The View From Our Mother's House

The View from Our Mother's House is a novel about a family of three women struggling to understand and accept their past, full of abandonment and manipulation, while dealing with the immediate needs of the mother dying from Alzheimer's disease. This project combines research in the field of literature with that of the social and environmental sciences. Topics covered in this novel include familial relationships, the LDS faith, gender and sexuality within religion, the progression of Alzheimer's disease, and Utah ecology.

THE VIEW FROM OUR MOTHER’S HOUSE By Ashley Roberts A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts In English Approved: _____________________________ Michael Gills, PhD Thesis Faculty Supervisor _____________________________ Disa Gambera, PhD Honors Faculty Advisor _____________________________ Scott Black, PhD Chair, Department of English _____________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Dean, Honors College May 2019 Copyright © 2019 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The View from Our Mother’s House is a novel about a family of three women struggling to understand and accept their past, full of abandonment and manipulation, while dealing with the immediate needs of the mother dying from Alzheimer’s disease. This project combines research in the field of literature with that of the social and environmental sciences. Topics covered in this novel include familial relationships, the LDS faith, gender and sexuality within religion, the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, and Utah ecology. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Introduction 1 Chapter One 8 Chapter Two 24 Chapter Three 30 Chapter Four 41 Chapter Five 54 Chapter Six 67 Chapter Seven 83 Chapter Eight 98 Chapter Nine 107 Chapter Ten 117 iii 1 INTRODUCTION During my time as a college undergraduate I have studied English and Philosophy, though my specific interests within those disciplines have changed several times. In the beginning, I found myself drawn to all things gender and feminism. Closer to the end of my time here, I find myself particularly interested in environmental literature and ethics. Both of those fields, while vastly different, have a place in my two majors and I’m grateful to have been exposed to both. In an effort to interpret my experience here at the University of Utah in a cohesive way, I decided to write a thesis combining all of the interests I’ve explored as a student. A novel seemed the appropriate medium as the length would allow for multiple avenues of research. Writing a fictional story would also give me the opportunity to use the skills I’ve learned in the creative writing courses I have taken as electives. Because this project is creative, my research methods did not seem as clearly outlined for me as perhaps they were for my analytic-thesis-writing counterparts. How does one research the art of writing in a practical way (as opposed to theoretic)? Well, my thesis mentor Michael Gills helped me get started by assigning summer reading. The assignment was to read twelve novels of my choosing from a long list of the best literary works from various time periods and regions of the world. Of course, one must know how a novel functions and understand how an author goes about constructing a novel in order to produce one of her own. Gills compared this practice to that of new painters recreating classic 2 pieces of art, getting brush strokes just right, familiarizing themselves with the styles of previous masters, before attempting to create their own style. I find that analogy to be apt given the work that goes along with studying a novel. For each novel I read over the summer, I took extensive notes on what point of view the author used, why and how, how the author chose to structure the story (as most often these stories were not told chronologically or without section breaks, my goal was to discover the reasons for their particular ordering), what kind of internal and external conflicts were happening in the story and how they interacted with each other, how the author produced realistic characters through their thoughts and actions, how the author was able to produce a particular tone through their word choice, and how the language functioned more generally. I paid attention to the varying lengths of sentences, the connotations associated with particular words that allowed for multiple interpretations of sentences, how dialogue differed from one character to the next, and so on. With these notes, I wrote a two to three-page essay for each of the twelve novels explaining the techniques the author used, and how I could implement those techniques within my own novel. Studying those novels was a great start to researching my thesis. I felt better equipped to tackle a project of this size having already accomplished a big task: reading twelve books carefully in three months. I continued implementing those skills I had practiced over the summer in my regular studies the next semester. For my English senior seminar, I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. In addition to the work associated with 3 those novels required for my senior seminar, I also took notes for the sake of my thesis realizing that every novel has something to offer a writer regardless of the type of story. Since I planned on writing a novel including some subjects about which I did not know a great deal, namely Mormonism, homosexuality, and ecology, I knew I had to take my research further than literary analysis. I spent at least an hour every week from September through March reading journal and online articles about these topics which would later become central aspects of my novel. My goal was to write a story about Utah and about the kinds of experiences people may have within this socially odd and geographically stunning state. In order to do that effectively, I had to learn more about this state than I already knew having grown up in it most of my life. There was plenty to discover. While the research for this project was extensive, there was also a novel to be written. Fortunately, Gills has written several novels of his own and has come up with a formula for success. His formula goes as follows: wake up every weekday at 4:30 to write. Shoot for two pages so that by the end of the week you will have ten. Every Friday meet with the novel writing workshop to discuss how the week went, go over literary techniques, and critique each other’s work. Have a general outline of chapters so as to allow for spontaneity. As Gills told our workshop over and over again, “you cannot be spontaneous without first having a plan.” The next step is to keep writing forward, and to never go back to make changes until you’ve reached the end of the novel. At which point, you’ll know exactly how to fix your beginning in light of what happens by the end of the story. 4 So for seven months I followed that formula. And just as Gills claimed it would from the beginning, that formula added up to a novel. Through my research and strict writing regimen, I was able to create a story that not only combines my years of study into something whole and cohesive, but it also hopefully highlights something important about the experience of women, specifically women growing up in the LDS faith, and the Utah experience more broadly. I have written a mother character who is LDS, one of the daughter characters was raised LDS but is no longer “active”, and the other daughter character is no longer an “active” member of the church but is in fact actively against the church and harbors a lot of resentment toward the doctrine. Her resentment is in part due to the fact that she is gay, and the Mormon church has been consistent on their position that homosexuality is a sin. While my goal in the beginning was to accomplish something for myself, namely completing a large work and submitting an Honors thesis, I realized soon into the writing process how my work may ultimately be for the sake of someone else. Many of the stories in this novel were taken from real experiences, my own as well as those of my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, my sister, my friend, etc. I realized that perhaps these stories are familiar to many young women growing up in this community, and that to write them out may actually be for the sake of us all. My first draft of this novel ended up being 220 pages. What I am presenting as my thesis is a condensed version of that original draft. I have omitted several parts that I found to be less productive or entirely unnecessary for 5 my overall themes. I have also reordered the original draft in a way I found to make more sense. In the reordering process I had to write a significant amount of new material so as to make the flow from one part to a new one seem natural. I call this my 1.5 draft as there is still a significant amount of work that needs to be done before referring to it as a second draft. My thesis mentor taught me to work in a twelve draft framework. The first draft is the heart of the novel, where you give everything you have no matter how messy. The second draft is where you clean things up, get rid of things that don’t matter, make some significant changes in characters, plot, introduction and ending. The third through the twelfth is a grueling process of editing on the sentence by sentence basis. First, going through to make sure you’ve written your best creative work. Next, making sure there aren’t any typos and grammatical mistakes. And then going back and forth several times between editors and publishers making their suggested edits as necessary. My thesis is somewhere between drafts one and two: it is full of heart as it is my very first novel, but I’ve made just enough edits to make it presentable as a complete work. One such change was the name of a main character, which you may notice from my mentor’s nomination letter. The woman he refers to as Elyse is now named Sara. I made this mirror change right before turning in my piece as I found the words “Ember” and “Elyse” to be visually similar and therefore confusing. I hope the switch makes these two characters more easily distinguishable. Finally, for your consideration: The View from Our Mother’s House. 6 THE VIEW FROM OUR MOTHER’S HOUSE A novel Ashley Roberts 7 For my mother, a far more beautiful and generous mother than the one portrayed in this book. And for her mother, who shaped us as women. 8 Chapter One: Ember My mother is dying of Alzheimer’s Disease and I’m back in Salt Lake City, Utah during the fall, just after the presumably spectacular show of yellow and orange maple and oak among evergreens on rocky mountain sides, when by now the leaves have fallen and covered the ground in rotting brown and the bare branches of deciduous trees brace themselves for chilled winds and snow, to care for her because my sister, who lives twenty minutes away, refuses to out of resentment, I’m guessing, and I don’t even blame her. I too would rather be in my own home, sitting quietly with my thoughts than here in my childhood home sitting uncomfortably quiet with a woman I haven’t talked to in years. We don’t have much to say to each other, and that’s exactly why we haven’t kept up with each other. No more than the occasional birthday card. That, and the fight when we both said too much. Before I left this house to start a new life in Washington, I told her exactly how I felt about the flawed way in which she raised me. How she completely destroyed my self-esteem over five pounds of baby fat, and manipulated me out of having 9 an actual relationship with my sister Sara. In response she told me why it was so difficult to raise someone like me, insecure and sensitive and “wrong”, and someone like my sister, lesbian. And for my mother, lesbianism was the ultimate form of “wrong”. I haven’t thought about the specifics in a long time, but the takeaway has stuck with me for years and kept me from reaching out: my mother is insufferable to me and I to her, so why try? Neither of us did try mending the relationship, until she needed help and evidently couldn’t convince anyone else. I convinced myself to go, she didn’t have that power over me. I convinced myself to leave my life in Bellevue behind and start back up again in Salt Lake because I don’t want to end up like my mother, angry and alone. She never forgave her own mother. Part of me believes that lingering bitterness lead to what will eventually be her demise, a degenerative disease of the mind. Before it’s too late, I’d like to reach a point of understanding with my mother, find out who she is in her heart and try to forgive her many mistakes that have shaped parts of my personality that I can’t stand. Also, Sara still lives in town. Two birds with one stone. Being in my childhood house now makes it difficult not to remember what it was like fifteen, twenty years ago. Things around here look almost the same. The kitchen is small and grey. Grey laminate countertops, grimy white cabinetry, a small twocompartment sink under the window that directly faces the sunset every evening and blinds those at the dinner table. The living room behind the half wall hiding the kitchen still has the piano with pictures of my sister and me on top. They haven’t collected as much dust as the piano, which makes me wonder if she put them up for the sake of my visit. I wouldn’t be surprised. She was never particularly proud of either one of us. 10 She has made some crepes for breakfast this morning insisting to cook for me for the first time since I’ve been here. More chunks of flour and slightly less yellow than I remember. She used to make those for us before church on Sundays, but she never ate them. She’d monitor us as we dished up our first two. My sister and I would put fresh fruit in the middle of each of our crepes. I’d walk over to the cupboard to grab the small container of sugar as my mother watched with confused eyes, though I know that she knew exactly what I was doing. She wanted to communicate that to put sugar on a breakfast crepe was so asinine a behavior that she couldn’t believe I was about to do it. My sister too. We sprinkled sugar on top of our hand cut fruit and homemade crepes in front of her as if to answer what we mistook as a question, “what are you doing with the sugar?” She rolled her eyes to drive her disappointment home, but by that point the grains had dissolved into the water droplets on our strawberries to make a glaze. When I came up to the counter for my second serving, she refused to be as subtle. “Do you really need another one?” She intended to embarrass me out of overeating. It worked. By then the sweetened fruit no longer enticed me enough to ignore my mother’s glance at my belly and thighs. My sister always got a second serving, despite being met with the same passive aggression. I didn’t know then nor do I know now if her assuredness came from a lack of knowing or a lack of caring. I aspired for the latter. I would never have learned that trait from my mother who cared desperately what people thought of her. I was young enough to be guilted out of eating too much; my mother was old enough to have gained the willpower not to eat, as far as I was concerned, at all. I don’t remember ever seeing my mother eat when we all lived in the same house. Her tall, thin frame never showed any 11 signs of having been nourished. Having dieted as an adult I know how hungry she must have felt all the time. Never satiated by calories, but instead by the knowledge that she can do it, she can abstain from that which we heathens require desperately. That emptiness in her body a reminder of her worth as a woman. She was thin, which seemed to me to be the only thing that mattered to her generation, and perhaps the one before as well. After eating our crepes, the three of us would walk up the busy street outside of our front door, then across a quiet street lined with trees that wouldn’t survive with the natural desert supply of water if not for sprinklers, to the beige brick church. I don’t go to church anymore, haven’t since I left the house. Back then I associated church with betrayal, thinking that if not for the doctrine concerning homosexuality our family would be closer, better. Maybe that’s true, but maybe our dysfunctional family couldn’t have survived any life philosophy or religion. Maybe our mother’s preoccupation with appearance and other people’s perception would have torn us apart regardless of the community in which we lived. Besides, at least the church gave us a community. I hope for my mom’s sake that her community has taken care of her up until this point. She hasn’t exactly been a perfect Mormon her whole life, and I hope they haven’t held that against her. Expectations of an LDS woman: A woman in the LDS church will never be “burdened” with the responsibilities of men. Up until the 1970s, she wasn’t even allowed to pray in a sacrament meeting. Of course, she is able to do so now but she still doesn’t have to ever bare the honorary title of “bishop” as to be the bishop requires Priesthood authority. She’ll never have access to that which they call the Priesthood as that would be 12 yet another worry on her full plate. She’ll never ask why, as her faith in the church is strong (even stronger than that of men say prominent male leaders of the church when guiding women of the church). Given her unyielding faith, a Mormon woman will never seduce a man out of wedlock, as it is her responsibility to tame those unruly desires of man. So much so in fact that even something as seemingly harmless as an intimate kiss could be enough to lead him on. And if he were to take things too far, it’s difficult to determine whose fault it was. A woman of the church would know that, and she would act accordingly. She is expected to find a man soon after he returns from his mission (two years away from home spreading the teachings of Joseph Smith to those who want it, and those who don’t as well), marry him—committing herself to his authority for eternity— and bare his children. How my mother fell short: My mother seduced my father after he returned from his mission. He seemed depressed to her and she thought the best way of lightening his spirit was to offer herself to him. His uniquely male desires rendered him incapable of denying her requests, so the two had pre-marital sex. Pre-marital and unprotected as buying contraceptives would make their encounter premeditated and therefore worse of a crime against god. And from that sinful act came a miracle: a child of god in the stomach of a 19-year-old girl in her second year of college. To cover-up or perhaps make-up for her mistake, my mother married this young man despite obvious signs that the two weren’t right for each other. Expectations of an LDS wife: An LDS wife is to follow the guidance of her husband. As Spencer W. Kimball said, the husband presides over his wife (which was supposed to be a less aggressive term that of an earlier church leader: rules). She is to 13 keep him on the