Acre Under a Green Sky

Which brings me to my mother's earliest memory; not so much as she related it, but as I see it now.

She's three years old. She's sitting on a streetcar with her mother, Winnifred, beside her. Winnifred is wearing a blue dress with white dots. My mother is wearing a dress with a crisp white apron. The white apron still smells of ironing. Her shoes are black with a strap. Her socks are white, and her feet do not reach the floor.

My mother is looking into the faces of the people across from her. So far everything is perfect. Life is perfect.

A woman smiles at her. My mother doesn't smile back. Grown-ups are always smiling at her. The woman looks away; rejected.

My mother is looking at a man now. He looks at her, but only in passing. He doesn't see her. It occurs to her that she doesn't know what he's thinking or feeling. She tries to get inside him, but she can't. Now, she's looking from face to face to face. They are all impenetrable. She can't be them. They don't know her. She looks up into Winnifred's face and sees only her haughty self-absorption. She knows now. She feels it.

"I am going to be alone in here all by myself for the rest of my life," and she starts to cry. She is inconsolable; nearly hysterical. Winnifred is alarmed; then frightened, trying to hold this fury, unable to calm her. My mother hates the faces around her. Some are concerned, others annoyed. Still others are indifferent. She hates them all. They are unreachable, untouchable, unknowable hulks. Only her rage is real, and they will at least see it. They may be too thick to feel it, but they will have to see it and hear it. And they will pay for their inaccessibility.

My mother came to accept the isolation of her soul, as we all must; but never the isolation of her heart –– never her inability to fully identify with others; which she chose to mistake for their inability to identify with her or with anyone else for that matter. And so she railed against the world. She railed against the isolation of life with others. She railed against the sham of communion with others. And at the root of it all; hidden deep in her heart forever out of reach, was this simple truth: She was in love with her mother and her mother did not love her back.

There is nothing sadder than the unrequited love of a child for a parent. And nothing more deadly to the spirit.