Mother

Between silk nightgowns and choppy bangs,

The oldest child came out abnormal and tried for 18 years to impress you.

I know you fell in love with him at 18.

Both of you, 18.

Senior prom and your dress was '80s pink (different than normal-pink).

And you probably kissed him that night.

I don't say this much, but I'm glad you fell in love with him.

I love him, too.

White brick, one-story piece of land off Main Street.

You taught yourself the piano and graduated college with it on your shoulders.

Seven older siblings, six of them boys.

One bathroom.

One bathroom.

Grandpa worked three jobs while you turned music into art and art turned you into an artist.

But I love you for more than that.

I love you for buying the double popsicles with two sticks and not one.

For 8am wakeups and laundry baskets with neat, clean collars.

Even though you wore your Nikes through Paris,

Even though you forced me to practice the instrument that made you.

I love you for memorizing cookies and street names and knowing Rachmaninoff better than Rachmaninoff.

I'm sorry I yelled at you.

I'm sorry for deleting your thesis on the anatomy of an orchestra for your Master's.

I'm sorry my first word was sh*t

Forgive my 3am stomach spells and all the weight I never tried to lose.

For holding my hair back, even now, as I lose it.

But I love you for Southern trees and weak-people runs and "hot shower cures"

Thirteen years of soccer games and tally marks for all the goals I broke my ankles scoring.

Four kids and forehead kisses and I raised your youngest child.

But I didn't.

And you cried over me. Over my weak body and the brain that didn't work.

The little brain you made for me.

Their needles and IVs pumped fluids into my spine and screams into my lungs.

Over the masks on their noses and mouths,

Over the sound of monitors that told you my heart was beating.

Over your two daughters, imprisoned in a hospital, 

bound by disease and separated by a wall.

And the surgeries. My eyes didn't move and my skull screamed at me.

And my spine was wrong and they couldn't tell you why.

And your other daughter, two weeks old, her brain collapsing in the room next door.

You walked between the walls, between that black-haired newborn and your oldest,

Your only daughters

Holding papers with dollar signs and ink streaked across the white parchment from tears.

Next to the man you fell in love with, senior prom.

And yet I never woke up alone.

I don't know the fear of hospital beds and oversized gowns and stiff socks.

I never slept there in fear.

Because of you, Mom.

Because of you.