right path, as she has that within her uniquely female power. If a married man strays from the path (be it through coming to church less, spending time online more, satisfying his uncontrollable sexual desires elsewhere from his wife, so on and so forth), it is at least in part due to the negligence of his wife. How my mother fell short: My mother refused to follow her husband’s guidance. He wanted to name their baby, me, Alma after his grandfather and the biblical figure. She refused, as she wanted her daughter to have a more feminine identity. Soon after my mother gave birth to her next daughter, he wanted to move the family from Salt Lake City to a small town in Montana where he could take over the apartment buildings his father had built to make a consistent and easy living. And when my mother refused, he moved there by himself leaving his wife and children behind. Perhaps if she had heeded her husband’s advice, she would still be a Mormon wife. Expectations of an LDS mother: An LDS mother is to stay home with her children and teach them the importance of benevolence through her actions. She is to get the children ready for church every Sunday, and teach them her own lessons of the church (guided by websites and relief society members) on Monday night, family home evening. She is to cook and clean so as to provide her children with a welcoming home. How my mother fell short: Given the fact that her husband, the family breadwinner, abandoned her and her family, my mother had no choice but to go to work and leave her children in the care of others. When she was home, she did not exude benevolence. While she did do our hair perfectly for Sunday church, we never had the follow up the next day with our own family lesson at home, away from other ward 14 members. She cooked and cleaned mostly for guests, who often felt more welcome than her own daughters. She wasn’t the perfect Mormon, nor the perfect mother but I’m happy that Sister Day still had her back when the rest of us didn't. Sister Day, a ward member, was actually the one that convinced my mother to go to the doctor in the first place after noticing some behavioral changes: asking the same questions every Sunday, wearing strange outfits, losing several pounds which she did not have to lose in the first place. Generally, it’s family members who notice these things before anyone else, knowing exactly who that person has been their whole life. A ward member seems just as likely to me, as their main focus once a week is to observe the lives of others and judge accordingly. This woman’s judgement just so happened to be correct, to my mother’s irritation I’m sure. I bet she went to the doctor out of spite, deeply offended by the assumption that anything was wrong with her mind. I bet she would have been pleased with her protruding collarbones and narrowing waist assuming that nothing was wrong with her and that in fact she had simply gotten better at forgetting to eat. That’s, at least, what the mother I knew would have done, but it’s difficult to nail down who this new woman is and how many of her “behavioral changes” are due to this disease and how many are caused by time and distance and age. Will Sara seem this strange to me too? We haven’t spoken either, but for different reasons. I always planned on reaching out to her after I left Salt Lake. I’d think about her when I noticed the antique coffee tin in my living room that we’d bought together one afternoon when we were too young to drive but not too scared to walk a few miles to the nearest antique store. We got two that kind of matched. Mine is red with the profile of a 15 woman with thick, long hair dressed in yellowish gold in the middle and a thin border that matches her dress in color. I remember Sara’s was red too, though I can’t remember the design hers had beyond that, what the woman looked like. They were all that we could afford and we were still fascinated with the forbidden beverage because we hadn’t tried it and weren’t planning on ever doing so. I wonder if she still has her tin. I’d think about Sara when I went on hikes in my new state with new friends, or a group of people from work, I never was good at making actual friends, something my mother never let me forget. Sara always wanted a group of friends like that when we were younger. A group to go on adventures outdoors with. Our mother never helped facilitate adventure for us. We could only explore as far as we could walk, and we never got any farther than the base of a heavily used canyon, Millcreek. She wanted to get to the top of that canyon, and beyond the marked trails in the wilderness area where she’d use a paper map and a compass to find her way into solitude and back into her everyday life after some time. Our mother instilled in us the importance of having other people around when we enter the world outside our home, either the civilized world or the primitive, so Sara wanted to meet a group willing to accompany her in the primitive world, otherwise she could have done it herself. I’m sure. I wonder if she has found her people. I’d think about Sara when I ran into Phoebe at work. She reminds me of her so much. So beautiful and naturally so. She’s tall like my grandmother was with a confident stride, shoulders back, always looking ahead. I wouldn’t know what to say to her when we were caught in a moment of having to deal with one another: just the two of us in the break room, the copy room, the bathroom. She always did. 16 “How’s the raincoat tagline coming, Ember?” She knew I worked in the copywriting department well before I knew she worked in the photography department of our outdoor retail company. She kept track of people well; remembering names, knowing what projects each department was working on. Very outgoing, just like Sara. “It’s going alright, I guess. Slowly but surely it’s coming along,” I said, immediately regretting using both phrases, wishing I had kept it more concise. “How are the photos coming?” I didn’t know the specifics of her work. She laughed, “The photos are coming along as well.” She poured her boiling water into her ceramic cup over a metal strainer full of loose leaf tea. “Keep up the good work,” she said as she left the break room. After having spoken with Phoebe I always felt an odd sense of relief, as if I had accomplished what seeing her had originally reminded me to do, talk to my sister. Now I am back home, in the city we both grew up, where she still lives and I know I can’t avoid it any longer. I have to talk to the sister I left behind all those years ago. She didn’t need me at the point that I left, but I could have been there for her more when she did need me. Like when she was thirteen years old and came out to our devout Mormon mother who, by the doctrine of her church, believed that two women couldn’t be together happily, nor should they be even if they were happy as that “happiness” would be in sin, and if they were being honest with themselves and with god they could find true happiness in a relationship with a man as a man would be able to marry that woman in the temple which would make their love eternal, and that man could impregnate that woman, and after all procreation is our duty and being a mother is specifically a woman’s duty, and by her own personal priorities (apart from those of her church) our mother 17 didn’t want to have a gay daughter because of what our neighbors would think of our family, some thinking that having an absent father made her daughter gay, that it was somehow her fault for not being able to keep a man around, others thinking that her daughter had been sexually abused by a man (either the father that then left her, or some random man she encountered while out on the town like a scandalous little child) which then caused her to be more attracted to women, these neighbors that cut down our trees in the middle of the night and gossiped about us when we didn’t get to church on time, she cared what these people thought of us enough to betray her own daughter, to let her daughter believe that what she felt was absolutely wrong and unforgivable, to embarrass her daughter whenever she got the chance, to avoid talking about her daughter with these neighbors or other strangers as if she didn’t exist, our mother left her daughter, my sister, alone at a time when she needed us the most and I could have been there for her then. I wasn’t. I followed my mother’s lead in ignoring the third member of our small family. I too was embarrassed to have a gay sister in a community that looks down on their “lifestyle”. How could a thirteen-year-old’s lifestyle be different from that of her family? The LDS church really missed the point with that one. Perhaps a woman living in a small, well-kept white brick home with green shutters, a garden in the backyard in a liberal neighborhood with a big dog, one you’d take fishing, an adopted child and another woman is a lifestyle. (Although it would be no different from that same house and setting with a man and a woman living inside of it.) But being in junior high, having crushes on girls more often than feeling any attraction to a boy isn’t a lifestyle. Sure the church has 18 some positive aspects that I cherish as part of my childhood, but God they really missed the mark on this one. At that time, I still cared deeply what my mother thought of me, so I didn’t want to support someone that she didn’t. At least not in front of our mother. Of course there were times when I’d talk to my sister away from our mother. I’d sneak into her bedroom to watch game shows on the small TV that she saved up for and bought herself. I’d wave to her in the halls of our school. I’d go up to her at lunch to compare lunches and ask for some of her well-thought-out snacks. I never mentioned or apologized for the way I acted when our mother was around. Rigid, quiet. But in those little moments of connection, I got the sense that she forgave me. She understood. What I can’t understand is why Sara stayed in Salt Lake City all this time. Her own mother ignored her because of a belief propagated by the predominant religion in this city and state and region of the world. Around this time of year, when the air starts getting cold again with bitter winds, the members of that religion gather in our city from all the surrounding small towns of our state for what they call General Conference. A meeting held in a building specifically named for its purpose: LDS Conference Center. The male church leaders give talks about following thy lord and their wives give talks specifically to the women of the church to follow thy husband. They give talks on how to better follow the lord including one titled, “He Heals the Heavy Laden” in which Dallin H. Oaks (of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles) advises those who suffer from same-sex attraction (a disease of the mind) to be healed through the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood (that power that only men can obtain and practice which means that a lesbian woman could only be healed by the hands of a man). 19 They come from all over. Down from Brigham City, Ogden and Roy and Paradise and Hyrum and Woodruff. Up from Draper, Provo (especially Provo), Nephi, Ephraim, Moroni, Manti, Hinckley, Beaver, Cedar City, and St. George. Towns that have not been gentrified like Salt Lake City. And the residents are blown away by the height of Salt Lake’s buildings, and the amount of restaurants, and the vastness of Liberty park in the middle of busy intersections, and the amount of cars, nice cars, driving from one part of the city to another at any point in the day because everyone has somewhere to be apparently, and the helmet-wearing, pannier-packing cyclists commuting to work and school, and the huge university with the medical village and football stadium larger than any they’d ever seen. And some of those members that come to Salt Lake for the first time, to watch General Conference see people walking around the city in clothes they’d never imagined: a man in a tight pink mesh top with a seemingly sane mind, a woman with buzz-cut hair in all black clothes that don’t flatter a feminine body type. And some of those people judge these others for wearing such strange clothes and makeup and go about their day guided by the confines of the Mormon church. And others see hope in the free expression of these city walkers. Some of these LDS churchgoers are gay and see that there are people in the city who are gay and successful nevertheless and they see hope. These small town Mormons wouldn’t dream of moving to such big and intimidating cities like San Francisco or New York. Salt Lake, however, is approachable. They’ve been here. They’ve seen it. They congregate here when they turn the appropriate age to leave the church (having made the decision to join the church at 8) and leave their house. Perhaps that’s why Sara stays in Salt Lake. 4% of the people here have the shared 20 experience of growing up Mormon and gay. Perhaps a gay community elsewhere wouldn’t feel as much like home as the one right here, at home. I hope she’s found her people. Finding the words to say to someone you left behind 10 years ago is a challenge. Should one act casual, as if it really hasn’t been that long? Should she start with an apology to clear the air and address what they’ll both undoubtedly be thinking about? Does she owe the other an apology? It takes two people to avoid one another’s company and conversation. Perhaps “avoid” is the wrong word, as I wasn’t actively trying to stay away from her. I was inactively thinking of connecting with her again. The phone will be slightly easier to start. I leave my mother in the kitchen to finish the crepes and go to my “favorites” category in my phone as I’ve always only kept my mother and my sister’s number there despite the fact that I never tried to contact either one of them until recently. No new friends have felt on par with family, whatever “family” means after years of distance. Sara may have heard by now that I’m in town. Or she may not be expecting my call whatsoever. “Hello,” Sara answers her phone quickly, with a normal tone. I wonder if she still had my number saved. “Sara?” I asked. “Yeah, is this Ember?” “Yeah. It’s me,” I said, not knowing where to go from here. I had considered multiple alternatives before making the call: ‘I’ve missed you,’ ‘I’m so sorry,’ ‘I think about you at least once a day, sometimes more, and I haven’t acted on my instinct to 21 contact you out of fear. I didn’t know what could have been said for the time lost between us. Abandoning you is one of my deepest regrets for which I’ll never fully forgive myself, but I hope this will be the start to rekindling our connection and both of our healing.’ “How have you been?” Is what I actually said. “I’ve been pretty good. How ‘bout you?” She said. “I’m fine. I’m in town.” “For mom?” “Yeah. Have you seen her?” I asked. “No,” She said. And she probably would have left it at that if I hadn’t created an uncomfortable silence with my hesitation. “Not yet. How is she?” “Not great, but not horrible either. She’s slow. When she walks, yeah, but also the way she talks and moves her face. It’s weird. I’m staying with her so I see it all. But I try to get out too. It can be draining,” I said. “Yeah, I’m sure. What have you been doing?” “I’ve just been walking around town. It’s changed quite a bit.” “Yeah, it definitely has,” Sara didn’t sound as confident as usual. Hesitating with certain responses, and trailing off at the end of them instead of making firm statements. I’m sure it’s because my calling her casually after so much time apart is strange and it’s making her uncomfortable. I feel bad putting her in this position. “Do you still like it here?” “I like it better now than I ever did before. There was a time when I thought I’d leave and never come back. About the time you left. But then I kind of found my place. I 22 love my town,” She said. Quickly following up with, “it was just missing you. That’s all I’d change,” feeling some obligation to express her sisterly love for me. Did she really miss me? I can’t say for sure. But even if she had it wouldn’t have been the kind of ‘missing’ that close friends or family members feel after a departure from one another for any small or large amount of time. Perhaps she missed having a sister figure in her life. Maybe she missed the idea of meeting up occasionally to talk about our mother and joke about our lives. But she almost certainly did not miss me, specifically, as a person. I was never a big enough part of her life to have gained that type of ‘missing’. “I’m here now,” I chuckled out a trite response. “Can I see you?” “Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, live close to downtown. Today?” “Just whenever you’re free,” I said. Perhaps I should have been more eager and demanded urgency. “Okay. Yeah, today is kind of weird. Can I call you soon?” She asked. “Of course.” “Alright, well then I’ll call you soon then.” “Okay, bye Sara.” “Bye Ember.” As soon as she got off the phone I cried. I don’t know for what reason. I felt slight relief for having finally called her, but not enough to justify that kind of response. Nothing absolutely revelatory happened between us. Perhaps that’s why I cried. I hadn’t changed a thing by calling her. We were still disconnected by years and distance. Perhaps I’m finally facing what I’ve been pushing to the back of my mind for years. 