visiting momma
by kathryn magendie

It was more than the near one thousand miles that separated my momma and me. Miles were the easiest obstacle to our relationship. Just hop in a car, drive for hours through tiny towns, busy cities, taking a few Stuckey's or other roadside doodad shop stops along the way. Airplanes have been known to go to West Virginia, too, I hear. It’s quite easy to plan. So why did almost twenty years go by before I visited her again?

I was born my momma’s daughter on February 26, 1957. I was held in her arms, rocked lullaby in her chair, and tickled under the chin by her for just a little over three years...then she let me go. At least, I am guessing she held me and rocked me like that before my two brothers and I were signed away. From the perspective of forty-plus years, most things are forgotten when not repeated over and again as years go by. Forgotten when the stories aren’t re-told. Forgotten when no one speaks of certain things, as was the way not so long ago. It wasn’t as if I were with strangers. My father’s wife adopted my two brothers and me and raised us as her own. She is and always will be our mother.

But Momma is Momma.

Momma still lives in my birth town of Charleston, West Virginia. Until my recent December 2004 move to Maggie Valley, I lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In October of 2004, I made plans to visit her—to drive the near one thousand miles from Baton Rouge to Charleston. Why wait almost twenty years before it was Okay To Go? Because something had changed in me since I had last seen her. An intense need to know her so that I could know myself in a way I had not experienced before.

When I saw her last, I was in a destructive marriage, lost and unfocused and numb. I couldn’t care about my past, because I was too entangled in the life I lead at that moment. Too entangled in trying not to feel anything too much because feeling meant pain. The visit there then was only a way to try to connect to someone who didn’t know how bad things really were. So, we visited, we laughed, we drank really bad blackberry wine and we talked about surface things that didn’t matter. Momma cried when I left. And I tried to force tears to come, just so it wouldn’t make her feel bad, but I was more worried about going home to that bad marriage than I was sad I was leaving my biological mother. And that was the end of that. Until now.

In a strong and happy time of my life, with a strong and happy marriage I had only dreamed about in the first one, I prepared to visit Momma. I grew nervous and tense, and paced the room the day before we left, anger I didn’t understand fighting its way from a deep well of mystery I had not known existed. I turned to my husband, Roger, and growled, “Why are we going? Who are these people? I don’t know them! Why should I drive all that way to see a woman who didn’t care enough to keep my brothers and me? I’m not going!”

He answered, “It’ll be okay, Kathryn. You’ve wanted to go for a long time.”

“Easy for you to say. Your natural parents raised you like an old fifties television rerun. And you know who your relatives are all the way back to the dark ages. I don’t know who I belong to.” There I was, the three-year-old little girl, sitting on the steps waiting for her father to come fetch her away from her momma. Gone was the self-assured grown woman who isn’t afraid of much of anything. I was teeny again, stamping my foot against the fates. “I’m not going.” But of course, I did. Because I had to. Had to see.

Two nights later, when we drove into the driveway of my momma’s house, I clenched my heart tight and fastened my teeth together, determined that I would not let any disappointments come. But more, I was afraid there would be no connection, and I wouldn’t feel anything for a woman who gave birth to me forty-eight years ago.

I saw an older woman silhouetted against the blends of night sky and beaming moon. The moon grinned happy to see the reunion, even if I wasn’t so sure. The gray-haired woman stood in the driveway, clasping her hands together. “That’s my momma, over there, I guess.” I pointed, as if he couldn’t see her standing there. As if he wouldn’t know that’s what mommas do, they wait for their children to come home while clasping their hands, staring in the dark.

Roger cut the engine and says, “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah, uh huh, sure. I mean, it’s just a biological mother. No big deal.” I grin at him—a grin that is more an upside down frown. Looking out of the window, I see her grab onto her husband’s arm, and he says something to her. I imagine he is saying, “You going to be okay?” And she answers, “Sure, no big deal. It’s just the daughter I gave up to my ex-husband’s wife to adopt. No worries here. Of course, I’m still her momma. Aren’t I?”

As I open the car door and step out, I breathe in West Virginia air. Its chilly outside and I want to hop under an old quilt, throw it over my head, and not come out. The three year old is back and her little self fits perfectly inside my big self. I stare up at old man moon, and I’m taken off-guard by a force that slams into me, her arms are around me, and she’s almost picking me up off the ground. The impact of her strong body takes me by surprise. Her strength matches mine, I think. Or is it the other way around? I hug her back and wait for love, or connection, or something. But all I feel is an awkward fatigue settle so far in my bones, I fear it will crumble my skeleton, and I will just deflate right onto the concrete. I want to say, “Who are you and why are you hugging me?” The older woman with an upside down grin who finally releases me is not the same almost unlined woman I last saw. I wonder how she sees me, too—forty-eight instead of twenty-eight with my own few lines. It occurs to me I may now be around the age she was when I last saw her.

