August in Bloom

My parents named me August, though I came into the world on one of the coldest February mornings in Jasper County history. It wasn’t long before I understood the irony and the appropriateness of their choice. By the time I marched up the broad concrete steps that led to my kindergarten classroom, the legs of my stiff, dark dungarees cuffed deeply to accommodate the growth spurt my mother seemed certain would magically happen as I slept one night, I was acutely aware that I stood apart.

“Most folks blend together like the ingredients in this glass,” my mother once told me as she stirred a chocolate malted with a long-handled spoon. “Nice enough, I suppose, but none particularly distinct. You, though,” she continued as she deposited a bright maraschino cherry atop the thick mixture and pushed the glass across the table toward me, “you stand out in a deliciously appealing way.”

Whether my mother was blessed with the odd child she’d hoped for or if she carefully orchestrated my cherryness is anyone’s guess. She’d always seemed part of the comfortable blend, fitting easily into the roles life brought her, but even to those who knew her only casually, it must have been clear she found her sameness an embarrassment greater than if she’d had a series of DUIs or rotted front teeth. She resented her normalcy far more than I’ve ever struggled with being akin to a soda shop embellishment, so if I was indeed simply born a square peg, it was my good fortune to have done so in a family where teenage football stars and head cheerleaders were seen as sorry disappointments.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood this week, though I’m usually a firm believer in spending less energy on the past and future than on whatever is right before me. Planning has its place, but too much of it steals the joy from life so I pay tomorrow far less attention than I do today. Or yesterday. History is rarely reported correctly anyway, its facts and nuances intentionally skewed or sometimes inadvertently altered by the layers of glitter and gloss time and distance tend to add.

As much as I strive to stay planted in right now, memories have been floating in and out of my thoughts since I got the call last Tuesday. My mother had fallen. A slip on the ice that seemed like nothing to worry about. A lightly bruised shoulder and deeply bruised ego, mostly. But then she fell again the next morning, this time in her dining room, no icy patch to blame. By the time I reached the hospital, she was disoriented. Three days later, she was gone.

I sat staring at the doctor as she delivered the news, hearing but not quite comprehending her words. They’d done all they could, she said. One of those terrible, unforeseen things. Did I need anything? Was there someone she could call? The touch of her hand on my arm startled me and reality began to settle in.

This morning, I sat on a hard bench not 15 feet from my mother’s casket and watched as the people who’d shaped both my life and hers filed in to see her off on her next adventure. I felt disconnected, as though watching from above or from the seat next to mine. People offered the expected words of kindness; they spoke of my mother’s strength in the years since she lost my dad, of her dedication to my education, to my happiness. I agreed. She’d been all they said. Strong, determined, kind, and beautiful. I wondered for a moment how I might be remembered when my time comes, then shook off the thought and returned to the bench where I sat, to the body she’d given me.

One row back, two ladies were talking, reminiscing about the many years they’d worked with my mother. I listened as they spoke of how responsible she’d been, how talented. Then one hushed to a whisper and said, “But what an odd duck she was,” and the other chuckled and agreed. In an instant, the tightness in my chest released. I exhaled deeply, realizing only then that I’d been holding my breath. I turned to smile at them, the women who’d seen my mother as she’d always wished to be. They seemed embarrassed, but their words were a gift and I told them so. I hope that somehow, from somewhere, my mother heard them too.

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(GBE #57, Fiction, Promp: “Eulogy”)