Sand in My Eyes (8 page)

“My last egg dropped, had a great fall,” I said.

“I didn’t come for an egg,” she said.

“You saw the ambulance out front?”

“Is everything all right?” she then asked.

“My daughter had a febrile seizure. Her fever skyrocketed within seconds.”

“You must have been terrified.”

“I was.”

“Is she okay now? Is there anything you need help with?”

“She’s fine now. She and her brothers are off with their grandparents for a week. I wish I had kept her home, told them ‘no’ when they came to get her. I feel guilty for having let her go.”

“All mothers feel that.”

“What?”

“Guilt,” she said. “No mother feels she does enough. It’s the hardest job in the world, isn’t it?”

I looked her in the eyes, eyes that were blue and old, belonging to the era of ladies who paid for things with cash, not credit, and cooked homemade dinners. She probably dropped ten pennies a week for a year into a jar before buying a new lamp with cash. I couldn’t tell her that all I do is purchase with credit and run in circles, spinning in my messy house, the house with no food. She would never understand. “It’s certainly not easy,” was all I said. “I hope I’m not losing my mind.”

“Motherhood,” she declared diagnostically, her eyes growing large and her voice intense. “You’ve got a full-blown case of motherhood, that’s all. I know I look too old, but I remember, I do, those chaotic days when my
children were small, when they had me running in circles, feeling dizzy all the time. It’s a form of insanity, don’t you think?”

“I’ve been wondering,” I told her with a laugh.

“Don’t worry,” she said, waving me off with her hand. “It’ll pass. These crazy mornings of yours will pass.” She said it as if warning a princess that midnight will strike and it all will end. “It’s all a big cycle. Everything is a phase. One day you’ll wake and your children will be grown and gone.”

“I’m in no hurry for that,” I said. “I love them being small. I wish things could be easier, that’s all, so I might enjoy them more.”

“Mothering is hard. I don’t know the secret to making it easier. You’ll have to find amusement in the disorder of it all.” She grasped the wooden railing again and started slowly on her descent. “I’ve kept you long enough. I better get on my way.”

I stood there watching, hoping she wouldn’t lose her balance and go tumbling down my long porch stairs, and feeling remorse for those mornings I pretended not to see her in her window watching me and my children go down our steps, dropping beach towels, falling, crying, quarreling, and me yelling as I piled them into the wagon. More than once I recognized from a distance a look of amusement, not irritation, on her face, and I had suspected that we were the sounds of morning that got her out of bed, luring her to that window.

“Fedelina,” I called down to her as she reached my bottom step. She looked up at me with panting breath. “You’re more than welcome to stop over again,” I told her.

“Thank you, dear, but you’re the busy one. You tell me when a good time is.” She bent down at the waist, putting her behind in the air, and picked a weed that was growing between two stepping stones. I waited for her to stand back up again.

“Anytime this week,” I said. “It’s a slow week for me.”

“Enjoy the orchid—and the letter from my mother,” she said, and disappeared behind the line of gumbo-limbo trees separating her yard from mine.

“I will,” I called after her, then went inside and opened the yellow envelope.

CHAPTER TEN

SPRING
1907

Welcome to the world my little angel of the morning!

After hours of grueling labor, I heard through my window bands marching, people parading the streets of Portland. Daddy claims they were celebrating, cheering me on for having pushed you, Fedelina, into the world. But I knew what it was all about, that Oregon’s first Rose Carnival and Festival had begun! With you in my arms, I later sat watching the children’s parade from the window and, come night, the spectacular Electrical Parade, with streetcars decorated with electric lights. Life is brilliant, dear!

What a time to be born! Everything around you is blooming, and mornings are my favorite. It’s morning now as I sit here in the yard with you, writing you this letter. I’ve always had a craving to write and can think of nothing more precious or powerful than a mother writing letters to her children. There is no novel, no poem, no literary masterpiece, nor lyrics to any song, that I’d rather write than letters to my daughter, and so I will start now, and continue writing my way through various seasons of your life
.

I can’t promise to record the exact day you first smile, or which tooth you grow first, or whether you said “mama” or “dada,” but I’ll start by saying butterflies from the yard next door are fluttering over, landing on your bassinet, and hummingbirds are whizzing by, and cardinals are sitting on a nearby branch. This is the world you’ve entered. And it’s a breathtaking one!

Every morning of your little life I’ve taken you out here as I sit in awe, trying to figure her magic, discover what tricks my neighbor is performing in that yard of hers to attract multitudes of magnificent beings. Maybe it’s her music—Mozart, every morning. We are blessed to be living next door to one of Portland’s rose enthusiasts, only I wish I knew how to grow them myself. I wish for a lot of things, darling —for a bathtub in my house, like my neighbor has, and a telephone, too. She’s the only one on our street that I know of who has both a bathtub and a telephone. Her husband, by the way, is a dentist. He makes $2,500 per year. I wish your daddy was a dentist, and that our home was as big!

