As I sit down to the tired laptop, weak battery, dirty screen, the clock reads 9:31 p.m. PDST. Simple math says that in St. Louis, the clocks read 11:31 p.m.. CDST. As of this moment, I have lived for 41 years and 13 and a half hours without my mother. I share that burden with my siblings, our children, and our cousins.
Forty-one years without the throaty laugh, the rolled brown eyes, the low voice, the brown curls and the myriad wrap-around skirts in every imaginable fabric. She made those skirts from a Simplicity pattern. After the first successful project, she went back to the fabric store and acquired enough yardage to make it again and again. She wore them with crew-neck t-shirts, Keds tennis shoes, and red Maybelline lipstick. If it was late enough in the evening, she would have shed her bra. During the day, she’d be demurely covered and carrying a shoulder bag that she also created in multiple materials with her Singer sewing machine.
I do not sew except with needle and thread in very small runs. But I still darn my leggings using the egg that I found in my mother’s sewing box when I brought it home to Kansas City after her funeral. I snip the thread with my mother’s tiny silver sewing scissors. A few years ago, I took a photo of those scissors and texted it to my three sisters without comment. They all instantly knew what they were. Sitting in the same chair that I now occupy, at the same fold-down live-edge cherry table, I literally laughed outloud. The habits of creatures never desert them.
Last weekend I stood on a stepstool to reach the shelf on which I have one of my mother’s pictures and a few other sentimental trinkets. An angel from my mother-in-law; a pair of God’s-eyes that my son made in kindergarten; a bronze rose that his godmother purchased at the Ren fest for my son to give me; a red crystal vase that belonged to my grandmother Corley. I carefully ran a feather duster across the wood surface and the contours of the precious objects. I had to strain to see the photograph of my maternal unit, arms spread wide and dancing a little jig in our front yard. I lowered myself back to terra-almost-firma, a 24 x 8 vinyl floor in my tiny house on wheels. Tears formed in my eyes but I ignored them and kept dusting, and sweeping, and washing dishes.
In the decades since my mother slipped from us, I’ve done so many things that she might have helped me navigate with more grace. I wed and divorced three times; I lost several pregnancies, including my son’s twin. She wanted me to have a career and I tried, Mama, I truly tried. She encouraged me to write and that I certainly have done. Every kindness done by me can be traced to her example. My political views stem from her. She gave me the curls on my head, the brown spots starting to rise on my hands, and the wicked sense of humor that I never quite suppress.
My son didn’t meet her. Neither did any of my husbands. Had they the privilege, something might have changed. What I am, what I do, what I fear, what I strain to undertake, makes more sense as a tribute to my mother. Every thrift store reminds me of the jaunts on which she took us to find treasures and the delicate objects that she used throughout our home — bowls, and pitchers, and candle-holders. When I sit on the porch at dusk, when I drink coffee and watch the sun rise, when I take drives to small towns — I think of her.
The clock turns to 10:00 p.m. so it is tomorrow in Missouri. Another anniversary of our loss draws to a close. I have made it through another year without her. The sorrow still grips me, but not as intensely. I have not learned to live without her, but I have found a path through the Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley shaped hole in the universe.
I have had a lot of names in my life, but for every day that I have breathed, I have been Lucille Corley’s baby girl. There are people who’ve lost their mothers at younger ages; and people that feel just as keenly the terrible moment when they held the frail hand of a fading octogenarian. I do not claim a monopoly on grief; nor do I insist on the right to remain raw and bleeding in the wake of her long-ago death. But I miss her. I owe my life to her. I owe my strength to her. I owe my resilience to her. I do not doubt that I also have her to thank for some of my insecurities, but I take sole responsibility for their stubborn persistence. She taught me better. She said, and meant, that although what can’t be cured can be endured, most things can, in fact, be overcome.
Rest in peace, Hot Lips Mama. Your boy has come home to you; and I know that you fell into each other’s arms, and walked together to the banks of the river, where you now sit with both your sons, at peace, perhaps, for an eternity.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
The Missouri Mugwump®