23 I pull myself together and walk back to the kitchen. My mother is rolling up a crepe for me. She’s about to put syrup on top without a plate underneath. I reach in the cupboard to grab her one and take the syrup before she can start pouring. She looks at me with a sheepish smile, “Thanks Ember. I’ve been getting more and more forgetful.” It’s been a long time since I’ve heard my mom say my name. 24 Chapter Two: Sara What the fuck Ember? Up until this point I’ve done a pretty good job of repressing my childhood. Of course, I had a bit of a hiccup when Sister Day came by the house to deliver the news. She brought peanut butter blossoms. I’m not sure what would have been the appropriate treat with which to give that news, but peanut butter blossoms felt especially inappropriate. She’s a decent woman from what I remember. She taught Young Women the importance of Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth, Knowledge, Choice and Accountability, Good Works, Integrity, and Virtue every Sunday and didn’t stray too far from those core values. I hated the teachers who got too specific and strict with their lessons: grown ass, unhappy women telling young girls to avoid having boyfriends until we are ready to take on the responsibility of marriage, sex, and children, rubbed me the wrong way. Sister day constantly reminded us of the blessing of forgiveness. The takeaway from her was to always keep our principles in mind to help us 25 make good choices, but also remember that we’ve got a backup in case we slip up. I found that lesson tolerable, even helpful. “Sara, is that you?” Sister Day said. “Yeah, remind me of your name again,” I asked. “I’m Sister day, do you remember me at all” I knew that, I was expecting to get first name access at this point in my life. “Hi Sister Day. How are you? Of course I remember,” It’s because of you that I’ll never forget that we are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us and we love him. Though I can’t say I’ve been committed to standing as a witness of God at all times, and in all things, and in all places as I strive to live the Young Women values which are: Faith, Divine Nature…you know the rest. “I’m alright. I’m doing pretty well. Gosh, I do wish I were coming for a better reason than this though,” She looked down at her cookies, probably realizing what a terrible mistake she had made in bringing them. “Sweetheart, I know you don’t talk to your mother very often,” which she really shouldn’t know but everyone in that ward knows everyone else’s dirt. “I just… have you heard about how she’s doing?” “No, not really. I guess I haven’t gotten any updates in a while,” it felt odd to be talking about my mother with, for the most part, a stranger when I hardly brought her up to people I’m close with. Sometimes I did wonder how she was doing. Is she happy now that her girls have moved on with their lives, and she no longer had to raise us? Is she lonely, I’d wonder? But even as Jesse and Laura, my closest friends since high school, talked about their mothers, the good and the bad, I never feel comfortable bringing up my thoughts about my own. I’ve only ever told my partner about her, and even that was 26 sparing strictly necessary information. At that point with Sister Day, I was preparing a response to some horrible news because I didn’t trust I would naturally react in an appropriately sad manner. “Well honey, she’s sick. Her mind is going. I mean, she has some years but they’re not going to be her best. We’re all so worried about her. She hasn’t been able to get herself to church. I just… I didn’t want you to find out in some insensitive, awful way. You know,” She maintained strong eye contact throughout, gauging my reaction. “Oh, wow.” “Here, can I give you a hug?” She set down the plate of cookies in the planter next to my door and came in to comfort me. “Sure. Thank you. I don’t know what to say,” That reaction wasn’t entirely dishonest, though it was planned. “Don’t say anything sweet girl. I’m sure that you’re in shock,” her voice was shaking as if she were about to cry. I believed it too. She was genuinely torn up over my tragedy. I always got the sense that she really cared about us girls, her Young Women who would one day have to deal with things such as this and be in need of guidance. The LDS church would likely reach the most girls in her community, and for that I respect her choice to stay. “I’ll leave these with you.” She handed me the blossoms. “That’s my number on the post-it if you ever need someone to talk to. Okay? Don’t hesitate, I mean it. Okay?” “Okay. Seriously, thank you Sister Day,” I said with a plate full of cookies in my hand, though those weren’t what I was honestly grateful for. 27 For the rest of that day I felt strange. Not guilt or even sadness, just odd because she is my mother. We have never been close, except for maybe when I was too young to remember, so my feelings toward her are split between who she is and how she treated me, and the fact that she is my mother and I’ll never have another one to fill the void she left me with. But, to be honest, after that day I tried not to think of her and her new struggle. It worked. I did a damn good job forgetting. I got back into my routine, going to work, spending time with my friends (talking about anything but her), cooking, cleaning, exercising. I kept Sister Day’s number in a cupboard I never open so I wouldn’t be prompted to think about my dying mother or tempted to call it. But now Ember goes and calls me. I can’t help but remember everything. Fuck you Ember. I’d rather not remember my years spent in a home where I wasn’t wanted. In a church building on Sundays where I was taught how wrong my thoughts were and god forbid I ever act in a way that might bring me happiness. The fucking church building. All of our neighbors came to that godforsaken building on Sundays, except the ones that didn’t. And we knew who they were. One of them was Grace, my friend from school. The ward members would sometimes ask, “Why don’t you bring your friend with you to church?” until the day that I did. She showed up in a sleeveless white shirt, jeans and sandals. An outfit appropriate for just about any other weekend activity. Her voice was louder than anyone else’s. Or at least she refused to quiet down for the Lord’s sake. While no one said a single word regarding her abnormalities, she got the message that she was unwelcome. The members would approach her and ask questions about her churchgoing history. ‘Is this your first time here?’ suggesting that she stuck out, as if she hadn’t already picked up on the fact that she was underdressed. ‘Do your parents go to 28 church?’ as if it were any of their business. Everything was everyone’s business, but they wouldn’t admit to their gossiping habits. They would tell one person about another as if it were their responsibility to do so, and that they hated having to do it. They’d ask people personal questions and act as if it would be suspicious and sinful if they didn’t offer up an answer. Perhaps withholding information would have been less sinful than what we all did instead, lie. Sister Harper lied when asked about her cookie recipe, “It’s a family tradition.” They were store bought. Sister Palmer lied when asked about how she managed five young children, “The little things they say throughout the day makes all the hard work worth it.” They hired a nanny, a cute one that Brother Palmer fancied. Brother Patterson lied when asked about his favorite feature of his wife’s, “I love her hazel eyes.” He really loved her masculine frame and acceptance of all the time spent with his “friends”. My mother lied by way of performance. I’d never seen her smile so much as when we were at church. Almost cartoonish, she grinned so wide to express happiness and contentment to even the audience members in the back. Church was a play orchestrated by the greying men on the upper stage pews facing the women and young people in the foreground acting out they roles as righteous (and shamelessly self-righteous) members of an unarguably correct system of thought. She was a fraud. Probably still is. Poor Ember has been duped by her again. First when we were kids living in the same house but with very different treatment from our same mother. She was the favorite. That much was clear. And in that house, where she was princess under the rule of our queen, she couldn’t be bothered with my woes. She’d sometimes approach me at school as if I were any one of her acquaintances at the high school with whom she had a few inside jokes. 29 You know those friends you’d have in high school that were only your friend because your real friends weren’t in a certain class, so you’d bond with the person sitting next to you, or someone you were always paired with for partner activities? That’s kind of what our relationship felt like in public. In the privacy of that goddamn house, where Ember is currently catering to every need of our selfish mother, I was nothing to either of them. But I kind of get it. Even as a sixteen-year-old, I kind of got it. We were both kids and our mom taught us to be distant. That was Ember’s “in” with our mother: treat Sara poorly, and we (my mom and Ember) can be closer. I probably would have taken that deal too, if I were in her position. I mostly didn’t blame Ember for that part of my life. I do, however, blame her for forcing me to deal with it now. Maybe it’s time for me to deal with it. Maybe my mother should have dealt with it years ago, and it’s not my problem now. I resent the fact that our mother’s death will be what ultimately brings our small family back together. Our reunion will be out of necessity. She needs us now. My sister was willing to take on that task by herself, and as of right now, I’m going to let her. 30 Chapter Three: Ember Salt Lake City, Utah has changed since I was here. This house is in the lower part of the cove, the less expensive part, but we may have had the best view in the area when I was here. My mother insisted that we did. From our front yard you could see Mt. Olympus transition through every season. In the fall, the bottom of the mountain was covered in changing and falling leaves. If you looked at it from the same vantage point every day, you’d notice changes: trees quickly went from green to yellow and orange. Some trees were red, but you had to look closely for those. As our eye traveled from the bottom of the mountain to the top we’d see less trees with falling leaves and more rock and conifers. Conifers in rock crevices. A fresh snow in Winter made the mountain look like an old black and white photograph of an unsettled town, the roofs of houses blending into the side. The trees were the black contrast to that white snow covering leafless trees and harsh rock. The snow would melt, despite my bitter conjecture every February and March and sometimes 31 April that it wouldn’t, and that in fact it would keep falling all year long. As it melted, the rock would become exposed again, but those crevices with their conifers and shade would retain the snow well into the Spring. The slow melting water from those shaded spots would revive the native perennials and provide one of the necessary resources for the newly buried seeds to sprout. The side that we could see from our front yard would become so green that on cloudy mornings I’d swear that Utah had changed from the previous year, that it had become more like the tropical mountains I’d see pictures of in class during world geography sections. In the Spring, our view included the front yard of our across-the-street neighbor as well, and we were grateful that she studied horticulture in college. Her apple tree bloomed with light pink flowers as soon as the warmth from the sun reached our city. The circular flower bed surrounding the apple tree was skillfully planted and replanted every year were annuals each color of the natural rainbow. Her Japanese Maple would have just gotten its bright red leaves back. When we looked at the mountain from our front yard in the spring, we’d get a kaleidoscope of color in our lower peripheral. Spring was my favorite time to look at our mountain. Summer would occasionally bring rain, and when it did we’d thank the clouds by running underneath them without coats or umbrellas. The warmth from the day, and several previous days would have soaked into the sidewalk enough to allow for shoe and sleeveless play. From our front yard we’d see the mountain glow green against the grey sky, and the rock darken from grey to charcoal with the moisture. Everything was rich with color when it rained in the summer, and our view was the best from which to witness the transformation. 32 Now that I’m back, the willow tree that used to shade our yard and grow into the telephone wire between our house and the Crough’s (who called the telephone company every year around the same time to have it cut back a safe distance from electrocution and losing leaves in their yard) has been cut down to a stump. The old wood shingles on our roof have been replaced by a flatter, more durable material. The grass on the lawn across the street from our house is much more yellow than it ever was when I was here, and the car in the driveway is much cheaper. There seem to be a lot more kids walking around our neighborhood and the ones directly surrounding it. I would have appreciated some younger families when I was growing up here. Most of my neighbors were fully grown with visiting adult children. The junior high at the bottom of our hill advertises upcoming events (parent teacher conference, school performances, orientation) on a bright, new electronic marquee. It’s blue and white with the cartoon mascot dressed as a Knight and referred to as a “Charger”. The letters glow red all day and night. The main road further down the hill has been repaved, which must have been a hassle for those who still lived here, but it had to be done. Myrtle Spurge, a noxious, highly adaptable and water wise succulent originating from southeastern Europe, has overrun the hillside along the drive from our house all the way to the University of Utah, which I could have attended for much cheaper than I ended up paying at Washington University. It’s light green and bright yellow flower-like shape and long stems full of triangular leaves made the plant an attractive pick for horticulturists in the desert. It wasn’t until after the plant escaped gardens and invaded Salt Lake County that we realized its harmful nature and lost hillsides of native species. 33 Filling in the space between each spurge, competing for total ecosystem takeover is Cheatgrass, with origins in the same area. I suppose at this time of year it’s difficult to tell the difference between Cheatgrass and the dying, yellowing, wilting native grasses entering their dormant phase for winter, but it seems to be a bigger issue than I remember. There are fewer shrubs of Bitterbrush and Sagebrush making our foothills less fragrant. Cheatgrass gives off no smell until it inevitably ignites in the summer heat, during camping season, and burns for miles giving the mountain and eventually valley an overwhelming whiff of smoke. It didn’t ignite this fire season. I don’t remember the air quality being this bad when I lived here, though I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t. I wouldn’t have been paying attention. I paid more attention to the vibrant red and orange sunsets in the evening and didn’t question what caused their hazy, far-reaching effects. I breathed that air in for years. I’ve since learned that breathing in polluted air has equivalent adverse effects on one’s lungs as smoking a cigarette (two depending on how bad the air quality is that day). I promised my mother I’d never smoke, and I’ve kept that promise. Areas I used to walk around have been gentrified. Trendy mock-Asian restaurants downtown serving vegan pot stickers for an appetizer and chocolate lava cake for dessert. Mid-century modern furniture stores to furnish hundreds of new apartments in tall buildings with community pools and gyms. More stand-alone gyms too. Gyms with misleading names like “Choice Training” when it seems no different from any of the other gyms offering treadmills and squat-assist machines and that no one with a membership is training for anything in particular. More lightly used bike lanes and heavily used parking spots. A gelato shop with daring flavors like balsamic vinegar and 34 vanilla rosemary, near the newly remodeled movie theater I used to go to for my independent film fix. It used to have peach tiles and teal accents. Now it has dark wood and a richer blue for an accent color. This theater has since become very popular with kids now as young as I was then. More people, everywhere. I’m not sure I would have liked this transformation as a kid, teenager or young adult. I liked to think of the movie theater as belonging to me and the old couple that had been coming since they were young and as far as I could tell were spending their retirement entirely in that building. I’m not sure I like it now either. I’m going to have to grow to like it, this city, because I’ve made the choice to stay here for my mother. I’ll have to find a job here as I refuse to live solely on her savings. I’ve come here for different reasons than to freeload, and if I didn’t get a job I’m sure my mother would try to twist it like that when we inevitably got into an argument. We haven’t yet. Probably because we feel like strangers to each other. Not old friends, because we have bad history. Not old revivals, because we were never in competition, just unable to work together toward a common goal. We are uncanny strangers. “Is it breakfast yet?” My mom said walking into my room smiling. “Are you hungry?” “Sure. I can eat,” She wouldn’t have asked if she wasn’t, but she is still unwilling to admit to an appetite. “I’ve got to drive all over town today, dropping resumes off. Do you want to go out for breakfast?” I ask. “That’d be nice.” 35 I help her pick out a nice outfit. If left to do so on her own she’d likely prioritize comfort over style and that would not be a fair representation of the woman she was, the woman she chose to be. The woman I knew had style you couldn’t teach. She wouldn’t buy new clothes often, but when she did they were high quality pieces that fit strategically into her neutral toned, classic wardrobe. In the winter she’d wear this beautiful cream sweater made a soft material I only got to feel when it was hanging. Sometimes she’d pair it with a mid-length black skirt that fit closely to her slender frame. In the spring she’d bring out her light denim jeans and pair her tan heeled sandals with a white top. She always managed to keep her clothes in top condition, but her days weren’t exactly filled with activities that could compromise a white fabric. She only wore dresses to church, but they were far more beautiful than our congregation required or expected. While most middle-aged mothers came to church in long, shapeless skirts over their short legs and mod-bod tees accentuating the lack of definition in their tired arms, my mother showed up to that old building in an olive green linen dress with a clean hem right at her knee, an appropriate length for a grown woman with long legs. She wore a wool dress with a high neckline and quarter length sleeves in the winter with one or two pieces of silver. Understated, never underdressed. The older, less attractive women in the ward probably thought her too “of this world” interested in looking nice, less preoccupied with getting to heaven where they’ll all be beautiful anyway. Perhaps they were right. But they were also jealous. We sit down in a small cafe on our way into town. “Is there a limit?” My mom asks. “What do you mean?” 36 “I mean can I get whatever I want?” “Of course, mom.” Taking care of my mother’s finances has made her seem more childlike to me. She asks for permission for things she never would have granted either me or my sister as children. If we were out to eat, which would have been a special occasion, she would have laid out our options for us and those meals would have been inexpensive and utterly unsatisfying to our youthful taste buds craving sweetness. “Good morning ladies, can I get some drinks started for you two?” The young waitress wearing pink lipstick asks. “I’ll just have water,” I said. “Me too?” My mother says. “Absolutely, I’ll have those right out.” She never has ordered drinks other than water. Sara and I would beg for lemonade or Sprite having been introduced to those sugary options by friends but she never once gave in. “What is Sara up to?” She asked. “Sara? I don’t know, mom. Why?” I said. I wonder what she is up to as well, and why she hasn’t called since the other day when we spoke. I mean, to a certain extent I know why, but there must be some part of her that wants to work things out. Right? We only have so much time to do what needs to be done. “Why doesn’t she come around?” Does she really have no idea? “Sara is pretty independent, remember?” Perhaps not by nature but lack of nurture. 