Oh my God, I thought, here it comes—she’s going to throw me under the bus! I braced myself.
“Ears! Yes, that’s right people, I, Rowan Francis Henchy, have . . . perfectly symmetrically pierced ears! Bam!”
She did some hip-hop gesture with both her hands to punctuate this declaration.
Stunned, I just stared at her. Emotionally inverted by a joy I had not expected, my eyes welled once again. Rowan had obviously intuited the whole picture so clearly and wanted to take care of me. I slammed up against feelings of relief and joy as well as guilt and embarrassment at how much I, too, needed her approval. This dynamic was so complex and layered.
I felt so proud of my little girl’s heart and her innate spirit, yet shrunk with shame that I had created a situation in which she felt the need to care for me. I silently vowed not to make my shortcoming her responsibility ever again. I should have remembered how I acted when she asked about my crying in the car all those years back. Rowan was being her grounded self, wanting everything to be OK. Standing chest-deep in the water with Rowan on his shoulders, Chris just shook his head and half smiled. His expression suggested pique, defeat, and pride.
We all celebrated the day of independence, and the irony was not overlooked on my part. I, too, shook my head.
That night Chris and I did not discuss the events of the day but instead quietly readied ourselves for bed. He broke the silence with the acknowledgment that a bigger conversation was necessary but sleep was calling.
The next day, after reaching the doctor and explaining my dilemma, I had a plan to offer. Taking Rowan aside, I admitted to having made a mistake and explained that we could take one earring out, let the hole close, and get it repierced. I emotionally added that I loved her so much and I had just wanted it to be perfect and for her to think her Mom was cool. I thanked her for what she did in the pool and said I really appreciated it. She asked me if I thought her ears looked OK. I said I honestly did. Rowan looked at herself in the mirror and then turned back me and said, “Mom, you didn’t do it on purpose and besides nobody is going to ever notice. Can I go play now?”
I exhaled and was awed by how self-confident and forthright my ten-year-old was. Had I had anything to do with that?
I realized once again I still had a lot to learn. I forgave my husband completely. I would have been mad at me, too. I admitted to my own mistakes and where my own insecurities reared their ugly heads. I brought up the necessity of our being a united front at all times in front of the girls and we could always hash out our own differences in private.
It is not about not becoming my mother as a mom. Nor is it about being her. It is about being as much of myself as possible and defining my individual relationship with my girls with respect for how they feel as well as how I feel. Using those lessons I have learned that I value and leaving the ones I don’t behind. Rowan and I were both free enough to be ourselves and together managed to find an honest and healthy way out of a decent-size problem. I don’t know all the answers but together we can learn.
I have to come clean and say that this was not the end of the Gummy Bear saga. A year later Rowan out of the blue asked if she could repierce her one ear. I said sure and we went to Claire’s that afternoon. A new hole was pierced and it was not dangerously close to the old one. She even convinced me to get a third in my left ear. How could I say no? It was a little bonding moment and funny that this time, too, she went first, just as I had when my mom and I got our ears pierced together when I was young.
Who knew that little, uneven, plastic Gummy Bears could penetrate so many layers. Literally!
Chapter Twenty
Returning Home
In January 2013, Chris and I began looking for a house out at the beach. I hadn’t spent time in the Hamptons in years. My dad’s family had moved to Palm Beach and soon those beaches replaced the sand of my youth. However, Chris and I and the girls soon began getting invited to visit with various families from school who had Hamptons houses. Driving back into the city on Sunday night we’d talk about how much fun we all had and how relaxing it had all been. I began to reestablish a bond with the area, visiting the playground on which I had skinned my knee and crawling under the trellis under which I used to find tiny frogs. I’d run into people of all ages that I knew from my childhood. Invariably after I’d introduce them to my husband and daughters, these old friends would begin to reminisce about my father and tell me how missed he was. I even got to show Chris and the girls pictures of my grandfather that hung on the walls at the Meadow Club.
It was all very familiar and somehow comforting. It felt different, though, and as if this time my entry into this community had been generated by me. It was via my husband and girls that I had come to want to celebrate my roots. After a while, it became clear that Chris and I wanted our own place somewhere at the beach.
One random day, after years of wishing for and working toward the possible purchase of a second home, Chris just said, “What are we waiting for? We work to live, so why don’t we invest in a house and enjoy it? It doesn’t have to be in Southampton, either.” We began the hunt and after a fun and exhausting search during the dead of winter, just three months after Mom’s death, we found the perfect place—a modest, yet roomy house in the town of Southampton, about a mile from the water. It was fully renovated, would fit many guests comfortably, and had a big backyard and a freshwater pool. Our dream house was finally a reality.
We had cast a wide net and had looked everywhere from Southampton to Montauk. How funny it was that we should end up right back where it had all begun! Suddenly, I was with a Realtor, driving past the place in which I learned how to swim and do the box step.
How serendipitous it had been to have been accepted at the perfect school and then become friends with people who all lived near one another in the town I actually loved. And how strange and amazing that it was my daughters who had brought me back to the place my mother had loved and to a life she had coveted. And how strangely sad it was that Mom would never see it.
