The Space Between

Looking at old pictures of Dad and Mom before they got married and then immediately after having children, I see something familiar to me—a marked change in both of their faces. Their exuberance had been diminished, they looked tired. I know all too well how that looks–Jorge and I certainly displayed that after having kids. I empathize with both of them and appreciate just how much they both sacrificed to bring us into the world. It is a labor of love and it is not for the weak of spirit or stomach.

Dad worked by day, went to school at night. Mom cared for the babies and worked when she could–from home even. Yes, it was a thing back in the 60s as well. Baby one, two, three, then four arrived. They toiled over what to make for dinner and how to pay the rent. “We’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Mom once told me of those early years. When they bought the house in Hanson, Dad lost his job right before the sale was finalized. It went through, thankfully. The day they closed they had just enough money for a couple cups of coffee and a piece of pie to celebrate. There was no such thing as revolving credit yet for them in those days.

Soon after moving to Hanson, Dad got a job as an engineer at Alden Products in Brockton. Prostitutes and drug addicts frequently passed by the windows of the factory while the workers inside made connectors for high voltage cables. It must have been a depressing scene for him to visit each day. As the 70s progressed to the 80s, one fateful night in May a star was formed and 9 months later born in the form of, you guessed it, yours truly. Mom cried when she called Dad at work to tell him, he just laughed. I love that story, it’s one of my favorites and, coincidentally, one of the reasons why I named this publication Evergreen & Grey. They suggested Mom get an amniocentesis done to find out if there were any problems with me, she opted not to because she was going to have me regardless. She was known as the grey-haired pregnant lady in town.

In 1978, I was born on the heels of a blizzard that froze our little state. I was not an easy baby, cried a lot and probably had colic. “Better that than the baby” Mom once said after hurling a frying pan from the kitchen into the dining room when I just wouldn’t stop fussing. Jan was sitting at the table when she saw the pan fly past her head. It’s one of those “core memories” as the kids say these days. See? I’ve always been an innocent little pain in the ass. Dad continued to work a lot, advancing in his career at Alden’s. Mom eventually went back to work, working at Almay’s for a while and then eventually within the schools as a secretary, landing in the very same high school my kids attend today. “Sure, she’s going to be the one that gets to go to all the restaurants and on all the trips.” Jimmy said with disdain after I came home all scrunched up in my newborn clothes. He wasn’t wrong. I regularly ordered “virgin piña coladas” at all kinds of restaurants, went to Florida, Toronto, Hawaii twice, San Francisco, Virginia, England, and a cruise all before the age of 18. I was so sheltered and immune to understanding exactly how much sacrifice had come before me to lay down the carpet I walked so easily upon. 

The 80s and 90s were the best and worst of times for our family. Things seemed to reach a head in the 90s in particular. Jimmy was going through his own stuff with periods of presence and prolonged absence from us causing Mom to feel as though she was losing her mind as she dealt with menopause and meniere’s disease, Jan was establishing an independent life as a career woman while balancing the everpresent expectations of her role as oldest (and my godmother), Gary was living at home in his late 20s but was still held to archaic expectations of curfew, Barb was planning what we now refer to as “the party” which was a great time had by all, and I was finishing high school with champagne taste in colleges. Mom and Dad deserved a break at that point in time, in some respects they got it through trips and stays in Mattapoisett. But I’m sure my foray into postsecondary education was a major stressor. In fact, I know for certain that they never bought a second home in Mattapoisett because of my going to college. I really put a damper on their golden years.

While I was away in Worcester receiving a top-notch Jesuit education and Gary began his own married life and no longer lived at home, Mom and Dad were feeling the emptiness of their nest. Dad, a creative introvert, began a quiet love affair with Herman Melville and whaling. His creativity took the form of the written word and a novel began to form. I never took time to read his book all the way through or understand his obsession. The hours he spent writing took him away from Mom; Mom resented this. Alone in a big house, her husband in the basement for hours at a time, I don’t blame her. After all, her creativity comes in the form of conversation and socialization; parties and gatherings her canvas. There is no one she cannot chat with, the gab is a gift indeed. She is our Oprah and I would absolutely give a kidney to see her interview some of our greatest humans of our time–she would get right to the heart of what makes every single one of them tick and, perhaps, tick them off too. Mom and Dad stayed strong but their interests were clearly different–what united them was their love of us. Full stop.