37 “I guess. It’s been a while since we’ve talked, hasn’t it?” She asked. “I miss having you both around.” “We haven’t really all been around since we were kids.” The waitress came by with our drinks. “Are you ready to order some food?” She asked. “I’ll just have some scrambled eggs and a side of fruit, please.” I said. My ordering habits are in many ways influenced by the mother I grew up with. I developed a real sense of shame about ordering large plates in public, so reserved cheat meals for the privacy of my home “Okay, and for you?” She asks my mother. “I’ll have an egg over easy and a slice of wheat toast?” She said. “Sure thing.” The waitress walks back to the kitchen surely now realizing she isn’t going to make much money on our table. Red Butte Garden, our state’s arboretum, is hiring for a horticulturist assistant currently. I figured I’d apply. Before I got the job as a copywriter, I worked at a garden in Washington cultivating beautiful grounds for guests to come and enjoy a safer form of nature. I miss my time there. Plus, planting and pruning may be a nice way to reflect when I’m not taking care of my mother. We pull up to the visitor’s center to drop off my application. “You wait in here, alright? It won’t take me long.” I said to my mother. “Okay,” she said as I shut the door. 38 As I walk up to the front desk I’m greeted by a young blond girl in a tan button up shirt with the green Red Butte Garden logo. Not a terrible uniform. “Hi there.” She said. “Hi, I’m just coming in to ask about the horticulture position. I saw a posting online, is that still a thing?” I ask. “I think it is, I don’t know much about it though. Would you like me to radio one of our horticulture directors for ya?” “Sure. I’ve got a resume if you just want to give it to them.” I wasn’t prepared to make my first impression. “Oh it’s no problem, they’re eager to hire so I’m sure she’ll be happy to meet you.” As I sit on this bench near the desk waiting, I wonder if I should have left the car running. I rolled the windows down to give my mother some fresh air, but it might still be getting warm in there with the sun beating straight down onto it. Just as I’m about to get up to check on her a short woman comes walking around the corner looking at me as the front desk girl points her in my direction. “Hi I’m Peggy, the horticulture director.” She reaches out her hand to shake mine. “Hi Peggy, I’m Ember. I’m sure she told you, but I’m just curious about the assistant position.” “Yes, we’re excited to get someone on soon. We do a lot of our propagation in the Winter, and then it will be Spring before you know it.” “I’ve brought my resume for you to look over.” “Great, yeah definitely. Have you worked at a garden before?” 39 “Yeah, back in Washington.” I looked out the window expecting to have a better view of the car standing up. “I propagated mostly succulents and maintained the grounds during the busy seasons.” “Nice,” She said. “What brought you here to Utah?” “I’m actually from here. I moved away for a while, but I’m back for family.” “That’s great. And what makes you want to work at Red Butte?” “I enjoy nature,” to an extent, more the cultivation of nature allowing me some control over my environment. Actual nature is quite intimidating to me but that probably isn’t the best thing to say to land this job. “I just love being outside,” as long as I have my sunscreen, lightweight, breathable clothing, and plenty of water. “And working with plants is therapeutic for me,” I said while glancing out of the window again trying to see my mother. Is she safe? Comfortable? “That’s what we like to hear. Well I won’t keep you today, but I’ll look this over and hopefully give you a call soon okay?” She said. She must have noticed my eagerness to leave. “Okay great, thank you.” I said giving her my full attention for two seconds before walking quickly out the door and down the stairs and to the car where my mother no longer was. Her door was closed but unlocked. She let herself out. I was half expecting this as I sat inside the building for too long, but I didn’t come up with any strategy to handle it. Where would she have gone? I started turning and pacing trying to see if she was nearby. She must be nearby. Had she planned this before I had gotten out? How far could she have gone? I walk down the steps to the lower parking lot, but she’s 40 not there either. I see a sign post for a trail down the hill from the parking lot. It’s called the shoreline trail. I run to it without considering if my mother would even be interested in taking this route. I just refuse to believe that she’s in the middle of the busy road in the other direction. “Mom.” I said, looking around the trail behind trees. The only other time I’ve ever lost my mom I was scared for my own safety. I was a small child in a grocery store worried that I’d never find my family again. When she found me in that grocery store, she was so relieved like she had been frantic since the moment she didn’t see me by her side. Now I search for my mother who likely does not have me on her mind. “Mom.” “Ember.” She says. Her voice is quiet over the rushing water. I walk down the hill towards her voice. There she is by the water. “Ember, isn’t this nice?” She asks. “Why did you get out of the car?” “What?” She seemed confused, like she didn’t remember that I had told her to stay and wait for me. “I told you to stay in the car, why did you get out.” “I’m just restless. All I do is sit and wait,” She said. She’s right. Since I’ve been here, she mostly sits. I sit too and we waste our weekdays away until Sunday when I have to take her to church to sit some more. I read somewhere that walking initiates movement in the mind as well, like thoughts are more productive when the body is in motion. Perhaps I should take my mother outside more often. Mind and body in motion. 41 Chapter Four: Sara Fall is my favorite season to do my job. In the winter we spend most of our time indoors, planning potential trail systems, writing grants, making a list of what is to get done during the spring and summer. Spring and summer are hot, so checking off that list of weeding, and drilling, and lifting, and shoveling, and hiking to each spot is hard-earned. It’s not the work I mind, in fact I find the labor meditative, it’s the oppressive heat. The air is cool in fall. Meditation is possible and even more necessary in these crisp months of change. On the Pipeline trail in Millcreek Canyon, I still get cell phone service. My friend Carly sent me a message that I check when in need of a break from weeding and picking up trash. “Emily needs last minute wedding help! You free Saturday?” “Definitely! Happy to help.” I quickly type, put my phone back in my pocket, and get to shoveling out Cheatgrass from the sides of the trail. I have mixed feelings about the 42 work we do out in the field, getting rid of large sections of vegetation to make way for native species. I often wonder what the natural world would look like it not for our intervention. Perhaps there would be no invasive weeds as no seeds could be transported from the middle eastern European countries over to these canyons in the United States via plane. My family used to live a ten-minute walk away from this canyon, in a nicer neighborhood than we could afford. I’m pretty sure my mother still lives there. When we were kids our neighbors were old people. Not a lot of young families or children nearby to play with, and certainly no other single mothers. Before school started, like 1st grade started, I had Ember. I wish I could remember more of this time when my brain wasn’t developed to the point of memory retention. Of course my mom would be the wrong person to ask to fill in the blanks, so I rely on those bits and pieces of memory, or images, sounds and smells-- sometimes separate from all the other senses-- from which I’ve tried telling myself happy stories of what it was like to be a small child in my mother’s home now that I’ve been forced to grapple with that. One image I see more often now is of me and Ember in our front yard. We’re both wearing the same dress except mine is one size smaller; It’s a cotton, tank dress in a nineties mauve color with big, yellow, cartoonish flowers spread out inches apart from each other. We were so small; the fabric could only fit ten or twelve of those flowers. We are drawing pastel colors in unrecognizable shapes with chalk onto the lifted and cracked driveway that curved from the busy street out front to our just-barely-two-car garage that only ever had to house one. My phone goes off in my pocket, it’s Carly again. 43 “Great! It’s going to be pretty much an all-day thing. Can you meet up around 8am? You’re welcome to leave early, but it might be nice to carpool…?” “Totally! Yeah, let’s meet at 8. I’m in for the long haul, baby! Haha. Emily’s house?” I put my phone away and put my gloves back on. I have this other image in my head of Ember and I sharing a bag of unflavored cheerios and a piece of paper, snacking and drawing in the dull, smelly room (that same smell you’ll find in any LDS church no matter how far you travel, maybe due to the cleaning supplies, though the smell isn’t fresh) with the organ in our church, trying to get through sacrament meeting. The snack must have been our mother’s attempt to get us through sacrament meeting quietly. Those stopped when we were old enough to be quietly hungry. I bet our chewing, when we ate those cheerios as small children was loud, but our mother didn’t seem to mind. And if she did, I wasn’t old enough to pick up on her irritable subtleties. I remember the taste of that torn up bread that the young Priesthood holders (who used to seem so old) would carry from one pew to the next on a lightweight, shiny platter with a handle over top, waiting patiently at the end of the row while the church members grabbed a piece and passed it along to the person sitting next to them. It tasted sweeter than our sugarless cereal. I only asked my mother one time in my whole life if I could have another piece, I remember her response, which was entirely non-verbal, vividly. I remember that response more vividly than any of the drawings Ember and I ever completed in that time every Sunday. There is a feeling I can remember from those early years in my life that I can’t nail down to a time or place, but I don’t think I had this feeling often. Reminding myself 44 of it now still gives me chills. It’s a warm comfort that’s all encompassing. I wish I could remember the source of that feeling, even if it were something as simple of a hug from my mother. Especially if it were a hug from my mother, actually, because that might give me some hope that we had some kind of natural bond. As soon as school started, like first grade started, our world opened up to all kinds of opportunities beyond the family. I kind of wish we could have postponed that, at least long enough for Ember and I to form an unbreakable bond. I didn’t realize how beneficial it would have been to have a best friend in my sister until it was far too late. It seems like Ember didn’t come to that conclusion until far later, or maybe she still hasn’t. I don’t know for sure what that call was about. Neither of us had trouble making friends in those early years as we were both fearless. It wasn’t until years later that we’d have that beaten out of us by peers and our own goddamn mother, Ember a little harder than myself. I don’t know how Ember made her friends as a young kid because I never got to see her be all alone, away from me or our mother, in a group full of strangers. My method was simple. I’d just talk to the person sitting next to me about anything. The fact the we lived a ten-minute walk and a two-minute drive from the elementary school helped our cause. Kids could often come right over after school. Well some of the kids. The kids that went to Oakridge Elementary were either from much higher up the hill or much further down into the valley. Higher up the hill were the smaller families with older parents. Those kids always had impossibly neat clothes from top (where the girls had matching headbands) to bottom (where the boys would wear the nicest tennis shoe you could buy in that small of a size). You’d never hear them complain 45 of being cold at recess with their top-of-the-line coat, new every year, or their winter accessories (gloves, scarf, thick socks, ear muffs) that the rest of our parents didn’t consider buying, or forgot where they had put them at the end of last season, or didn’t remember to put them in our backpacks every winter morning, but you might hear them complain about the choice of birthday treat someone in the class made, “cupcakes? I can’t eat those.” The teacher must have rolled her eyes at that complaint before offering the little brat raised by a couple of yuppies a snack from the “healthy bin.” And if the kid had the audacity to point out that “pretzels aren’t healthy” than god help them when it came time to play a game where someone would be chosen to be the leader. Was it the gluten or just the sugar their parents were afraid of? My mom certainly feared sugar, but never specified what we could and couldn’t eat outside the house; so I would have taken the cupcake, and I probably would have gotten blue frosting on my hand-me-down shirt. The kids from up the hill, up on those streets with Book of Mormon names and places-- Zarahemla, Gilead, Mathews, Abinadi-- usually couldn’t play, having other responsibilities beyond public schooling. Sports, dance, music. And their forty-something parents wouldn’t have liked my family anyway, or my house, though they’d pretend to if ever in a situation to see it with backhanded compliments that would have never fooled my mother. “Your house is so cozy,” and “I never see decor like this where I shop, it’s so cute.” My mother wouldn’t have accepted “cute” as an actual compliment knowing full well that these people valued beauty and class, likely decorated their homes with literal pieces of art, more so than cutesy trinkets passed down through her family. In many ways 46 my mother was not sentimental, but she did keep some items from her mother for whatever reason. The kids from far away could always play. Their parents appreciated the extra hours after school to stay at work or to get more done around the house. They seemed to like my mom. Pickups were always friendly. Even when I started hating my mom, I hated the people who were unkind to her more. My phone buzzed again, this time I don’t take off my gloves assuming her message won’t require a response. “Yeah, Emi’s. See you tomorrow!” I blow some dirt off my phone and stuff it back in my pants. I have a decent sized group of friends now, but when I was a kid I use to invest most of my time in one friend. Those early years of school, I chose to play with a girl named Ashlyn. She was a non-denominational Christian in a town full of Mormons. Her parents weren’t from Utah; I think they were from somewhere on the East Coast though their song-driven brand of Christianity seems more like a West Coast invention. At seven years old I didn’t care to ask where they were from exactly and what they were doing in Utah. The answer to that question interests me now, with anyone I meet that’s not from here. Why Utah? A better job, the skiing, a nice place to raise children, slower/more deliberate lifestyle than a big city, mountains, hiking, and I’ve only heard this one once, but it was memorable enough to include: Utah is the Mecca for Mormons. If I had to guess, I’d say Ashlyn’s parents moved here thinking it would be a great place to raise a family. But if they thought their religion would fit nicely into a predominantly Christian community, they were sorely mistaken. The LDS church is 47 about as denominational as it gets. Raising a family seemed to be their main focus though, what with the chores charts, homemade tree house in the big backyard (which I’m sure was as a big factor in their house buying decision), organized toy cupboards and dinner placemats. I got the sense they were doing a pretty good job. And in spite of the fact that her parents had absolutely no sexual passion between them whatsoever due to both of them being gay (which is something I’ve totally made-up or assumed based entirely on what they looked and dressed like back then: the mother had short dark hair and a big eighties coat, her shoes were always practical, Tevas in the summer, men’s style Sorels in the winter. Her dad was scrawny as hell, which Ashlyn told me was the result of his donating blood on a monthly basis (likely a joke her parents told her at dinner once, that she took as fact). He wore pressed denim jeans and polo tops), they seemed to be pretty happy. I don’t see any other patches of Cheatgrass in my area so I pick up my bucket, dump the pulled weeds into the huge communal bucket, stuff my shovel into the fabric chain on the side of my pants made for shovels and walk up the trail past the ten or so workers and volunteers on my team to a fresh spot, with plenty to weed. “Keep moving slackers,” I say as I walk by. “Your section was puny,” one of my team members says, smiling. I never noticed certain plants as weeds and others as native until I studied botany in college. As a young girl, every plant had its own beauty and purpose in my mind. I wanted to be surrounded by plants as often as possible. To do so, I’d walk my ass up the canyon road with whoever happened to be my one friend at the time most every weekend, no matter how reluctant they were. Even Hannah. She hated hiking. I made her go 48 anyway. I refused to believe that anyone, even someone who didn’t like the journey to get there, wouldn’t fall in love with the lush green oasis at the top of Millcreek canyon, past the gate that opened to cars only during the summer months, just waiting for intrusion. The branches of the trees and the stems of the ground-cover, some weeds, some native wildflowers and grasses, growing quickly with the river always running nearby, and the snow melting slowly, crept into the roadway. When Hannah saw Millcreek Canyon, past the gate for the first time, having gotten there on foot, she thought it couldn’t get any greener in a desert like Utah. But it did get greener the further we walked. It would always get greener because we never made it to the top. The furthest we got on foot was to a little sign that said, “Thousand Springs” in a font similar to, but not exactly like that of the official forest signs. Less formal. And the wood plaque was small, just big enough to fit those two words, as if someone had discovered this place on her own, without the forest service and tried her best to make a sign that passed as official because she didn’t want anyone to miss that site. But you likely would miss that sign if you were driving up this narrow road instead of walking it. And if you drove and you missed the sign, you wouldn't have turned you head at just the right moment to catch a glimpse of so many little streams of water coming down the mountain wall from invisible holes, hidden by rich vegetation and moss. Plants so green and so wet and different from the ones you’d see further down the canyon. The shapes of their leaves were unfamiliar to me, having lived in a place with water-wise plants my whole life. The only plants that I knew at that time have deep rootsystems that travel down to the water table below the earth to stay alive. They only ever get truly green as sign of gratitude for the rain that comes a few times a year. 49 The plants surrounding those springs up Millcreek Canyon might not have been industrious like those desert plants I knew so well, but they were beautiful. That humid ecosystem allowed those plants to be green, to be grateful all summer long. I’ve been up to that spot several times since, especially lately with my team, but never quite to the same place I found that first time I walked miles and miles to get there. My experience since then has been tainted by the knowledge of invasive weeds; I’m no longer fooled by their unfamiliar shapes. It’s my job to clear them to make way for our native species to grow. Here’s a good spot to get back to it, my team twenty feet behind and cheat grass as far as I can see. I haven’t thought about this in years, but I’m just remembering the time when, around this time of year, seventeen or eighteen years ago, before college, before Cheatgrass, Ember and I walked the mile from our house to the mouth of this canyon. We hardly spent any time together during those years, but that one day I convinced her to come with me, out of the house that stifled our friendship, away from our mother. I wonder what I said that convinced her. Yellows colored our entrance, dry groundcover, tree leaves losing their chlorophyll, wildflowers in their last days. We took our mother’s camera with us intending to put on a fall photo-shoot, my idea surely, Ember was never comfortable having her photo taken. I didn’t ask permission to take it. Our mother would have said no. I snuck it in my backpack before asking Ember to come with me, while my mom was in the bathroom. I packed two protein bars and a water bottle too. Walkers weren’t required to stop at the brown fee station, so we kept walking into yet more color. The ground by the river was still rich with greens. The water made the plants around us, and the decaying leaves from them on the ground more fragrant. Sweet. 