate the color of flowers and line material with the container, but try contrasting surprises, like found in Japanese kimono colors.

  “That’s like the orange hibiscus in the brown coffee cup; right, Mom?”

  “Hmmm. Yes. I hope they don’t mind that I ‘borrowed’ it,” she said, smiling. “But blue would have been a better contrast for the orange.”

  We pored over the lesson book, me learning so many rules about the precision and imagination of ikebana. “Oh my gosh, Mom! I didn’t realize you could actually create an arrangement to depict the phases of the moon!” But there it was, described under the C’s:

  C: CONTAINER: Moon Containers: There are three types of arrangements depicting the phases of the moon. Waxing moon—all lines flow to the left of the container; full moon, all lines must stay within the circle of the container, and waning moon, all lines will go out of the right side.

  And on and on.

  As we turned the pages of the books and lesson plans, I realized that she had brought them not just so that she could prepare for the upcoming demonstration back in Texas, but also so that we could share just such a moment as this, in that New Zealand hotel room, with moonlight beaming through the window. I was proud to be her bedside student.

  I was so like her, our bodies so the same, our legs the same shape, our feet always cold, our hair and eyes almost the same color, our love of adventure and travel, our need for clean rooms and no clutter, our need to feel we were making an impact on life somehow, making a difference somehow, giving back somehow. We lay under the down comforter, our chilly feet bundled in the socks we always wore to bed, two friends talking creatively about the various arts they loved.

  I remembered a phrase from Shakespeare: “Thou Nature art my goddess,” and I was suddenly glad my boyfriend wasn’t there, telling me his thoughts about God and Jesus as if he alone sat in the lap of God and had all the answers. I was glad it would be Mom and me tramping on the beach the next day, gathering shells and driftwood to use in the various coffee cup flower arrangements she would make. I was glad to have my mother pointing out the incredible beauty of God’s Kingdom, as seen in nature through the ancient eyes of the ikebana masters of Japan. I was grateful for the nightly conversations we would have throughout the week, and I was proud that Mom had lugged her flower books halfway across the world to teach me a lesson.

  Much to my delight, two years later, in October 1993, Mom gave me the Norman Sparnon book and inscribed it, “To Marcia, from a proud mom.” I recognized her on every page.

  That was twenty-five years ago. My mom was fifty-five, one year younger than I am as I write this. There was no sign of Alzheimer’s. No sign of forgetfulness, no sign of any weakness. Only a ladylike unwillingness to pronounce WH as F when referring to Maori villages.

  If I am so like her, do I have Alzheimer’s, too?

  This week on my to-do list is “Book a test to do a brain scan.”

  My mother is a miraculous bamboo

  EVEN A MOTHER WITH FIVE children can be lonely. The day starts at 6:30 a.m. Breakfast is made. Five eggs, five strips of bacon, five toasts spread with jam, five glasses of orange juice. Children dress and scatter socks, toothpaste is left on sticky brushes, the remnants sliding down the porcelain sink like a mint-striped slug. Doors slam and shoelaces are broken as we run for the bus. Then the house is quiet. Except for the chatter of running water as Mom rinses the dishes, her quiet hum under the clink of china and scrape of metal pans. Chair legs brush up against the table legs and placemats return to their darkened drawer. She hums. Now gliding down the hall, with the family pictures talking to each other across the frames, and into the bedrooms, she checks that the beds are made as they are supposed to be, opens a window, feeds the goldfish and the lovebirds, then cleans the kitty litter and grits her teeth as she picks up dog hair sitting like a forgotten dandelion fluff in the corner. She doesn’t hum now. She just works and vacuums and dusts and throws T-shirts and underwear in the laundry. Hours pass. Another window is opened, and the chirp of birds reminds her to stop for a minute, to actually look outside. She stares at the pyracantha just beginning to burst into orange flame-like berries, and she makes a mental note to pick up some bright yellow chrysanthemums from the Japanese market on her way home from the commissary, which is next on her list. She hums again now, imagining the flower arrangement evocative of fireworks she will make later in the day using pyracantha and exploding yellow chrysanthemums.

  Pyracantha is a winter bloomer, sometimes called firethorn. Ikebana directly translates to “the arrangement of plant materials,” and its minimalist style allows my mother to work outside the Western tradition of many showy flower bloo
ms plunked in a vase, but rather gather backyard plants and trees to create a serene arrangement. Pussy willow, palm, and pine, draping jasmine and cherry blossom, chestnut tree and candle tree, forsythia, wisteria, and evergreen—all these can be found or planted in one’s own backyard, and pyracantha is an ikebana staple for line material. Its orange- and red-berry-laden branches will provide the smoldering arms of the shin and soe, and the yellow chrysanthemum will be the center of the arrangement, the hikae.

  Monks began the tradition of ikebana, arranging flowers at the temple, and the meditation that is part of the creation is perhaps why my mother loved the process of it so much. It wasn’t just the social gathering and community of ladies in the class or garden club—though those were hugely important. It wasn’t just the beauty of the flowers and the small gift to the family she gave of a weekly live sculpture—though those were also important. Equally important, however, was the space of hum and meditation that filled my mother’s brain as she contemplated and planned her arrangement. There would be poetry, emotion, balance, a nod to nature, a drift of peace, a fondling of hard branches and soft petals, and a hum and a hum and a hum in her head of God and of beauty. With the tools of her craft, what would emerge would be an exciting, idyllic scene, as if you were on a nature walk and, when you turned a corner, suddenly happened upon a beautiful spot in a magical garden. You would stand for a minute, admiring the coupling of lime-green fern draping over fluffy white hydrangea, with a deeper green palm arching heavenward, anchored in a dark blue vase evocative of a pond.

  She begins her meditation as a hum these mornings, interspersing home care and child care with weighing the balance of two heavy arms of pyracantha. Standing at the window, her eyes resting on the bamboo across the lawn, she remembers that she has heard that you can actually see bamboo grow—right before your eyes!—for it is the fastest-growing plant on earth. But the cat meows, the dirty clothes beckon, the soured socks need to be fished from under the bed, and she doesn’t allow herself to take the time to stand still for five minutes and witness this astonishing miracle.