I took off to Venezuela when I was 23 with a desire to learn Spanish well and because I loved all things Latin. Caracas was then known as the “murder capital of the world.” Mom and Dad accepted it, with disdain, even visited me there…twice. Mom sent me packages upon packages and cards filled with messages about how much I was missed. She had always done that even when I was just an hour and a half away in college. Dad talked to me briefly each time I called, always awkward and never a phone person. Whenever Mom was not there, he’d eventually say “Mom’s out” in order to let me know that he had run out of things to say and/or ask. Of course I had already known she was out simply because he answered the phone which he absolutely never did if she were there. Before their second trip, I had to tell them to cancel as there was a quick little coup d’etat and the country was too unsteady to have visitors. “Do you hear what you’re saying? It’s unsafe for us to come down but not unsafe for you” Mom said as I told her to postpone. They listened, they put off the trip. Then they came down, again, this time we even took a puddle jumper of a plane to the Andes mountains and wound our way through all the little enclaves of Mérida. It was an amazing trip; filled with so many wonderful surprises in that imperfect country I called home. I look back on that trip as one of the best of my life. 

All through the strife of the past 5 years, I watched Mom and Dad dance these twilight years together yet in the separate way they always have—he in his space, she in hers. Dad’s loss of his memory and faculties toward the end was harder for all of us than I think we realized, I know he would have hated that. However, the more he grew into his elder Dad/Grampy role, the more he morphed into an Ahabesque appearance with his whitish gray beard, buffalo plaid wool jacket, and (on his birthday) a captain’s hat. He was, in a way, unbecoming in the sense that he shed every layer of his “Dapper Don” facade that he had worn so long and turned into who he really was at the core–an artist, not unlike Melville, his personal hero.

Over the years and as we’ve grown, we have never been perfect and things have happened that threatened our peace and unity. I fled to Hawaii in 2016 in an attempt to establish a life independent of all the things I saw as wrong. What I realized then and now was that no amount of space could undo whatever damage had already been done. I returned, tail between my legs, and learned, through Mom and Dad, how to be graceful and strong, fierce but kind. The sun went down on many sad days over the years but somehow we managed to laugh through it all and forge onward and upward. We children and grandchildren hold quite the legacy in our hands.

“You know how when you go to the Kalalau lookout and it’s all encased in mist?” This is what my therapist on Kaua’i said to me when I expressed all the misery I felt living there. “You’re in the mist right now. Someday those clouds will burn off and what you’ll see is going to be so beautiful.” I knew exactly what she was talking about, I had driven all the way up Waimea Canyon to the lookout so many times, waiting for the sun to burn the mist off so I could see the rugged and lush start of the Na’Pali coast. I knew the mist wasn’t going to clear for me there, I needed to come back home. Moving back was the most humbling yet best thing I have ever done. “It didn’t work out.” I told people when they wondered why I was back. That was just the beginning of mist starting to burn off.

As I approach my 50s with caution, I remind myself that it is an age that Mom and Dad would want to go back to. Mom frequently tells me that she wishes she had the energy I do; she has been struggling with a leg wound and another leg that just won’t stop swelling. It is hard to balance her desire to get out and socialize with her body’s need to heal. Socialization is her craft and she’s damn good at it.  “Do you need anything while I’m out?” I asked her today. “A new life? New legs?” she told me. This is a common request, a disdainful acceptance of a body that no longer works the way she would like. I couldn’t pick up a new life or new legs for her today at Prevites. I could, however, pick up the makings for bolognese and a chocolate loaf cake, two perfect additions to a chilly and rainy Sunday afternoon. I wrapped up a tough week of parenting with a few regrets but mostly resolve to do better this next week and moving forward. The view that is now coming into focus is a spectacular glimpse into what it means to fully exist in the space between the start, the finish, and the continuation. Though I may be tired and feeling the weight of my responsibilities, I look at Mom and Dad’s example to remember that parenting is a noble endeavor. The best we can do is be the solid foundation of love these kids need to live their own imperfect lives in the space between.