50 I think Ember pointed that out. She likely hadn’t smelled that particular scent before, spending more of her time inside where she was safe. I took a photo of her there. She must have been beautiful with youth, but at the time she seemed so much older than me. She was looking upstream with her long, thin hair, like angel hair I used to think, behind her back. Her light denim pants reached slightly past her flat, traction-less tennis shoes behind her heel, frayed. I can see that photo so clearly in my mind now. I doubt I realized what an impression it was to make on me when I took it. I asked Ember to take my photo as we walked further upstream. She and I kept our eyes out for a perfect spot. I found a tinted orange rock with light green lichen on the river, with an opening in the trees behind it that revealed the side of the mountain. I stood on top of the rock as Ember crouched by the river to capture this photo of me that I would have wanted to show my mom if I felt she were interested in my life and my happiness. I didn’t use my teeth to smile, just a pleasant grin I’d seen demonstrated by older women. I wore a coat that day, but I took it off for the photo to reveal my lavender long sleeve shirt that I knew, and for whatever reason cared, flattered my twelve-year-old figure. My jeans were hemmed to meet just below my ankle, not to touch the ground. My shoes were much more practical than Ember’s, though not as in tune with the pre-teen aesthetic. I hopped down from the rock to take the camera from Ember. We kept walking along the side of the river on terrain undesignated for walking as I held that camera, looking through its contents only occasionally glancing forward to see where I was going. There were more pictures of me and Ember on there. The two of us so little stacked on a wooden ladder in a grove of trees with freshly picked apples in a canvas sack. Scattered 51 in a pumpkin patch somewhere outside of town where agriculture was more prevalent than small shops and restaurants. Another photo was of Ember and I in our church parking lot celebrating our nation’s independence wearing corresponding red, white and blue outfits with paint on our face, which we had earlier begged our mom to buy with the intention of painting each other’s face. Instead our mother painted each of our squirming faces with intricate, holiday specific designs. It wasn’t the kind of fun we were after, but it made for a great photo. I wanted to show Ember the photos. I thought they might remind her of the friendship we had before either of us knew what lesbianism was. But having not glanced up from the camera screen in too long, I tripped. I lost my grip of my mother’s tool for capturing moments and later remembering them, and it fell down into the water. I didn’t yet know to feel such guilt for taking that from my mother. At the time I just felt fear. I considered the cost in financial terms, and wondered if making the money back through neighborhood landscaping would make up for the loss. How could I pose it to her? How was I going to tell her about the loss to begin with? Ember had been looking at me for a few minutes as I brainstormed how to handle the situation. She was thinking too. “She doesn’t know I took it. I didn’t ask,” I offered a possible solution. “She’ll find out eventually,” Ember thought for a minute, “Would she be madder if you didn’t tell her right away?” Neither of us spoke for some time as we started down the canyon by the water. “I don’t know.” We were quiet for a while longer. “She already hates me.” I said. 52 “She doesn’t hate you, Sara.” I don’t think Ember knew the extent of it at that point. She just knew that our mother was mad at me, probably not realizing that it was the kind of anger that lasted. I couldn’t change that which was causing her to be angry. “She will after this.” I said. “What if I tell her that I took it and dropped it?” She offered. I considered it. “She might not be as mad.” The rest of our walk was quiet. We hadn’t made the plan official, but we both knew what Ember was going to do. I stopped paying attention to those sounds that were so comforting at the beginning. I felt chilled, and no longer enjoyed the river water next to us, wanting instead to be at home with my mom’s camera. My mom was in the kitchen, and I knew to expect her first thing as we came inside. “Where did you girls go?” Ember and I looked at each other, I hope my eyes didn’t prompt her to actually do what she had offered unwillingly. “What’s up?” My mom caught on fast. I couldn’t look my mom in the eyes, so I kept mine on Ember for a bit longer. “I did something stupid,” Ember finally said, eyes still on me. “Ember, tell me what’s wrong,” She had no patience for childhood fear of punishment. “I took your camera with us. I’m sorry for not asking.” Hearing her apologize for my action made me second guess my decision to let her take the blame, but it was too late. 53 “Why would you do that?” She squinted her eyes and lifted one side of her mouth. Her facial expressions were dramatic, like an actress emoting clearly enough to events in the plot that a voiceover was rendered unnecessary. Everyone knew what was going on in her mind from a reading of her face. “We wanted to take pictures of the changing leaves.” “Well where is it?” “That’s the thing. I lost it,” Ember said. “What do you mean, ‘you lost it’? How do you lose something that you should have been trying hard to keep safe? You stole my camera, and you were so careless that you misplaced it?” She never hesitated to make us feel stupid. It felt even worse that Ember was being humiliated for my sake. “I was keeping track of it, but I tripped and lost my grip,” tears were building up in her eyes. God why didn’t I step in? “So, you dropped it? I’m sure it could have survived a three foot fall, Ember.” “I dropped it in the water, mom,” she said looking toward the ground. “Wow,” She spoke with no surprise in her tone. This was where she began her long, manipulative game of punishment, the one I had come to know so well: silence and disregard. For days she ignored my sister, even at times reaching out to me to make it seem as though we were on good terms and it was just Ember she was angry with. That must have really hurt. I didn’t realize that’s what she was doing until after the two of them worked things out and started ignoring me again. That may have been the moment that cemented our sisterly relationship of betrayal and distance. I didn’t remember that moment until just now. 54 Chapter Five: Ember On the piano in my mother’s living room, she keeps an ornate sculpture of a mother cradling her child. It doesn’t match any of her more contemporary (at least contemporary fifteen years ago when she had the money and inclination to decorate) decor so one time many years ago I asked her where she got it, and why she has kept it. She told me it belonged to my grandmother but that didn’t answer the second part of my question. Margaret, who I always wanted to call Grandma Maggie, took pills that her nurse friend prescribed her to get her through those long, painful days with the awful man she married, Paul. I don’t presume she found much joy in marriage or motherhood. Her husband Paul was short, though he never allowed himself to get fat, always working to extend his body with vertical striped dress shirts, thin coiffed hair and shoe inserts. His eyes were green. Although the picture of Paul with his young family suggests otherwise, he must have been handsome at some earlier time, when my grandmother fell in love with him (if in fact, she ever did). Margaret was beautiful. She had olive skin that 55 never broke out, always perfectly moisturized and balanced. Her hair was long and thin in shades of light brown and yellow. Margaret brushed her thin hair to look elegant, something I have never been able to do. Her eyes reflected the vibrant, verdant forests she always wanted to explore but never had the time to. I suspect she could have had any man she desired. It’s a wonder why she chose Paul. The two of them didn’t agree on most everything, including how to run a family. In the beginning of their marriage, that caused a lot of palpable tension and audible fights. My mother and her sister would spend a lot of time together in their shared bedroom trying to ignore the raised voices and protect one another from their angry parents. As Margaret’s thin hair became thinner and her smooth skin began to wrinkle and sag, she fought less and less for what she believed. She gave into Paul. She gave into a lot of things. Paul ran the house exactly how he wanted without any interference from Margaret. He had everyone wake up at the same time so as not to unintentionally wake another up when walking in shared spaces like the living room and kitchen. During the weekdays that system worked fine as they all left around the same time to get to school and work. The weekends, however, were awkward. My mother and her sister wanted to sleep in on days that they had nowhere in particular to be, but Paul insisted they woke up at 7:00am to join their parents for breakfast. They may have been more willing to do so if they ever had any say in what the four of them would eat for breakfast, but of course Paul dictated that as well. Most often they each ate two eggs, one piece of toast and some kind of lean breakfast meat like turkey bacon or chicken sausage. 56 Paul decided what they’d eat at every meal. Even dessert, when it was especially important to determine everybody’s portion. Every few weeks Paul would bring home a carton of ice cream to treat his family. Vanilla, every time. Before putting it away in the freezer Paul would score the ice cream. He would carefully remove the lid, take a butter knife and lightly indicate with lines how much each of his three girls were allowed to eat. One time he made my mother’s portion significantly smaller than the others and marked it with her first initial, C for Carrie, to make it clear who was to be eating less of the sugary dessert. “Paul,” my mother said because he insisted on being called by his first name after the girls reached the age of 8 (the age of accountability), “why is my section so much smaller?” she asked. “Because, Carrie, we thought you’d have gotten rid of your baby fat by now,” he said looking at Margaret as if the two of them had discussed this together and came to the same conclusion. They hadn’t. My mother didn’t know that and was humiliated by the thought of her parents devising a plan to help their daughter lose weight behind her back. She didn’t eat that small portion. She left it in the freezer long after everyone else in the house had eaten their portion causing the sides to darken in yellow and crystalize with freezer burn. My mother would abstain from eating as much as she could around the house, proving to Paul that she was determined to be thin. She’d tell him to only score three sections when they got their vanilla ice cream, as she didn’t need dessert. She’d refuse the toast in the morning having read somewhere that carbs are the enemy. My mother was only ten when Paul had drawn her attention to the importance of weight. She was as determined as a 10-year-old can be, but she slipped up every once in a 57 while naturally. When she was over at a friend’s house she wouldn’t refuse any of the snacks offered to her: cheese crackers, fruit chews, popcorn, wrapped candies. She’d immediately regret her decision to eat and fixate on her mistake the rest of the time with her friend. The scored ice cream stayed with my mother for years. When my mother had her own family, and my sister and I were nine and ten years old, her mother was sick. Before she died she’d have fits of crying and talking, to herself and anyone who happened to be by her bedside at the time. I was there when she described details of this time in my mother’s life. Margaret cried and cried as she admitted to letting Paul make her daughter’s insecure like herself. “I stayed with him because I knew no one else would love me,” She said. Some of her words stuck with me. “It’s my fault. I let him. I numbed myself to let him.” I’d never seen my grandmother cry before. These tears seemed uncontrollable, falling from her eyes without the effort of lifting her cheeks. She made no sounds of a crying person apart from the wavering in her voice as she spoke and spoke. I later found out some of the common symptoms post-stroke and uncontrollable crying was one of them. The details Margaret offered were vivid. I, unlike my mother, refuse to believe that those last few days of my grandmother’s life were dictated only by her stroke. She spoke what had been on her mind for years when the stroke had diminished her emotional filter. My mother never forgave her own mom for the way she was raised. She’d sometimes talk about her to my sister and me when we were disappointed or confused about the lack of grandparents in our lives. “Why don’t we ever see grandpa?” We asked, but only once, as the answer was straightforward and convincing. 58 “Because he’s a terrible person, and I never want you girls around him,” Our mother said unflinchingly. “Why did grandma marry him?” We’d wonder. “Good question. Maybe he was better when he was young. But I swear to god she stayed with him because she didn’t want to deal with his younger wives in heaven,” She was referring to their religious belief that women can only be sealed in the temple with one man. So whomever she marries first will be her eternal partner in heaven. Men, on the other hand, can be sealed to any number of women. Maybe my mother had good reason not to forgive her own mom. But a little while after her death I stopped asking questions because I wanted to forgive her. I wanted to remember my grandma by those last moments of regret. I still wonder why she keeps this figurine at all, let alone such a prominent spot in her house. My mother prepared food for me and my sister for eighteen years. Now, as she forgets to put food on plates, and turns the burner up too high, burning everything, and leaves the burner on too long after cooking her food, it’s my responsibility to cook for the two of us. The food in her upstairs cupboards is sparse. She has, fortunately, kept the food storage she bought several years ago in case of an emergency in the pantry room downstairs full of dehydrated mashed potatoes, vegetable medley, rice, pasta, beans, chili, tortilla soup, hearty vegetable soup, apricots, blueberries, powdered butter, flour, sugar, and baking powder. As pasta is generally dehydrated, it seems the best choice to cook for my mother and me tonight. I go back upstairs to check the hallway cupboard. She keeps regularly canned food in this one as backup. On hand she has diced tomatoes, 59 olives, beans, tomato paste, and soups of various flavors. I take the diced and pasted tomatoes to the kitchen with the noodles. The refrigerator in the kitchen has very little to offer, dinner wise, so I go outside to check the freezer in the garage. There are several options for frozen meat: chicken, pork, beef, ground turkey. I opt for chicken. I’ll use the bread in the cupboard inside to blend up breadcrumbs. But first the chicken will have to thaw. I don’t have all day; otherwise I’d put it in the fridge to do so. Instead, I’ll have to use the “thaw meat” setting on my mother’s convection oven/microwave. While the chicken thaws, I take several slices of her bread and place them on a baking sheet. Set the oven the 300 and I’ll toast the bread for 10-15 minutes or until they turn golden brown. My mother starts pulling the comfortable lounge chair over to the kitchen. I go to help. “Thanks. Is it alright if I join you?” She says. “Yeah, go ahead,” I said, though I wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending the next hour or two with my mother micromanaging how I cook for her. “What are you making?” She asked. “Chicken Parm,” I said as I prepped four metal bowls. The first with cracked eggs, one, two, three, four. Whisked. The second with flour. The third with more eggs, one, two, three, four. In the fourth, I put a teaspoon of salt, oregano, thyme, a halfteaspoon of basil and rosemary and add the toasted blended breadcrumbs when they’re finished. “Are you going to put garlic powder in the breadcrumbs?” My mother asked. I