VII - Boundaries
My mother has a knack for getting cards, parcels and gifts to the receiver right on the designated day of celebration whether it be birthday, Easter or Christmas. At the beginning of March, I picture her heading to the chest of drawers in her living room of her apartment in Winnipeg where she lives with my father. She selects from one of the appropriate hallmark cards she has stockpiled, sits down at the kitchen table during a quiet moment and begins to wish me a Happy Birthday. Her tight, intense cursive lettering leaves indentations in the card stock, and gives her message extra weight.
She has not missed or sent a late birthday card in all the 30 years I have lived in Toronto. I have come to expect my card and its contents. One day, close to March 22, the letter carrier will shove an envelope through the mail slot where it lands on a small marble table top along with useless flyers.
The cards though are tiny, ticking, time bombs. I open them tenderly at my kitchen table. Sometimes a cheque falls out, or a slip of paper with a poem floats to the floor. I scan over the religious messaging, trying to ignore their implications but they set off a blast of guilt inside of me anyway. The poems or bible verses remind me of how she still fears that I am doomed for hell. Sometimes I drop the card and go straight for the cheque, other times I leave the card where it falls only to put it on the window ledge later for a prescribed amount of time.
In 2018, my Mom completed her memoir, Precious Memories How They Linger. No small feat for a woman who has a grade nine education and worked in a sewing factory in her teen years instead of finishing high school. I decided to tell her then, what I wanted. “Mom could you sign the book copy with Love Mom?” I said. “None of this God’s love anymore, I want your love.” I knew the comment would hurt her and I know her greatest expression of love for me is to wish me God’s love.
At first she stopped putting a signature in the cards at all. They just ended abruptly like there was nothing to say, like she had nothing to give but over time she’s started to express her love in great outpourings, “We were so happy to have a daughter, thank God too. You have brought us much love, we shall always stand by you as long as we live…Mom & Dad.”
As she ages, the cards no longer come on time or at all. On the phone though, she says before she hangs up, “I love you I will always love you.” Full stop. A full expression of her love.
***
Last year a friend of mine, an artist, sent me a beautiful card for my birthday. It was on time, filled with artistic metaphor and on the flip side was a poem, simply signed Love always, Veronica.
Now I take the love from whence it flows.
Love you to Mom.
