~ Mom had this cloth, over 100 years old ~

Wednesday, March 16, 2005
9:36 a.m.

“You look like Alice from The Brady Bunch," he said with a grin, and I, chagrined, had to agree. We were driving away from the hairdresser’s after I’d had my mop cut. The gal had done a fine job and I approved as she passed her hand mirror behind my head. Then she said “I’ll just put in a curl or two.”

“Oh no, don’t bother. I’ll never curl it.”

“Just a little bit, okay?” She almost pleaded.

“Oh all right, what the hell.”

A few quick squeezes of the curling iron and I knew it was a mistake. As S remarked, “It put 20 years on you.”

We went straight over to Mom’s, as she was there alone and needed someone to rustle up lunch. She loved the do. “It makes you look sophisticated,” she said.

I did not get a chance to wash the curl out yesterday, so my hair is still fluffy today. But not for long. Out goes Alice’s hair, in comes Kate’s porcupine quills, next time I go upstairs. That’s when I’ll shower and do yoga before getting dressed and beginning the work day.

***

A lady who is a counsellor through the local cancer clinic is also trained in therapeutic touch, and she came over at one o’clock. Mom and I were alone by then and she laid on her bed and I on Dad’s while the two of them chatted for a bit, and then we got started. I was invited to help, and did so. It was something I have done before but not called it by any name. As we passed our hands above the length of Mom’s body from head to toe, over and over again, Mom wept. She has been very emotional lately and this was no different.

Afterwards we had a conversation about tears. Not only does Mom not wish to cry in front of anyone; she does not wish to cry in private either.

“Where do you think this sense of crying being unsuitable comes from?” the lady asked. “Is there someone in your family who ...?”

Mom and I instantly said oh yes, of course it’s Grandma. To this day if she thinks you are about to cry, she will say “Don’t you cry now.”

But it isn’t only Grandma. Grandpa was like that too, Mom said. She remembered him walking into the house and announcing that his own mother had died, without a shred of emotion. People died, things happened, but you carried on. You didn’t make a spectacle of yourself.

“It’s no different around our home town, either,” Mom told the lady. “At funerals, if the family cries a lot, they are clucked about as if they are weak or self-indulgent or melodramatic. If they don’t, people will remark how strong and tough they are.”

“And then,” she added, “that is how emotion is handled in Scandinavian countries, and there are a lot of Scandinavians where we come from, and Dad was of Norwegian ancestry.”

“Ah!” the lady said. “That’s so true! I lived in a Norwegian settlement in Saskatchewan for some years, and that’s exactly how it was. You didn’t let anything show.”

During the session the lady asked Mom to imagine herself in a place where she felt at peace and happy, perhaps outdoors. “Where are you?” she was asked. “I am sitting on my dad’s knee,” she said, “and he’s telling me stories, lots of stories that I believed and then went away and thought about later, finally realizing that they weren’t true.” She laughed. “I was a pretty big girl by then.”

Afterwards, as Mom dabbed at her eyes with kleenex, the lady said “Grace, what you’ve said about where your inhibitions about crying come from is very insightful. By allowing yourself to shed tears, you are breaking a taboo that is generations old! That takes courage.”

After she left, Mom and I sat in the living room and worked with our needles. And talked about crying. And dying. I read her a passage written by May Sarton in Among the Usual Days, which I had copied into my journal:

But there is one balm and one only in such illness — sometimes it is like Heaven in the Hell — to feel truly cherished and loved, to be able to take the love at last without warding it off or being afraid.

“That’s exactly how it is,” Mom said, face flushed. “All my angels ... I never expected ... you girls, and Joanne, and Mary Jo ... and so many others, all the time ... I never thought of you as angels, but you are ... all so good to me.”

All evening I thought about tears. If we are sad, why should we not cry? It seems so simple.

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