am replicating a recipe she made several times when my sister and I were living in her home. Though I’m editing as I see fit. 60 “No. I’ll be adding plenty of actual garlic to the sauce,” I said. “Oh, good idea. I love garlic. I hardly ever use to cook with it because it makes your fingers smell for the rest of the day,” she said, “but maybe it’s worth it. Do you use it a lot? Do you cook a lot?” “I guess. Most nights I would cook at home for myself. And yeah, I use a lot of garlic,” I said. “Were you still living alone in Washington?” My mother asked, surprise and concern in her tone. In her community, a single woman in her thirties is something to mourn. Something to pray for so as to change the situation, provided god wants his female children to be married and taken care of. A thirty-year-old woman should not be living alone, providing for herself, cooking for one, husbandless, childless. A thirty-yearold woman should be a seasoned mother. She should finally be reaching the point of sexual comfort with her husband, and no longer feeling the shame that has been associated with the act since she was a child. She probably still thinks I’m a virgin as I have not yet been married. She probably thinks me a poor young woman for never having felt love for a man and from a man. She’d be wrong. “Yes, mom. But not ‘still’” I said letting her feel my irritation. “What do you mean?” She asked. “I’ve lived with someone before. For years. But we’re no longer together. I’m living alone again.” “What happened?” She asked. I’m not sure what she means by this question. Is she asking how we met? I used to love telling that story when we were together, but now I’m sure it would spark feelings I’ve been trying desperately to avoid. Does she want to 61 know what our relationship was like? Like every failed relationship: good in the beginning, slowly becoming worse, then finally bad. Most likely she’s asking why we are no longer together. But that’s complicated. There are many reasons. Not all of which are easy to explain, and I’m not sure that I want my mother to be the first person I talk through this with. “We broke up,” I said, hoping it would suffice. “Why?” She asked as if one didn’t need any context about the relationship as a whole to understand the motivations for splitting. “For a lot of reasons, mom.” I take a piece of thawed chicken, dip it in the first bowl of eggs, then the bowl of flour, the next bowl of eggs, and finally the seasoned breadcrumbs. I place the first piece of heavily coated, raw chicken on an olive oil greased pan. “Fine. We don’t have to talk about that. Tell me about your life in Washington,” she said. “Like what? My job?” I asked. “Sure. Or your friends. Who are your people there?” “I spend time with some friends I made at my first job there. At a botanical garden. Sarah and Liz,” I said. They don’t know why I’m here, Sarah and Liz. They know that I moved to Salt Lake, and that this is the city in which I grew up. But I don’t feel close enough with either of them to share anything about my mother. And even if I shared with them that my mother is dying, they wouldn’t have any background knowledge to support their obligatory ‘I’m so sorry’ reaction. And if they did have some background knowledge they might know that ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t at all what I want or need 62 to hear. ‘I’m sorry’ implies that all I’m experiencing is sadness. It implies that a mother dying is a universally devastating event, and anyone experiencing it deserves the same tender, understanding treatment. That’s not to say that I’m not sad. Maybe. I don’t know if I'm sad. I know that I’m resentful. But even that isn’t overwhelming me. It’s subsided since being here. I’m not experiencing much of anything that warrants an ‘I’m sorry’. Maybe if I were closer with Sarah and Liz they would know that this move would be strange, and instead of an ‘I’m sorry’ they’d issue a ‘good luck’. But adult friendships are much harder and more deliberate than childhood friendships, so I didn’t tell them why I came. I probably won’t ever see them again anyway. “What are they like? What do you guys do?” She asked. “They’re nice. They know a lot about plants and birds. We hiked. We went out to eat occasionally. Sometimes we’d go on short, quick road trips to camp,” I said. Like the time when we drove down to the Columbia River Gorge and hiked a segment of the Pacific Crest Trail on the Washington side of the Bridge of the Gods to Gillette Lake. We all hiked at different paces: Liz was the fastest, I was always in the middle and Sarah was the slowest. Liz was patient and waited for Sarah and me every half mile or so. She’d take out her all-weather outdoor journal and write down her observations of the surrounding flora. She’d take photos with her nice, digital camera of certain plants that she did not recognize. She’d later identify those ones with her exhaustive Washington Flora at home. When I’d catch up she’d take a picture of me hiking toward her and promise to send me a copy once she downloads it to her computer. She did the same for Sarah. We’d spend a few minutes together walking slowly and chatting, mostly about what we’d experienced during that last half mile apart. ‘Did you see a Bullock’s oriole 63 back there? I swear I’ve seen at least two sitting in these trees. So pretty.’ ‘Yeah, the yellow and blacks one, right?’ They’d chirp back and forth. ‘The wildflowers are beautiful at this time of year.’ I’d contribute vague observations of plant life. And eventually, without an obvious departure, we’d assume our positions of first, second and third. “Do you like camping?” My mother asked as if she’d be surprise to find out that anyone enjoyed it. “Yeah, it’s fun,” I said. But if I told her the details of what camping entailed perhaps she wouldn’t understand the kind of ‘fun’ I'm invoking. The kind of fun that involves digging a cathole 200 feet from any water source, and 100 feet from your friends in which to shit that combination of trail mix, jerky, chili, and oatmeal you’d been eating the previous day and a half. And walking through a patch of tall grass with shorts on before realizing it has the potential to break skin and sting like a bitch. And sleeping close to two other bodies that hadn’t showered in two days, and being grateful for the proximity because an early Spring night near a lake calls for as much body heat as possible, especially when you’ve forgotten to pack your sleeping bag liner (the new one that makes up for the old, packed down sleeping bag you borrowed from your friend, who had already owned it for years). And waking up early in the morning, before the sun has come up, with a nagging urgency to piss with nothing but a headlight to guide you at least ten feet away from the tent, but probably no further because a forest of complete darkness is intimidating, especially when you’re the only person awake. The fun of agreeing on an exact moment when the three of you will escape your warm sleeping bags on top of sleeping pads into the bitter cold morning air outside the tent to start a fire. And 64 waiting a long 20 minutes in that brisk air before the flames are tall enough to warm the front of your thighs. And cooking oats, again, over that open flame to satiate your accumulating hunger. My mother surely wouldn’t understand what’s so fun about any of that. I hardly understood it as I was experiencing it, and if my friends hadn’t begged me to go with them, I likely would have never found out that some experiences are only fun upon reflection. The oven is preheated. I place the pan of breaded chicken inside and set a timer for 15 minutes to remind me when to flip each breast. I start opening cans to prepare the sauce. Diced tomatoes. “That’s good. Where did you meet them? Did you say?” She asked. Anyone could have forgotten. “My first job in Washington. The botanical garden,” I said. “Okay. What did you do there?” I take an onion out of her root vegetable bowl, that has been consistently filled since I lived here, and start slicing. “We were in the education department. We’d teach kids about nature. Classes would come on field trips during spring and fall, and kids would come for summer camp during the summer,” I said, giving her the same sound bite I gave people when they asked what I did when I worked there. And when they asked if I liked it, I’d give a simple, ‘yeah, it’s great’ without providing any details as to what was great about it, and what was hard about it. Like having to control groups of 10 to 15 kids with behavioral management tips that didn’t work for at least half the kids that came to visit the garden. 65 ‘Alright boys and girls, when I’m trying to get your attention I’m going to say, ‘Hey Coyotes!’ and you’re all going to howl like coyotes ‘Awooooo!’ and then close your mouths and put your eyes on me. Okay?’ I’d say. ‘Can we roar like lions instead?’ The class clown would say, getting a laugh from some of the others. ‘There aren’t any lions in Washington, are there?’ I’d try to maintain my friendly demeanor. ‘Yeah, mountain lions.’ ‘Alright, well we’re just going to be coyotes today, okay?’ ‘Why?’ And every time I’d shout my ‘Hey Coyotes’ he’d insist on roaring like a lion, and every time the same kids would find it hilarious. And by the end of that hour and a half I would have lost my patience and fostered a hatred for a kid 15 years my junior just trying to have a good time on his fieldtrip. Or like how there would always be an adult chaperone with our group on the fieldtrip. And they often had questions like ‘what’s this plant?’ and ‘where is this species native to?’ to which I most often did not have the answers because that job was an entrylevel position with no background in botany required. And when they didn’t have questions, they had answers. Answers to the questions I posed to the kids to get them thinking critically about nature. ‘Do you guys notice anything interesting about the trees in this area?’ I’d ask. ‘They’re bending to the side,” a parent would shout. ‘They’re bending, right everyone? And does anyone have a guess why these trees are bending this way?’ 66 ‘They’re bending toward the sun,’ that same parent would yell out. ‘Yep. They’re bending toward the sun.’ And my attempt to get the kids thinking would be shot down by a grown man trying to prove his third-grade level knowledge. “Did you like that job?” My mother asked. “Yeah, it was great.” My eyes stung from the fumes of the onion. I put them in a heated pan with some olive oil to sauté, stirring them occasionally with my mother’s wooden spoon. I mince garlic with the same knife, over and over, and add it to the pan once the onions were close to translucent. I pour the cans of tomatoes into the pan and lower the heat so it doesn’t splatter. I open a can of tomato paste and add that to the pan to thicken the liquidy sauce. I add some salt and oregano letting the garlic do most of the flavoring. The timer goes off. I grab some tongs, open the oven and as quickly as I can flip each chicken breast before letting out all the heat. I close the oven door and set the timer for 10 minutes. I add the dehydrated noodles to the water I’ve been boiling on the stove. Al dente calls for 9 minutes, which now aligns with the timer for the chicken. I’ve timed it just right. I place a lid over the sauce to simmer. “It smells good,” she says to herself. “Thanks mom.” I say to her. 67 Chapter Six: Ember Having spent the last few months in this house, I see now why my mother tried to escape the car the sunny day in the fall. This house suffocates. The walls surround and trap me no matter my position in the house. Not because the house is small, but because there are walls where there shouldn’t be. Two walls along the first five feet following the front door, closing me in immediately. Half walls, dividing rooms. A wall along the staircase, blocking my view of what awaits me downstairs. They’re closing in. Windows generally let in natural light, and expand an indoor space. The windows in this house have the opposite effect. They tempt. The view to outside reminds me of how confined I am inside. It accentuates the beigeness of these indoor walls, the grey backdrops to our childhood studio photos, the yellowing keys on our piano, the stiffness of these cream slipcovered couches that my sister and I never sat on as children, per my mother’s request, so as to retain their shape, the coldness of that metal ramp along the floor above the staircase that my mother painted beige, so as to blend into the walls 68 because it stood out as an outdated piece. The view to outside reminds me of my commitment. My heavy burden. My duty? But sitting outside for an hour or two each day isn’t enough of a reprieve for me, as it too is fenced in, enclosed. I have to escape. She probably does too, though she wouldn’t be able to without my help. The doctor has advised my mother to no longer drive, especially on her own. I stood in the doorway of her room, like I did so many times as a young girl. “Do you want to go somewhere?” I asked. “Yes,” She said without giving it any thought, as if she had been waiting for me to ask this whole time. As if the entire reason she asked me to come here, back home, was to take her somewhere, and I finally caught on. I finally gave her what she’s been wanting since the day she lost her independence in that doctor’s office. “Alright, get dressed and we’ll go somewhere,” I said assuming she had given up on her appearance only because other people weren’t likely to see her on a daily basis. Perhaps she still cares to get dolled up when she goes out. She changed out of her black sweatpants and large grey t-shirt into some dark wash jeans and a better fitting black top. She put on some mascara and lipstick that stains her lips for a claimed 12 hours, though probably closer to 8 when you account for meals and talking. She brushes out her hair and gathers it into a clip creating a small bun on the back of her head. A paired down version of how she used to present herself. She looks nice. On our way out the door she grabs a thin, black jacket and a lacquered wooden cane that I hadn’t noticed until just now. Or if I had noticed I didn’t think anything of it, 69 assuming it was the handle to an umbrella, or an antique for decoration. My mother uses a cane to assist her walking now. Strange. “Where are we going?” She asked as we took our seats in my car: me in the driver’s, her in the passenger’s. “I don’t know. Do you want to go somewhere to walk, to eat, or just drive? We could go sit somewhere nice.” “Let’s go walk,” She said. “Alright, let’s walk.” I started driving toward my place of work as the garden is the perfect place to walk. I’ve been mostly inside during the cold season, working in the greenhouse. It’s early spring now and the buds are finally breaking through the last of the snow. “Can you turn up the heat?” and “This is a nice car” are the only two things she said as we drove twenty minutes away from the house. And when we got to the garden, “I’ve always wanted to go here,” with a smile. “Remember when we came here in the fall? You walked by the creek, remember?” I said as I helped her out of the car and walked her up the stairs to the entrance. Last month her doctor asked me to go through memories, old and new with her to keep her mind fresh. He wants me to refresh her memory while I relive mine. He emphasized the word “good” in terms of memories over and over claiming that relaying bad memories can cause my mother to feel melancholy without an understandable source. She’ll later forget what made her feel so sad, but nevertheless retain the feeling. “Hi, welcome to Red Butte,” A young woman at the front desk greeted us with enthusiasm. Having worked here for five months now, many employees still don’t know 70 who I am. I hand her my membership and don’t bother to let her know I’m an employee of the garden too. She scans, and my mother and I go on our way. We take the elevator up to the doors leading outside the visitor’s center to the garden. She insists on stopping by the map before we head down the obvious path. “Should we stop by the herb garden first?” She asked. “That sounds great,” I said. I took her arm as we walked up the path to the herb garden. We didn’t touch much when I was a child, and she my young mother. Hugs felt forced and uncomfortable so they didn’t happen frequently. Holding my mother now as she struggles to walk feels natural. I’m grateful for the excuse to be near her. “I wonder what these look like later in the spring,” My mother said as she looked up at the plant crawling up the structure at the entrance of the herb garden. It has light green vines and in the fall it had long, green bean looking seed pods shriveled and ready to explode to the ground. The sign near the plant says WISTERIA MACROSTACHYA. I look up that name on my phone to find images of lavender-colored flowers drooping from the vibrant green and leafy vines. It’s a beautiful plant, later in the spring. I show my mother the photo. “Very nice. I love that color,” She said. Many of the herbs in this section of the garden had been deadheaded or ripped out entirely in the fall, and still haven't shown up just yet for spring. It makes the planting job look haphazard. The signs indicating the name and background of each plant are still in their spots, regardless of whether the plant is still there. THAI BASIL Ocimum basilicum 71 Mint family Widely used throughout Southeast Asia, its flavor, described as anise- and licorice-like and slightly spicy, is more stable under high or extended cooking temperatures than that of sweet basil. “I wish it was here. I want a taste. I’ve never had Thai food,” my mother says after reading the sign. It doesn’t surprise me. She didn’t go out much when my sister and I were around. She didn’t have any friends, aside from those relief society women who swore they would do anything for my mother if she needed it, but I hardly saw them around when I was a kid, and I certainly haven’t seen them now. She didn’t have a partner. He left when he realized he didn’t believe in the church and didn’t love my mother, or his children for that matter. She didn’t have the confidence. To sit at a restaurant by herself would reveal to everyone just how alone she was. And people would have noticed. Being alone stands out to those who aren’t in Salt Lake City. Some people might pretend (for themselves or for their company) to feel sympathy for her. ‘How sad. Is she eating by herself?’ Despite the fact that they despise the person sitting with them. They’d rather hate their husband than not have one. My mother didn’t want people’s sympathy. “Let’s find one that we can try,” I said, moving my mom along the path. “Here’s a perennial.” GARDEN SORREL Rumex acetosa Buckwheat family 72 Sorrel occurs in grassland habitats throughout Europe from the northern Mediterranean coast to the north of Scandinavia and in parts of Central Asia. Its leaves have a sour taste when eaten raw. The leaves on the outermost parts of the plant are dull, copper, having dried out and lost their chlorophyll. I reach deep into the plant, spreading the stems to find some smaller leaves that retained their color longer than those exposed ones. I tear two leaves off and hand one to my mom. “What do you think?” I asked as I watched her face crinkle with discomfort. “Sour, “she said. We both laughed. My mother and I didn’t laugh together often, which made those few times that we did feel sweet. Like the time when the three of us, my mother, my sister and I sat on the church pews on Sunday when we were all so young, and a man misspoke while giving his talk. I don’t remember what he said. I remember that was he said was an honest mistake, and not unbearably funny in and of itself, but the forbidden nature of laughter in a church setting made our reaction all the more uncontrollable. I looked at my mother right after he said it with a smile on my face. She quickly looked at me and looked back up front then with a smile on hers. Sara saw my mom and laughed at her having noticed the humor in his mistake. Which caused my mother to let out a disruptive breath through her nose. The old couple in front of us turned around to administer their disapproving faces. We maintained composure for the few seconds that they looked our way, and then resumed our silent giggles as soon as they turned around. That laugh felt so good. I’d even try to replicate it a day or so later by reminding my mom. 73 “Remember what that guy said in his talk on Sunday?” I’d say, hoping it would have the same effect. But that time she didn’t laugh. Having her emotions back in check, she’d remind me that laughing in church is inappropriate and disruptive and that we as a family would do everything we could to avoid it during the following sacrament meetings. And we did. I often tried to convince myself that what had just happened between my mother and I was genuine affection from both parties, and that even if they only happened occasionally, those moments proved our love and gave me hope. One such moment was the forbidden laughter in the church, another happened when I was thirteen years old and got my period for the first time. I woke up that morning with a stomachache, which at that point in my life my mother had become more cautious of, always checking in on me to make sure I was okay after hearing of my discomfort. I knew that it didn’t come from her worry of my wellbeing. I thought maybe she was worried instead about the fabric on her furniture, checking on me in order to transport me to the bathroom in time if I were to violently relieve myself of the poison inside my stomach. Or maybe she worried about the potential of having to wash my soiled clothes. I also thought she may have been keeping tabs on my illness to determine whether or not it as a contagious virus, from which she should protect herself. “Go to the office if you need anything. You can call me,” she said as I left for school that morning. I hardly ever got to leave school early, even when I was sick. She’d usually say something along the lines of, ‘the mom of whoever got you sick didn’t let her kid come home,’ and make me stay out of spite hoping to pass the virus along to other irresponsible kids and their families. 74 “Okay, thanks,” I said pathetically to my mother hoping to illicit even more sympathy from the woman that hardly ever gave me any. I did end up calling my mother when I noticed the bright red blood that had soaked through my white skirt (the one my mother had advised me not to wear that day, or any other day I showed symptoms like headache, soreness, irritability, exhaustion, loss of appetite, insatiable appetite, strange cravings for iron-rich foods, unexplainable sadness, unjustified happiness, stomach pain of any variety—sharp cramping, dull aches, nausea, diarrhea sensation with no release, emptiness that radiates through the body—or bloating) only after the prissy, pretty girl of our school, whom every junior high boy wanted but none could have as she was already dating a high school boy much more mature and handsome than any of them that would have felt weird about dating a girl so much younger than himself if it weren’t for the fact that she had already developed a full C-cup of breasts and cellulite on her upper thighs before he had grown a reasonable amount of armpit hair, had noticed and drawn the attention of everyone who happened to be in that hall at that particular time (which seemed like just about every person I ever cared to impress) to it with a short but always effective in these halls full of insecure and intrigued children slowly and painfully developing into adulthood, “Look!” and when everyone did I felt their eyes on the exact spot where the blood had shown through and the dampness of my underwear made perfect sense as I walked quickly to the office with redness all over my body, on my face especially, with hidden tears in my eyes and thoughts of what I was going to say to the secretary when I finally reached the office and then my mother when I finally reached a phone, though nothing I could say would have 75 been more embarrassing that what I had shown everyone just then in the goddamn hallways of that stupid fucking school. Rage. She told me to wait outside and that she’d be there quick. She was right. There were no kids hanging around outside at this time, though there were likely at least a few that had to visit the office. It took her 5 minutes to drive what’s usually a 35-minute walk. As soon as I sat down on the towel-covered passenger’s seat I broke down in tears, which was usually something I did out of sight of my mother and because of my mother. She sat next to me then. She didn’t say anything on the drive home, but she touched my back in a way that gave me real comfort. When we got home I put my reddened and ruined white skirt in the laundry room, with the expectation that she’ll wash it. She told me she knew a trick for blood in clothes. Cold water. She gave me one of her tampons and sat outside the bathroom door verbally directing me how to use it. I put on some fresh clothes and sat on the couch in the living room. She sat on the other couch in that room. “What happened?” She asked, only having known the general situation and none of the embarrassing details. “I didn’t know there was blood on my skirt. I was walking in the hall when some girl pointed it out,” I said. “What did she say?” My mother knew how awful young girls could be to each other. “She just yelled for everyone around to look at me,” I was embarrassed to tell my mom that I had been through that. 76 “What a bitch. Who is this girl?” She usually swore when she was angry with my sister or me. It felt so nice to have her on my side in anger with someone else. “Just some ‘cool’ girl who dates older boys and wears pushup bras. She’s the worst. She’s always rude to other girls,” I said. “Yeah watch out for those girls now. But wait until she’s my age, and her boobs sag. She’ll be unhappy eventually,” she said and I believed her. It was fun to know something about Isabella that she didn’t yet know. I felt like I had gotten some revenge with that knowledge. “All the other kids laughed too though. It wasn’t just her,” I said, ashamed to admit that Isabella wasn’t the only one who had defeated me. “Fuck those kids. All of them. Seriously, what do they know? The girls who laughed probably don’t have their periods yet, the prepubescent little shits. The boys are too immature to know that there is nothing embarrassing about being a woman,” She said. I felt proud to have something in common with my mother in that moment. We were both women. We both used tampons. We both hated the boys and girls that I went to school with. We felt in tune. Maybe I didn’t imagine the connection in that moment. Perhaps my mother found it easier to connect with an older version of her daughter. Before leaving the herb garden my mother and I pass a reflective green shrub with soft-looking leaves. COMMON SAGE Salvia officinalis Mint Family 77 Sage has a long history of medicinal and culinary use, and in modern times as an ornamental garden plant. It is native to the Mediterranean region, though it has naturalized in many places throughout the world. I encourage my mom touch the leaves knowing they’ll be fragrant. She rubs her pointer, middle finger and thumb lightly against one leaf and lifts them to her nose. “That’s lovely, isn’t it?” She says. I do the same as she did. “Yeah, I love that smell.” The pathway leads us to the medicinal garden. The plants in this section have healing properties. On the outer edges of this small section of the garden are dwarf pines, just like the ones we had in our front yard many years ago. We had those dwarf pines lining the outer edge of our yard until the neighbors, the Croughs, cut them down to stumps. “Remember the Croughs mom?” I asked her, hoping to spark a funny memory rather than a bitter one. “Our crinkled up neighbors?” She said. I laughed. The wife had excessively tanned skin, wrinkled beyond her age if she’s still living now. Her face had sagged from overexposure to the sun, which caused her eyes to droop, giving her a permanent scowl. Her down turned mouth and snarled upper lip were choices she made to cement that scowl. She wore loose fitting shorts throughout the summer revealing her skinny, crepeyskinned legs to all of the neighbors who’d rather not see them. Her upper body was not proportional to that lower half, much shorter and denser. Her cotton tank tops clung to her oddly shaped upper half. Her freckled décolletage peaked over top of the shirt. She spoke with her raspy yet high pitch voice, only when there was bad news to deliver or a 78 demand to give her fellow neighbors. The husband was plain looking. Tan from having never worn sunscreen, though I doubt her ever reclined in an outdoor chair directly in the sun to achieve that look like his wife. He had a lot of grey hair on his weathered head. His legs didn’t look as creepy as his wife’s poking out of his summer shorts. I don’t remember his voice. Perhaps because he never spoke to anyone but his demanding wife. For all I know he could have been the one instructing his wife to carry out his bitter plans. I’m more inclined to believe that he simply went along with those of his wife originally to avoid punishment and eventually out of habit. “Yes. There were definitely crinkled. Those pines reminded me of them,” I said. She laughed too. The Crough’s always took issue with my mother’s landscaping decisions. One year she decided to plant four Dwarf Pine trees along the outside of our front yard fence. Before doing so there was a one-foot-wide mulched, dirt garden bed waiting for something to be planted. When she dug down to plant those trees my mother found old root systems of large plants that had once occupied this space. It took her hours to clear that soil of potential weeds and old roots, measure the exact distance each tree should be planted from one another, and plant those little versions of the trees I saw in our surrounding mountains, big and tall. She must have felt so proud when the job was done. Not an hour after my mother had completed her task Mrs. Crough showed up on our doorstep, knocking more times than was necessary up until the second the front door was opened. “Hi neighbor,” at the time I thought my mom was misunderstanding Mrs. Crough’s anger. Now I see her sense of humor. “What are those?” She pointed to the four meticulously planted trees. 79 “Those are Dwarf Pine trees; I believe of the Japanese variety. They’re conifers, very drought tolerant, perfect for this dry summer,” My mother said with a cheesy smile on her face counteracting that familiar scowl on Mrs. Crough’s. “Right, well how long will it take you to get rid of them?” “I hadn’t planned on it. What do you mean?” At this point my mother pretended to be confused and horrified by our neighbor’s aggression despite expecting it well before those trees made it in the ground. At the plant nursery, in fact. “I mean they block my view entirely when I try to back out of my driveway. It’s a ridiculous idea to plant so far out in your yard, by the road. What gave you that idea? I can’t see. It’s a safety hazard. They have to go, alright?” Mrs. Crough expressed anger differently than my mother. She was straight. She said exactly what was on her mind in the clearest way possible so as to unmistakably get her point across. She was old enough to stop caring about social conventions keeping us all in cordial check. “I’m sorry Mrs. Crough. See, the already existing planting bed was what gave me the idea to plant. I had considered potential dangers which is why I opted for the dwarf pines as opposed to full height trees which you often see in the fronts of yards to provide shade. How short is your car? Is it an older model?” My mother was still young, using passive aggression to achieve her neighborly goals. “What are you saying?” “Just that if you are still driving a car you’ve had for several years it might be lower to the ground, making it harder for you to see over such short trees. Shrubs really” “I drive a year-old Volvo,” she said, angered. “Then what seems to be the problem?” 80 “Your trees. My car isn’t the problem. It’s your goddamn trees.” “Mrs. Crough, I may have been more accommodating had you come over here as a friendly neighbor but I feel less inclined to help you after being screamed at. The trees are here to stay. I hope you find a way of dealing with them,” in that moment, we both felt that my mother had won. Sometime that night, after my sister, my mother and I had gone to sleep, Mrs. Crough came back over to our house, but this time with some gardening tools of her own. A shovel and some gloves would have gotten the job done, but she wanted to make her point clearer than simply pulling the freshly planted trees from the ground. She took a saw over to our house. When my mother woke up the next morning she saw four, evenly spaced, tree stumps in the planting bed in front of her yard. My mother never intended to sue. She did, however, take photos of the top halves of Dwarf Pines in the trash cans in front of the Crough’s property at a time when they saw her do it. She took photos of the stumps in front of our property and smiled anytime we ran into each other indicating that she had something planned. The silence must have driven Mrs. Crough crazy. She wasn’t used to the slow burn of passive aggression always opting instead for straightforward arguments and action. “Those sons of bitches ruined my yard. I never forgave them for that.” She said. I enjoy hearing my mother swear as if it weren’t an impediment to her righteousness. MOTHERWORT Leonurus cardiaca Mint Family 81 Motherwort is native to the southeastern part of Europe and central Asia where it has been cultivated since ancient times. Now its natural habitat is beside roadsides, in vacant fields, waste ground, and other disturbed areas. “That’s an interesting name for a plant,” my mom notices. We both chuckle. I take out my phone to look up more about it and find a blog post titled The Top Ten Medicinal Herbs for the Garden. I read the entry on Motherwort to my mom, “Motherwort is one of my favorite remedies for anxiety and stress. It is taken as a tincture or tea to lessen pain, such as: headaches, menstrual cramps, and muscle sprains and aches. I will add that motherwort is quite bitter, so I often recommend it as a tincture over a tea. It is many women’s ally in menopause for easing hot flashes and hormonal- induced irritability. Motherwort is also used in childbirth to help strengthen contractions; it is the only herb I used giving birth to my daughter! Finally, motherwort fully lives up to its name in helping to increase parental patience. Many mothers find that motherwort softens the edginess brought on by sleep deprivation, endless laundry and dishes, and uppity wee folk.” “Too late,” my mother says with a smirk on her face. She could be referring to any number of those supposed cures: too late to ease the pain of childbirth, or the discomfort of menopause. Too late to help with the stress she dealt with for years. Or she could be referring to the bit about patience. Perhaps she is admitting to having been impatient with my sister and me. I laugh at her joke regardless of its intended meaning. “Not for me, I still get menstrual cramps,” I said. “Write that one down for your garden back in Washington. Did you have a garden?” She asked. 