The sale went through and I set out immediately to decorate. Given my mother’s inability to ever finish decorating any of her homes, I was even more intent on quickly assembling furniture in every room. My goal was for each room to be livable and uncluttered. I promised Chris that I would not spend any money, but could easily furnish the place with what I currently had in storage. Dan and I had spent almost five years going through my mother’s storage spaces—Beanie Babies, Louis Vuitton purses, and all the rest—and it happened that we were just about to finish and leave the space for good.
The day we emptied the unit completely and had trekked to Paterson for the last time it seemed almost too good to be true. Mom had been moved to the new facility in Manhattan and had declined in mental health so that she had given up trying to fight me on the warehouse. She just knew I had sold some stuff and had money for her. I assured her I kept the jewelry and most of the art and special furniture, but maybe we did not need twelve Erté sculptures. Two would suffice. She seemed to be mollified by the amounts of cash we made at the three huge tag sales and the tax deductions from donations. As we drove away from the now cavernous unit, I looked out the window and saw the bronze monument of Lou Costello and a little park dedicated to him. He had been from Paterson. Abbot and Costello had always been a favorite for both my mom and me. We’d rush back from church Sunday afternoons to watch it together on Seventy-Third Street. Amid the seediness of this area stood this plump little man with a smile on his face. It looked as if he were waving me good-bye.
• • •
Now it was time to start decorating the beach house. Chris was away the weekend the movers came to Southampton for the big move, so I had free reign. I called in my personal troops and was determined to use as much preexisting stuff as I could.
For three full days, three of us worked nonstop, getting all of my mother’s furniture and art scattered and perfec
tly placed. We staged it as if it were a movie set. We put down rugs and hung art. We made up the beds with various antique linens. In every room we found mismatched but functioning end tables, lamps, chests, and more. We moved a huge oak table by ourselves down a flight of stairs and into a basement to be used as a wrapping, craft, and work table. I wanted it to look cozy and eclectic and like we had lived there for years. We were able to fill the small pool house with towels and couches and a few coffee tables. An enormous collection of earthenware green vases that Mom and I had collected from various antique markets lined an old oak baker’s rack. The Van Briggles, Roseville, and USA pieces added color to the room. We’d only take one break a day to eat dinner.
By the time Chris arrived I was shattered physically and mentally. I was an emotional wreck, having engaged with my mom’s belongings so intensely over the past few days. Many memories were attached to all the pieces, and it felt like each one was imbued with her spirit. My mother’s stuff was finally being put to use after decades of being paid for and transported all over the United States. This was the first time some of the pieces had ever even been put to use. She would collect just to collect. She amassed for future homes she wouldn’t even buy. Seeing it all finally staged perfectly in a home Mom would never see gave me pause. Mom never arrived at a place to actually use and enjoy her things.
Chris gave me a huge hug and was obviously blown away by how much work we had done. He marveled that it looked like a “completely decorated home.” But I couldn’t help but think his comment was like what you say when you see an ugly baby for the first time and don’t want to insult the parents. He must have caught a glimpse of an expression on my assistant’s face as he hugged me that suggested he tread lightly. He smiled and said, “It’s great, babe. I’m starving; let me shower and take you all to a great meal.”
At dinner Chris, sensing my fragile and fatigued state, lifted a glass and made a toast to us and to all the hard work we had accomplished. Cheers to our new amazing home! He then added a special toast to me, calling me “Mom” and saying he knew how much I was doing and that it was all truly appreciated. I felt so relieved he was there and let out a sigh that represented a mixture of weariness and relief. I drank my martini straight up with a twist and didn’t realize the poignancy of the order until later. That had ultimately been my mom’s drink of choice. We all counted our blessings and talked about all the things we wanted to do in our new home.
Later that night, I lay in bed, wide-eyed and staring up at the ceiling. Chris asked, “Babe, what is it? Are you OK?” In a trancelike voice I responded, “I hate everything, I’m getting rid of it all.”
Suddenly, I hated everything. It was eclectic all right, but seemingly done by a color-blind crazy hoarder person. I hated the old-fashioned style, I hated the smell, I hated the fact that Mom saved it all and that we had paid for the storage all these years. I hated her hoarding it, and us waiting and waiting for a dream house and a place in which we would be happy and at peace with one another. I hated that I gave so much of my own time to the navigation of it all.
What was meant to have been a fresh start for us all had developed into an experiment in clutter, in being stuck in the past, and in how not to decorate a beach house. I had hoped and believed the pieces would work and that this eclectic amassing of furniture and things would make for a charming beach home. But the truth was, I had outgrown the stuff. Assembled all together, after all this time, it just seemed dated. None of it felt like my taste anymore. I was no longer that person. I had changed and was no longer “shabby chic meets uptown Manhattan meets tramp art meets Connecticut housewife.”
I felt sad, stupid, and slightly frustrated by the years that had gone into these past three days. I lay still and felt an unsettling sense of rage and sadness inside. I was surrounded by the things my mom savored, in a house she would have loved, yet she was not there to see any of it. And I didn’t even like it in the end. It felt it had all been for nothing.
