“OLD PICTURE COULD BE KEY TO MOTHER’S MISSING YEARS”

A work of fiction, which tells an important truth.

“Who was your mother before she was married?” asked the bureaucratic form I had to fill out. The question threw me.

 To be honest, I didn’t have a mother before she was married and I was born. My life with my mother didn’t begin before she gave birth to me, yet incredibly she had a life of her own all those earlier years. I only know her from our shared life on this planet

It all started from the “baby book”, in which everyone (I’m thinking the whole world!) was amazed at my first  hesitant steps and first words( “bring me a pad and pencil”). It went on, as I now remember, from one glorious/scary phase of my life to another, like the unraveling of a ball of yarn rolling downhill.

But, and here’s the intriguing mostly blank prologue, what was her own life like before I came along? I only get this second hand. And it is doubtful my last remaining older relatives are telling me everything they know.

Left to my own devices, I would create a heroic story to fill in some of the gaps in the family narrative. It would be a piece of historical fiction, part true, part embellished, but satisfying my taste for the dramatic: As we all might think, she was no ordinary mother, and I no ordinary child. Fears and flaws linked up in a loving way.

The grief period following my mother’s death (Dad had died 12 years before) was made mundane by the gruesome task of settling her estate and clearing out her things from the apartment. There were scads of her treasures and trash which had accumulated over the years. knick-knacks of dubious value, books and pictures At first I thought the clothing would be the hardest part to deal with, but when I found the old shoe box in the back of the closet, I was in for a surprise.

There it was, partially hidden behind a box of Christmas ornaments, on one of the dusty shelves next to the ancient movie projector. “Grace Ample’s Shoe Emporium” was the colorful label on the shoe box, but with that dusty rose ribbon tied around it, I just  knew it wouldn’t contain shoes.

When I opened the box, I discovered a few old snapshots, mostly discolored by time, and beginning to fade. Nervously, I lifted the snapshots to the light of the bedroom window. These were pictures of my mother I had never seen before! One old black and white deckle- edged Kodak was obviously a much younger version of my mother dressed in dowdy acrobat’s tights, and standing next to an elephant. On the back it simply said “Mason City, Iowa, July 1920”. The other snapshot of interest was a smiling woman, proudly holding an infant child right up next to her own face. Scrawled familiarly on the back of it was simply, “Our precious gift”.

Although I knew she had had several miscarriages, I didn’t know if the baby in the picture was me or not until I read the entry from the journal page that was lodged underneath the pictures: “Until William was born”, my mother had written, “I could never find myself. I never had the courage to later tell him how I ran away with the circus at 17, looking for something-I- didn’t-know-what. I guess I just made up some things about those ‘missing years’ to protect him from my mixed-up past. It is a wonder that I didn’t get into more trouble before I met his father. He was the stable one and told me we were going to get married and settle down. I just trusted him.

“ When I sustained the pregnancy, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. As a young new mother, my life took on real meaning. I finally understood how God sends us children to enlarge our hearts, because mine was wonderfully swelled with love when he was born. Because of everything that happened later, I was just never good at showing him this love, but it was there all the time, whether he ever felt it or not.”

I framed the elephant picture, and keep it around where I can still see it out of the corner of my eye. 

There are three take-aways from this story: 1. The best mystery stories are about mothers. 2.All writers are egocentric 3. Motherlove is usually underestimated.