Momma spills out a million words. I catch a few and answer her in my head since my clenched teeth won’t let words out. “Come in! (Do I have to?) We’ve been watching for you. (For twenty years?) Did you see the balloon we tied on the fence for you? (No, I didn’t I was too busy staring at the silly grinning moon.) Are you hungry? (I want to go home.) I’ve been on edge all day waiting for you. (You and me both). I can’t believe you are here.”

Maybe she thought I wouldn’t come.

When we are inside, I am enveloped in a warm sweater. It feels like a cozy home, just not my cozy home. Then I let myself study my momma as she begins to pull things from the refrigerator, determined to feed my husband and me. After all, food is the universal language of strangers. And, no need to talk when the mouth is full of goodies. The words are pushed down by the food, all the way to the stomach, and become lodged there to ferment.

When she turns her back, I notice she has the neck-bump, the one I have just begun to get and hate. Her strength, her neck-bump—what else do we have in common? Her husband, Coy, looks from my momma, to me, as if he’s been in my brain looking around and is pulling out my thoughts.

He says, “Sue, you two are like two peas in a pod! I can’t get over how you both look so much alike.” He grins a big lip-splitting grin. Then he gives my momma a look of love so intense, my breath catches up. I get that same look from Roger. Coy says, “And you act alike, too. I can tell that already.”

Roger nods, his mouth full of sandwich. I nod, my mouth full of sandwich. And my momma takes a big bite of her sandwich and stares at me with familiar eyes. When we swallow, my momma and I both laugh and snort at something Coy says.

I say, “So, that’s where I got that snort-laugh from.” Then I begin eating again, because I don’t have anything else to say. The table is full of chewing and swallowing words that end up consumed by the bile.

That night as I lay in bed, my eyes itch and burn. “I don’t want to be here,” I tell Roger. He just pats my hand and is soon snoring. I talk to myself. “Why did I come? My momma is a stranger. Why do I need two mothers anyhow?” I fall asleep and dream I am rocking on an ocean of tears shed by all the momma’s who ever disappointed their babies.

The next morning, I awake to coffee smells. Padding down the steps and through my momma’s house, I half-heartedly look for signs of me. There aren’t any, at least on the path that I take. Following the java scent, I come to the kitchen and there is Momma, in her gown, her hair messy, sleepy eyes. We stare at each other again, fun house mirror images. “You hungry?” She asks. I’m not really, but food keeps the tongue occupied so I nod my head and smile.

Then something begins to happen. Over coffee, toast, eggs, and connected genes, we begin to talk. And I learn the stories I had never known. I hear the names of relatives who are mine. Like a book you’ve always wanted to read, and suddenly discover it tucked away in a corner. Then opening the cover, anticipating the story inside, and finding it is the story of your own life. The story of uncles, aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers, my half sister and half brother, the story of my momma, my momma and daddy’s marriage, my brothers—and the story of me. She runs to get a photo album. In those pictures, I see a young woman who I think is myself holding my only child, my son Daniel. Looking closer, I see it actually Momma holding me. Proof. There, in black and white, proof that I existed in her arms. I have the sudden urge to cry.

Over more coffee, the stories pour out of Momma as if she can’t stop them at all now. As if they have been piling up in her gut for years and need to be vomited out, fast, hard, and full of hurts, loves, regrets. The regret slams against me most of all.

In that moment, I recognize my momma. I see myself in her, in those regrets that she carries around like old stinky garbage. We are alike in more ways than the same big smile, the same neck-bump, the same snort-laugh. We are women with regrets over decisions we made, marriages we stayed in for too long, our children we fear we’ve damaged from our decisions, from youth, pain, and fear. We are women who stare at each other over the table and feel the connections of mother and daughter, older woman and younger, regret to regret, and finally, peace to peace—connection to connection.
When I left my momma a few days later, this time the tears were not conjured up from some wish. They were real, and they were happy. Brown eyes matched brown eyes with moisture and released regrets.

I hug her hard, strong bones to strong bones. “Goodbye, Momma. I’ll be back soon.””Yes, please, come back soon.” She lets me loose, but leaves a repaired invisible cord, a mother’s connection to her children. “Come home any time you can. I’m always here.”

And I will.

There are only near three hundred and twenty miles between Maggie Valley and Charleston. But most important, there are no obstacles to keep me away from my past, from the woman who understands me more than I ever thought she would. And I understand her, too.

If she needs to hear it, I forgive her for that decision made too long ago to matter any longer. Sometimes we just do what has to be done. There isn’t always a wrong or right— sometimes, there just is.

 

I live in Maggie Valley after living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for over thirty-five years. I just completed my first novel and am working on the sequel to that. And I am at home here in North Carolina, home at last!