A Messy Love Letter to My Mom

Dear Mom,

All I have to do is type those two words, dear and mom, and already I’m in tears.

Come back. I want a second chance with you. I won’t be as scared of you, of you leaving me. I won’t be so scared I’m turning into you. I won’t be so angry you don’t do a good job with your makeup because my eyeliner, when I wear it, is always smudged and a mess. I forget I put it on and rub my eyes.

I won’t be so mad you are human.

Dear Mom.

I have a group of writers on Facebook that I’m helping to get to the finish line of done with their books. I’m doing for them what I couldn’t do for you. I’m going to work my ass off all year because I know what it’s like to die without finishing your book. I saw your face at the morgue. You looked like a furious, frozen lion.

I failed you, Mom, but I won’t fail this group.

I know that you failed you, too. I also know society failed you. I watched the movie Bombshell yesterday, and I walked around dampened afterwards, thinking about all those women who had to fuck or blow their way to their jobs at Fox. It’s so ugly. Writing it is ugly. I hate that those words are on my beautiful blog, but if I don’t write them, I am complicit in the sexual misconduct of others, and that’s not going to happen.

I know that society didn’t encourage you to write the stories you carried in your guts, your heart, your brain. I know that you felt you had to be a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend, work a full-time job, keep the house clean, cook dinners, be thin, attractive.

As your daughter, I watched the stories you carried inside poison you. I saw how much happier you were after your Friday Manhattan. I saw your face when you smoked your beloved cigarettes, the luxury of the inhale, the exhale. I saw the grief when you quit smoking. I smelled your skin when you were having chemo and radiation. I watched your hair thin.

Mom, remember how you used to call poops b.m.’s? I was a teenager before I learned that b.m. stood for bowel movement. Remember how you used to call poops messes? I call them shits and turds and poops. You would have hated all those words, mostly shit and turd. I talk about shitting so much, Mom! You would hate it! You would turn away from me, walk out of the room.

It’s not nice to talk about poop, right?

But here’s the thing, Mom. I don’t get it. Why isn’t it nice to talk about poop? Why can we talk forever about the food we eat but not the way it exits our body? Why can we talk about photosynthesis but not shit?

Mom, I think you were afraid of making a mess.

Mom, I think writing is a solitary act. I think it’s like a bear going into the woods to take a dump. I think it’s like a little kid who is scared of his or her own body hiding behind a chair to poop in their diaper.

Mom, I think society took away your solitary acts. I think the world asked you to give all of yourself to your family, to the community, to Stop & Shop, so you wouldn’t go into the woods and create a gorgeous pile of shit all on your own.

Mom, I think society was afraid of what you might create.

Mom, you tried to be a good girl. You tried. I saw it. I saw the price: the anger, the smoking, the depression, the cancer, the cancer again—that cancer that finally took you down. I saw the stories you carried inside eat you up alive. I saw them fester, rot, and kill you.

Mom, I wish we’d talked about pooping more, about the messy parts of life that scared and embarrassed us. Why? Because then I would have felt freer to be myself and I would have been less judgmental of you, of me, of everyone else.

I needed permission to make a mess. I needed to see my mom was a wild bear who wasn’t afraid to go into the woods. I needed to see that a woman can go into the woods and come back, again and again. I needed to see the part of you that lived like the poems you so loved by Mary Oliver.

In the book Year of Wonder, today’s piece of music to listen to is by Chopin. It’s Étude in C, op. 10 no. 1. The author, Clemency Burton-Hill writes, “This glittering little study was supposed to be a means of developing the technique of piano students: the music demands outlandishly wide stretches (especially for the right hand that would have been considered extremely daring in the early nineteenth century.”

Living a life where you bring the stories inside of you outside requires outlandishly wide stretches. Mom, do you remember how you tried to get your book done even when you were high on morphine? Do you remember how happy you were when you were writing about Louisa? You had let yourself fall in love with your own process. It was amazing.

Mom, since you aren’t here to walk away, I’m going to keep talking to you.

Mom, if you think about your poop, if you value it, you understand that the quality of the shit you produce depends on the quality of the shit you put into your body. Mom, this is why I don’t watch the news. This is why I don’t watch much TV at all, really. This is why I stopped reading Vogue and Elle. This is why I don’t hang out with people who say words such as can’t or global warming isn’t real. This is why I barely drink alcohol and try not to eat a lot of processed foods.

Mom, I think if you take in a lot of beauty, anything that comes out will hold its own beauty, also.

I think you are so beautiful, Mom. It was excruciating to be the daughter of a beautiful mom who thought she was ugly. I lived with that lie, with that fundamental misunderstanding you had of your own self, and then you died.

Mom, I want to tell you something:

You were gorgeous.

You took my breath away.