I knew not whether to scream or cry, but I was clear about one thing: I had to rid myself of almost everything. I realized it could possibly be considered excessive, but I knew it was necessary. Suddenly, I didn’t care about spending money on new pieces. I had some cash left from the tag sales and I wasn’t going to go on a crazy buying spree. I just needed this home to reflect the me I was today and the family I had created. Some might say I was ascribing way too much to inanimate objects, but this was my entire past and my upbringing and the life I had only shared with my mother. These things represented our unfulfilled dreams. Now I saw it all as only holding an obsolete promise. I had attached so much to these things. I saw in them a feeble chance to go back and make right the “almosts” in our life. I saw it all laid out and knew I could never go back. Mom and I never finished a home and enjoyed it together. We just kept chasing the stuff and the destinations and never inhabited them. It felt like a real end to a huge period of longing.
The next day I started peeling away the things that gave me the most anxiety. I found an antiques dealer in the next town over and engaged him to help me sell most of it. He was hesitant at first because he said people often came to him with pieces left to them by family. They usually held only emotional value to the individual but usually little else.
Undeterred, I sent him photos and measurements and we were in business. I have to say that the pieces were all exquisite. They had real value and were in pristine shape. This guy said that in all his years of being in this business, he had never seen such a cohesive, quality, beautiful collection. He could easily move this stuff and give me half the proceeds. I then could buy items we all really loved and wanted to live among. It made sense, and I did just that.
I soon realized that this had actually been an important part of my particular mourning process. I had needed to go through the entire process—cleaning out the storage space, seeing everything that was there, placing it all in our new home, paying tribute to what my mom and I had collected and the path it had taken, and then being done with it.
I kept a few special items with which I could not part and decided to work just enough of them in to feel good and connected to my mom. With the money I received I bought and decorated the place to reflect my husband and me and us as a family. It was a liberating process and a telling one.
• • •
Six months later it was our first Christmas in this house, and to quote my girls, it promised to be “the best one ever!”
For the first time since I can remember, I was also not alone in the holiday decorating. As a kid I decorated our tree every year all by myself. I’d take a minimum of four hours to place the multicolored mini-lights on practically every needle. I would then deck out the tree with so many ornaments you could barely see the branches. I loved the ritual of it all. I would stay up all night if I had to use everything. I was methodical and maniacal and felt such commitment and peace doing it all by myself. Mom never liked doing the tree.
I would start after dinner and then we would go to midnight Mass. I always resumed after Mass and would sometimes stay up to 4:00 A.M. I never turned on the lights until the whole tree was done. My favorite part was when I’d finally take the ridiculously long assembly of plugs that had been stacked and attached and put the last one in the socket. The tree would glow and it was so bright you could read a book under it.
I’d switch it on and enjoy the light and the intense quiet. Mom would be getting ready for bed and I’d do the reveal for her—“Ta-da, Mama!”—and then go into my room and go to bed, incredibly excited for Santa to come. I’d leave the tree without presents and in the morning there would be so many wrapped packages surrounding the base that one would not believe we were a household of two. Most of the gifts would be spilling out of a Christmas stocking the size of a young child. Mom had found the enormous stocking at some store and thought I deserved it.
Christmas morning was always amazing and we would usually go to
Bob’s family’s house for an Armenian-style family Christmas. The day after Christmas I’d go to my dad’s house and have the holiday with my family there. Mom’s relatives were never a part of our lives in these later years.
Now it was my turn to create traditions in my own home. And I was taking it incredibly seriously. I roll-called my platoon and we put together a plan. Everyone happily got to work. I dreaded the day my girls stopped believing in Santa (and vowed to never pass out like my mom had done so many years ago and reveal the truth). Santa would come during the night when they were all asleep for as long as possible.
This year one daughter did the outside lights with Chris’s mom, another child did the fireplaces and powder room, I completed the dining room table, and we all did the tree together. For the record, I did not redo the placement of any of the lights or the ornaments when my girls were not looking! The house was stunning. Because it was to be the first family dinner at my new special table, I wanted it to be just right. I had recently convinced my husband to let me get a large oval zinc-top table that had two massive debarked tree trunks as its base. Even though Chris started out being unsure, thankfully, its dominating presence grew on him and we kept the table. Since the table was my domain, I went about the decorating in a way that would make Colin Cowie proud.
First, I placed two fresh garlands from a local farm along the length of the table crossing in and out of the other through the center. I next wrapped tiny battery-operated mini-lights on thin wire, which I had splurged on from Restoration Hardware, around white balls made of seashells. I made two pyramids of three balls each and encased them under glass domes and located them toward the center of the table amid the green garland. Two sterling candelabras that my mom bought at an antique place ages ago bracketed my center masterpiece. To finish it off, I scattered a few huge pinecones and nestled a few silver birds and mini-conches into the green. I thought I’d add a bit of beach into Christmas. I lit the candles, stood back, and as the holiday music wafted through the otherwise quiet house, I thought it was the best-smelling room and most beautiful table I had ever set.
There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me Page 36