I looked over at Mama, as she bent down to pick up the spill my father had left, when he pushed his dinner plate off the table. The plate, was china from their wedding set, and it was the only plate left from the wedding, so many years before.
My mother's pursed lips, her eyes squeezed shut, and her wrinkled, knobby fingers, told me everything. I felt sympathy for her just then. It was too bad she had to go through all this, but I felt guilty that I didn't feel more. What kind of a daughter am I to stand and watch my mother pick up after yet another of my drunken father's tirades? How cold. How unfeeling.
I can hear her inner voice in my own. Her eyes misted, as she picked up the pieces of the ivory china, ringed by gold around the edge. How pretty it looked, long ago. How pretty Mother always looked, long ago, when I was small, and she'd take me out in the stroller, laughing and playing withe me. She was happy then. Before Dad started drinking.
Oh, he can't help it, she'd say, her voice quivering. A lousy excuse. I hated her when she'd say that. Mother looked at me, as she held up the plate she'd pieced back together.
Diana, I'm going to glue the plate. Her eyes were large with wonder. Maybe she was thinking of earlier days. I don't know. I'm going to glue this, Diana, she repeated. She looked loved, in that moment, as her face glowed with her thoughts -- maybe thinking of the first years of the marriage. I could see the innocence and hope she once had. I had never seen that before, knowing her as Dad's drunken rages stole her innocence and love, and lined her face.
I felt sorry for her. No. I always felt sorry for her.
But now, I didn't. I felt what she felt.
The hope and sadness of a time gone by. I could see how she'd celebrate the hope and love that once had been there. She smiled, as she held the pieced-together plate. She looked 20 years younger, the only giveaway was her furrowed brow and sad mouth. My eyes misted as I held the glued-together plate.
She knew -- and I knew, that her relationship with Dad could never be fixed, but in gluing the plate back together, the shards that were her were sufficient to carry on. And in that moment, I had empathy for her, my mom, the mom I had spent most of my life hating.
*
What I want to do in my writing is to make people feel -- to feel pain, but to feel hope in that pain.
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Comments: 65
I lived exactly the same situation, but it was my mother who drank and my father who placated and stuck it out because of his adoration for her....thus I learned to understand and finally be able to voice what I felt. H was my stoic support, she was the dynmic force that caused the tidal waves....both awesome and horrible at the same time...
You made me cry with this one...you are such an envisioning writer...little Kathy!
Amazing in the strength you all had.
xoxo
I added the second to last sentence last night, otherwise this remains unchanged from the original that I wrote in 20 minutes a few nights ago on his comment thread.
I want my manuscripts to make people feel, to cause them pain but also hope, because that's life, but life offers less hope than novelists provide, which is one of many reasons people read novels -- for the hope.
Have to do ESL billing, edit legal articles and parenting articles and finish reading book 2 of 'Grey' and then work on my MS.
That will take hours.
And then tomorrow, book 3 and more MS editing and writing and revision.
I feel I am getting 'it.'
Southern fiction reminds me of Utah. Utah, the state that is called the Southern state in the West. Issues are different, but a lot of original Utahns or Utahans, came from the South.
I am amazed, too, at how well he came out of it. I take the book to be a disguised or fictionalized autobiography in part, especially I think, between his parents.
Make your own banner at MyBannerMaker.com!
But now you have a nice wife and kids and some great kitties.
and you do because you are a pure storyteller of the deepest kind~
Thanks for sharing in the Triple Name Club.
Funny thought for a 3-year-old....
More of an 'in my own experience' pain. But dad is gone now, and mom thrives. Hope has come to be.
Good work.
Thanks for sharing with Gather's Luminous Writers and Artists. Featured.
My soulmate ... and yet so completely unlike me in that very respect, that very trait you happened to mention, Kathsie. She internalised everything - all the anguish and sorrow, all the dust and grime and slush that life - in the form of family - threw at her. I told her that *that* was the most powerful reason for the Big C, and have been helping her get rid of it through my own spontaneous joy and love.
I wish women, and especially wives of brutal men like my Dad and his brothers, would be different - would refuse to take the emotional/physical abuse.
That - my soulmate's Big C - has felt like a cosmic kick in the guts - and for the second time round. It's why I've been so irregular here, so tentative and maybe even superficial in my comments. Maybe you've felt ignored, like some others I have sensed so strongly about.
To all of you who have, my deepest apologies - I have not been myself, as you can imagine. Been exhausted from the hours and hours of healing, and then the tearing anguish, the silent heaving, the memories of another beloved, another beautiful lady who was snatched too early ... all this drains me like nothing ever has.
Your writing has gone from strength to strength, Kathsie, I can see, but I need no literary piece to tell me how supremely empathetic and sweet a soul you've always been. I have felt that from the time my soul rested on your refulgent, soulful eyes in that wedding pic you had as an icon many moons ago. I love your eyes deeply - but what they enshrine comes from your timeless, old soul which I'm absolutely in love with.
(((((((((((((((((((((Captivating Kathsie!)))))))))))))))))))))))
(Kathryn, sorry to be tardy commenting.)
Great writing especially for only 20 minutes........
most of the time, I am completely brain dead, with my editing job.