“What ridiculous eyes that baby has, so blue,” she said moments ago, as she heard you fussing and stepped up to where my yard meets hers
.

“She’s got her daddy’s eyes,” I replied. “What a beautiful yard you have. I wish I had a yard like yours. I’d love a garden but wouldn’t know where to begin. All that work.”

“It is a lot of work,” she said, “but I love it to where it doesn’t feel like work.”

“I should buy a packet of seeds and give it a try, fix up this yard of mine,” I told her. “I should be productive, do more with my days.”

And it was then, Fedelina, that she told me something I never want to forget. She said, “Cora, what you are doing when your children are small is working on the underground roots, the things not seen, but vital below the earth.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling more important than I had ever felt before. And in that moment, the hair on my arms stood up and something in my stomach fluttered, and you will find this, too, darling that your stomach flutters when you realize something you didn’t know before—I call these instances butterfly sightings—and all of a sudden, in the instant that she said that to me, a metamorphosis took place within me and I will never be the same again. From now until the day you are grown, I will view my job of mothering as vital to this earth
.

It was then that I heard a phone ringing and knew it was hers, for no one else on the street has a phone. She went running inside, and I thought about going in, too, to put you to bed and pamper myself—wash my hair with Borax or egg yolks, which I do once a week. A little pampering goes a long way!

But as I stared at you in your bassinet, I suddenly wondered about all the things you must know to live a vivacious life, the lessons I must teach you. For now your newborn mind is easily content, and mothering is simple—cuddling and bathing, diapering and feeding. But I’m no dummy. I know the day will come when you notice that your mommy sings off key, and forgets all the words, and knows hardly anything. I know the day will come when you no longer see me for what I am, which is perfectly in love with you, and when you no longer want to sit in my arms or hear me sing, but expect more from me
.

That will be the day that I cry. But it’s the other day I fear worse, the one I hear about from other mothers of daughters, the day in which you tell me you know everything and I know nothing. That will be the day I retreat into the corridors of my own insecurity, no longer daring to share with you all the things I felt were important
.

And so I’ll write it all down now, everything I want you to know about life, and when I’m gone someday and you reach that point—it usually happens to women once they have babies of their own—where you wonder whether your mother might have known a thing or two, you can pick up my writings and find out
.

I’ll start by saying I hope you cultivate beauty in your mornings. Mornings are important. They set the mood for your entire day. It’s why I start ours sitting out here listening to Mozart and the birds. Like classical music, nature has a strengthening effect. Listen to the birds and let them sing for you. It’s good for the body and the soul in ways I do not understand, but know instinctively. Ten minutes of sitting outside with you in the morning puts me in a fine mood and establishes my state of mind for the rest of the day. And if you’re not a gardener yourself, living next to one is a blessing. It has me caring a little less about the small house I’m in. I like to believe that living in a small house with a good view out one’s window is better than living in a mansion with no view at all
.

But one more thing, Fedelina—life is short. The average life expectancy in the United States is forty-seven years. So please, baby, delight in your days. It’s your life! Make it a life you relish! A life you are proud of! Live—live your life!

Being Cora, your mom, is who I want to be right now, and I am savoring it, fully engaged, aware it won’t last forever, not in this way. In case I forget to say it when you’re older, I will say it now, “Thank you, Fedelina,” for giving me the experience of mothering you. But babies don’t stay babies forever, and you are to me now like a dandelion in my hand. With each breath I take you will change, lose your baby ways, and then I must let go of who you were. When that happens, I don’t want to look back, perplexed that all of a sudden a big gust of wind came and took you away, and so I try now to be aware of the subtle breezes, the things I can’t see with my eyes but can feel. And I’m trying to figure out how I can make it feel like forever that I am holding you—this dandelion—in my hand
.

If before having you I wanted to become a doctor, or when you’re older, I feel like becoming a lawyer, all is achievable. You’ve been born into a world that is starting to favor women, and being a woman is the best thing to be, better than, say, an orchid. Orchids are beautiful, but cannot change their variety, whereas a woman has the liberty to constantly adjust who she is, how she thinks, behaves, reacts, what she learns, pursues, talks about, as well as who she wants to be in life. And if she finds she no longer likes parts of herself, she has the ability to change what it is she no longer likes
.

Uh-oh—you’re acting hungry. Time to go
,

Cora, your mum