母亲与儿子的故事(英文)

母亲与儿子的故事(英文)
母亲与儿子的故事(英文)

母亲与儿子的故事(英文)
return to Margaret Cho's Blog
3/19/2004
My Mother
I really,really,really,really love my mother.It's not the best,between my family and I.There are so many crimes left unpunished,unpaid debts,white elephants in the middle of the room that no one will even offer a peanut to.We are in the red,emotionally speaking.But with my mother,things are easy,flexible.She bends and moves with grace,and even though she is barely five feet tall,she seems to loom above me still.
There are lots of things you don't know about her.She speaks French like a Parisian,because she was one for many years.In the early 60s,she kept a tiny bedsit in the city of lights and taught classes to foreign students.She wore her hair flipped and had heavy black eyeliner above her upper lashes,just like Brigitte Bardot.After I was born,she spent many hours designing clothes for me.The best I remember was a red wool coat and dress set,trimmed with black mink,with a matching pillbox hat.She liked the way that Jackie Kennedy had such understated elegance,and so she felt that it was only right that I must have the same.
Even though she made all my clothes,she never fell into the awful trap young mothers do at times of making matching mother-daughter outfits.My mother thought that to be gauche and beneath our stature,for we were to be future fashion icons.We didn't really get to do that,because she had to work so hard at the little snack bar my parents ran then,and the dresses were fewer and far between.She kept drawings of amazing gowns,clothes that would exist only in theory,bolts of cloth unused in cabinets.After I got married,the sewing machine was sent to me,but it was too complex for me to use.I still sew everything laboriously by hand,but I make my own things,which are unique and lovely,like she taught me to.
She loves gigantic jewelry,and keeps the most valued pieces wrapped in toilet paper in a Folger's coffee can.She is fondest of amber,especially the kind that is opaque,honey yellow,and she wraps her neck in long strings of beads of different size and hue.
She flies,when she dreams,and she loves it.She says she visits me,often,flying over my house,over her sister's homes all the way on the other side of the world,seeing all of us from above,sending us love and whatever good things she remembers to bring before she goes to bed.She is worried,because she is not sure that I am happy,and she is right about that sometimes,but that cannot always be helped,which maybe is just the way things are in life.She accepts,and flies over the cities she loves most,Frankfurt,Hong Kong,Seoul,Paris,New York.
She is an accomplished Flamenco guitarist,completely self taught.I don't know who dances for her.I cannot picture my father in tight black pants,red rose between his teeth,but you cannot really know your parents.They are your parents,and they are not meant to be much more than that,unless you are very special,and get to have your parents also be your friends,but even then,there is a limit to the intimacy,borders that do not get crossed.Flamenco dancing,or even the tango are secrets that are not disclosed between mother and child.
My mother had surgery today on her heart.She is fine,and will be discharged in a day or so.Yet,there were many hours where we didn't know she would be fine.Many terrible slow minutes waiting by the phone,that I could do little but sit down,stand up,and then sit down again.Well meaning friends,insistent on helping me,wore me down even further.The Rescuers,like the little mice with berets on their heads who were infuriated at the inability to do anything to ease my worry.Lots of bad thoughts,scary visions,sweet memories,crying - oh lots of crying.
I don't think I have ever heard my father so scared in my life.He downplayed his alarm with false laughter and turning off his cell phone by 'accident.' He makes me mad.I was angry because the bridge I burned so long ago to him will have to be rebuilt,hurriedly,and that is hard to do.He has been in love with my mother for over forty years,and even though he has not been particularly good at anything having to do with love,at least he is still there,sleeping in the waiting room,all through the long night.Even though I disowned him and was adopted by a lovely,lively,brilliant painter poet writer historian tattoo aficionado gay father,I will have to take him back,because he's trying,and that is going to have to be good enough for now.
If you have parents that you like,or one parent that you like,enjoy that.Remember that whatever happens,it is okay,that they are okay,that everything that is part of life is ok,because life is life,and life is okay.Always.