82 “Yeah, a small one. Herbs and veggies,” I said. “I’ve always wanted a garden,” my mother said. We keep moving over to the fragrance garden, which looks as though it blooms beautifully in the spring. But all that are in bloom currently are the purple crocus interspersed with flowerless stems. My mother pays them special attention. “These are beautiful,” she said, ignoring the surrounding plants nearing the beginning of their life cycle, and the patches of dirt where new bulbs had been planted, not yet seen above ground. “They’re nice, aren’t they?” I said. We continue down a paved path with nearly bare chokecherry trees to our left and water-wise desert plants spaced out far from one another on our right. From here we can see the hillside outside the garden in the natural area covered in grass getting greener and bare branched oak trees. We can see the Bonneville shoreline trail indicating just how high the water of Lake Bonneville was 15,000 years ago. We see a bit of snow further east in the canyon on mountaintops. Soon that snow will have fully melted and it will be spring in Salt Lake City, my favorite time to be here. 83 Chapter Seven: Ember I lead my mother further down this paved path in the garden to an open field, a meadow, with several species of grasses and tall stocks of Milkweed that had opened, fuzzy seedpods last time I saw them in the fall. There’s another map. My mother informs me that if we continued on the path through the meadow we’d reach the natural area where hiking trails would take us above the garden to look down across the whole Salt Lake Valley. If we continued down and around this paved path we’d go past a water pavilion to reach the Rose Garden and the Floral Walk. “I love roses,” she says casting her vote. “Rose garden it is,” I’m sure she’s not in any condition to hike. Nor has she ever wanted to as far as I'm concerned. We continue past a life-sized statue of a moose sitting on the mulched ground whose back has been rubbed shiny and gold by kids, I’m sure, that come to the garden with their families, or perhaps with their classes on fieldtrips and are more interested by 84 statues of wildlife than growing and dying plants. I would have wanted to sit on the back of this moose if I were a kid. I’d climb on his antlers before my mom would tell me to get down and be careful. I used to not be as careful as I am now. We walk along a red gravel path with recently mowed grass on either side, and benches tucked away in the trees lining the lawn. If we had come here years ago my mother would have sit on one of those benches because Sara and I would have insisted on running around the grass lawn despite the fact that the lose grass would undoubtedly stain our clothes with chlorophyll. And while that wouldn’t be the break she had hoped for on her long day out with the kids, she’d take what she could get. And Sara and I would run and yell and laugh. We used to laugh. When we were really little everything was funny. Further down the path my mother and I find the water pavilion. It’s a wooden structure with a minimalist roof, which would not protect one from anything except perhaps the sun at the right hour, above a large pond surrounded by cattails and other more ornamental water plants. Our mom probably would have wanted to enjoy this peaceful moment as well, this time insisting that Sara and I stay quiet. And while she’d sit on the bench watching ducks and fish enjoy the pond Sara and I would wander to the side of the pavilion, out of our mother’s sight, lie on our bellies and touch the water while we spoke quietly to one another. Now she and I stand quietly together and look out at the still, cold water for a few minutes. She doesn’t say anything when she’s done here at this spot; she just turns around and starts walking to the next one. I follow. Past the Lady’s Mantle which blooms yellow later in the spring, but is just green leaves with little hairs that hold up drops of dew at this time of year. 85 “Lady’s Mantle is my favorite.” She says Past the stone sign that indicates we’re about to enter the Rose Garden, my mother and I see a grass lawn full of nicely dressed people. “Is there a wedding going on?” She asks. “Yeah, probably,” I said remembering all the weddings we hosted at our arboretum in Bellevue. Public gardens are a popular destination, especially in the summer. It’s early Spring, and the people are dressed accordingly. Long wool coats down the sides of dresses over tights. Thick suit coats with sweaters underneath. The lawn is a circle with a pavilion in the front, where the chairs for the audience are facing. Behind the pavilion there is a waterfall, which I assumed to be perfectly framed for those viewing the ceremony. The leaves on the Oaks and Maples surrounding the small pond have not yet filled out, but many of the roses are in full bloom. “Should we watch?” I asked. “Of course not,” my mother said, disappointed that I’d even suggest something so childish. “Don’t you want to see the couple? Her dress?” I asked, knowing full well that some part of her did. She smiled at me, realizing her disapproving looks don’t suppress me like they used to. “Maybe if we found a spot far enough way,” she said. The rose garden is vast. Past the grass lawn there is a network of paths to what’s called the Ring Garden where a cement circle is surrounded by a ring of flowering shrubs. To the left of both of those sections of the Rose Garden there is a half circle filled with various species of red rose and next to that a staircase. The staircase leads to a small table, for two, above all three sections with a perfect view of each. 86 “How’s this?” I asked. “Perfect,” she said, taking a seat at the table, positioning herself toward the grass lawn where the wedding is currently taking place. I sat across from her, slightly askew meaning I’ll have to turn my head significantly to the right if I want to see what’s going on over on the wedding lawn. I’ll want to limit my head turns so as to draw less attention to us, the two women attending the wedding, uninvited. “Tell me what’s going on,” I said to my mother. I’ll turn when something interesting happens. “I think these are the bridesmaids and groomsmen getting into position, but there are men and women on both sides. Everyone is wearing white and tan. It looks like some women are wearing suits,” She said, confused. “Progressive wedding,” I said nodding my head, indicating my approval to my mother who may or may not have changed her stance on a number of issues since we lived together. “Here comes someone down the aisle. It’s a woman. Are they reversing the roles? Is that a thing now? Or is this… is this a gay wedding?” She asked with her eyebrows gathered, either from genuine curiosity or slight disapproval. These aren’t her kids, so her disapproval has no bearing on their decisions or on this ceremony. Maybe she’ll keep her mouth shut because she knows that. “Yep, there’s the other woman. Her mother is walking her down the aisle. Is that another statement, or is the dad not around?” She asked. 87 “I don’t think their making statements mom,” I said trying to point out her prejudice. I turn around to gather my own impressions quickly. The two women are both wearing dresses. One has dark hair down to her shoulders straightened out, the other has long, light brown curls down to her waist. The officiant is a woman. The crowd is diverse. Women and men, various skin tones and hair textures. Within the limited color scheme, there is a wide variety of outfits: Nice suits with scarves and boots, long dresses with boots, collared dress shirts and skirts, hats and matching scarves. They’re all welldressed. I can only see the back of each of them for the most part, but one girl in particular has familiar mannerisms. I stare at her for a few moments trying to remember where I know her from. “They’ll see us,” my mom said indicating that I’d been turned around too long. I snapped my head back waiting for her cues again. “The officiant is starting. Can you hear what’s being said at all?” She asked. “I can hear that someone is talking, but I can’t make out what they’re saying at all.” “Okay, me too,” she said, relieved that her hearing wasn’t noticeably worse than mine. “Should we move down closer?” I asked, not entirely serious, just curious how she would respond. “Absolutely not.” She said. “There are plenty of bushes to hide behind.” “Ember, no.” Her eyes were wide, though not genuinely angry. She wasn’t playful often, but I could always tell when she was. So I kept going. 88 “Don’t you want to hear the vows?” I asked. “Come on.” She finally cracked a smile. Does she sense that I’m joking too? Or does she really want to hear those vows? “Maybe if we walk around down there it won’t seem so suspicious,” she said. “Good idea,” I said, laughing a little. “Follow my lead, I see a path,” she said as if she had been planning, waiting for my suggestion. We walked down the stairs, back up the pathway she insisted on leaving behind just ten minutes ago. When we saw a garden employee walking down past the water pavilion, my mother looked at me and nodded her head to the side indicating we’d have to change our route. We turned all the way around and quickened our pace (as much as my mother was able to). She grabbed my hand to pull me into the Ring Garden, which was separated from the wedding lawn by a tan, stone wall. We stood right behind it. “Do you think she saw us?” My mother asked. “No, we’re good. Can you hear from here?” I asked. We stood still with one of each of our ears turned toward the lawn, and our eyes moving up and down the wall to act out attentive listening. The wall muffled the sound significantly. “Not really. We’ll have to keep moving,” She was serious about crashing this wedding. “I’ve got a backup route.” She said. I held my mouth as I let out a surprised laugh. “What?” She said laughing quietly as well. “Nothing. This is fun.” I said. 89 My mother grabbed my arm again and started tiptoeing around the wall to a path hidden from the lawn by rose bushes. The sound penetrates the wall of plant much better than the wall of stone. She pauses in her tracks and points to the rose bush to check if I had noticed. I nod my head. They’re exchanging their vows while my mom and I circle the lawn from the outside, out of the wedding goers’ view. “I remember the first time I saw Alice and I thought, ‘oh right, so this is what attraction feels like’,” One of the brides said. The crowd laughs. “I had tried having boyfriends and even girlfriends before, but never felt a real connection with anyone. Alice changed that.” My mother looked at me and paused, as we were about to walk past an opening in the bush. She widened her eyes and bore her teeth. I had never seen this face, this caricature of fear, on my mother before. She could tell I wanted to laugh, so she put her finger up to her mouth and mouthed ‘shhh’ without letting out the noise. We stood still for a minute. “Alice taught me what attraction felt like from the beginning and the longer I’m with her the more I learn about love. I’m excited to continue learning with you for the rest of our lives. I love you, Emily.” The bride was finished. The officiant prompted the brides to exchange rings. “You may kiss the brides,” the officiant said, perhaps thinking she had been the first to come up with something so clever. The crowd cheered. As their noise was loud enough to distract from any that my mother and I could make, we hurried back to the main path so as to look inconspicuous. We saw the married couple walk back through the crowd to the back of the lawn where stone walls separated it from the Ring garden, with 90 an opening in the middle. My mother looked at me so as to say ‘perfect timing.’ And I smiled to her. We kept walking down the pathway as if we were simply garden patrons walking by at that exact moment. Some of the wedding attendants left the lawn to walk around and enjoy other parts of the garden. We blend right in. Because there were wedding attendants around us, coming from any direction, we didn’t feel comfortable discussing what we had just accomplished. But my mother had a consistent smile on her face every time I looked over at her and she at me. As we felt smug walking up the floral walk, I heard someone say my name though not loud enough that I’d immediately assume she was talking to me. “Ember?” This time it was closer, and the voice sounded familiar. I turned around to see a familiar face. The one that belonged to the woman whose mannerisms I recognized. Sara. She had her thick hair down and curled loosely. The bottom of her white, cotton dress poked out from her tan, wool coat that looked like she had borrowed from a friend, as it didn’t fit properly, though it does match the style she had ten years ago: neutral, practical. She looked beautiful walking up the gravel path with lilac trees budding on her left and shaped hedges, still green, on her right. “Hi Sara,” I said. I didn’t know whether or not we should hug in this moment. “Ember… mom,” she said. She must not have realized who I was walking with before she approached us because she looks surprised now. Perhaps she is surprised by mom’s state, which by this point I’ve gotten used to. She doesn’t attempt to hug either one of us, so I don’t push it. 91 “Sara, what are you doing here?” My mom chimed in. “I was going to ask you guys the same thing. I’m here for a friend’s wedding,” she said and pointed to the nicely dressed people walking past us in hordes. Clearly my mother and I were the ones who didn’t fit in. “Whose wedding?” I asked. I already knew the names of the brides, and the fact that there were no grooms, and I knew what they looked like. I guess I’d find out how my sister knew these women with this question. I could feel my mother look over at me. She too must have wondered what I was after with this question knowing full well that I had seen exactly whose wedding it was during the wedding itself. I maintained my focus on Sara. “Her name is Emily. She’s a friend,” She said, looking around her at the people walking by, likely trying to find her out. “Kate,” she called out to a woman walking past us. “Hey girl, what’s up?” Kate said. Sara started walking with her up the hill. My mother and I followed. “Hey. Nothing, just chatting. Kate, this is my family. My sister Ember,” I shook her hand, “this is Carrie,” my mom shook her hand and Sara turned to us, “This is my friend Kate,” she said. “Hi Kate,” I said. “Kate,” my mother said. “Hi Ember, hi Carrie,” Kate said. “Are you guys coming to the reception?” She asked smiling. 92 Sara laughed uncomfortably. “No, they were just here at the garden randomly. We had no idea we were going to run into each other,” she said. “All the more reason. It will be fun. Are you guys hungry? There will be food.” Kate asked my mother and me. “I actually am a little, now that you mention it,” my mother said. Sara laughed not expecting our mother to admit to something so base. She would have never replied in such a way when we were growing up in her household. I lifted my eyebrows at Sara. I understand how strange it is. “I’ll go talk to Emily real quick. But you know her; she’ll be excited to have you guys.” Kate ran up ahead of us and alongside the crowd to get to one of the brides to confirm two new invites. “You guys ever go to weddings?” Sara said. “I’ve been to one, a friend in Washington. But not often, no,” I said to my sister, then turned to my mom. “How about you?” “I went to plenty when I was young and newly married. Not really friends per se, just people we knew. And not the actual wedding portion, just receptions.” My mother said looking at me, not really acknowledging Sara in the same way. The three of us, my mother, my sister and me now pass under pear arbors that are not yet bearing fruit. With most of the leaves gone from last year it’s easy to see the ways in which the branches are interwoven and shaped by the arched metal structures. I hear the wedding attendants express some opinions on the fruit as they walk past us. Some love them; some can’t stand the grainy texture. Others don’t notice the pear trees as they’re too invested in unrelated conversations. Sara waves at some of them as they pass 93 without interrupting conversations. They generally look at her with a smile and then look over at my mom and me understanding Sara’s reason for such a slow pace. ‘See you up there,’ they might say. “I should warn you guys. This is a gay wedding,” Sara finally said, now that we’re close to the Orangerie (the building everyone keeps referring to, though with various pronunciations, as the location of the reception). “We know,” our mother said without turning her head to look at Sara. “What do you mean? How do you know?” “We saw some of the ceremony,” she said, unembarrassed. I almost wonder if she’s admitting to spying to bother Sara, letting her know that she’s got her hand in everything. “Oh,” Sara was confused, “are you guys okay with that?” “Of course,” I said quickly, offended that she’d assume I was a bigot. My face softened when I remembered how long it’s been since we had spoken, and the way I treated her as a kid. It wasn’t an asinine assumption. “I mean you won’t make any comments, mom?” Sara addressed her directly. “Of course not,” our mother looked straight ahead. Sara held the door open for the two of us. We walked into the Orangerie where tropical plants grow up walls with intricate irrigation systems providing them with more water than Utah would have to offer them outside. The temperature and climate in here is clearly adjusted to accommodate these foreign plants as well, warm and slightly humid. Some plants here have velvet leaves that are colored by magenta and forest green stripes, almost like a modern painting. The variegated leaves on other plants look like 94 impressionist paintings, light green and cream spread and blend like watercolor. The wall on the other side of this huge, high-ceiling, glass windows and walls room is covered in vines all the way from the floor to the ceiling. There are pots along every glass wall of various sizes. One as tall as my mother contains an olive tree with light grey bark and sage green leaves. One pot half her size contains a lemon tree currently baring unripened fruit. A pot on the other side of the room looks a regular pot size, one you’d put near the entryway of your home, but contains a plant far taller than any of us in the room; It’s stems reach several feet above my head and its leaves are at least double to size of it. These plants stay here year-round, I presume. There are other plants that have clearly been picked out and displayed for this particular occasion. White baby’s breath flowers in glass vases on each round, light wood table. The tables, with white table clothes and ceramic dinnerware placed nicely, take up half of the room. The other half is likely for dancing. “Should I introduce you guys to people?” Sara seemed to be asking herself as much as she was asking us, not knowing if it was the best idea. I’d let her make that decision. “Yes, people will wonder why we’re here,” my mother said before Sara could decide for herself. I suppose she’s right. People may worry about the two women in casual clothing whom no one recognizes wandering about a public space that’s been rented out for this private event, harassing their friend Sara, and eating food that was not prepared for them. I’m glad she said something. “Alright,” she said looking into the crowd deciding where to begin. Every small step she took toward the party we took as well, following close behind our only 95 connection in this room full of strangers. “Brianne,” Sara put her hand on the shoulder of a young woman. “Sara, hi,” she said. Looking first at my sister then at my mother and me then back at my sister. “Can I introduce you to my family?” Sara said. “Please do,” Brianne now looked closely at us, my mother and me, as she had an excuse to stare. “This is my mom, and my sister Ember,” Sara said, “we ran into each other outside, Kate kind of invited them to the reception.” Brianne laughed, “That sounds like Kate, but we’re all happy to have you guys. Does Emily or Alice know?” She asked Sara. “I think so, Kate was going to find Emily to make sure it was alright,” She said, now scanning the room for either Kate or Emily. “I’m sure it’s fine. It was nice meeting you two. Enjoy the wedding,” Brianne said with a genuine smile. “See you, Brianne,” Sara said to her friend as we walked further into the party. She seems nervous. She keeps looking at us, looking around the room clicking her tongue, and scanning for someone in particular, probably Emily. I wonder if my mother feels guilty for putting Sara through this. She was attending a wedding of her friends, expecting to chat with her people over drinks and food, maybe even dance and let loose a little. She likely wasn’t even thinking about the fact that her actual family abandoned her at a young age when she realized who she was. The fact that she hadn’t spoken to her mom in over ten years, and had just recently had an awkward conversation with her sister 96 probably wasn’t ruining this day for her. Not until we showed up. Now she’s being forced to deal with both of us at once. She’s being forced to accommodate the two of us at a party that she was invited to and we weren’t. “Hey Jane,” Sara interrupts another conversation, “Kyle, how are you guys?” she asked. “Good, how are you doing Sara?” Jane said. “Who are these two ladies with you?” Kyle said. “Kyle, Jane, meet my mom and my sister Ember,” Sara held her hands out in our direction like we were for sale. “Hi mom and sister,” Jane held her hand out to shake ours. I shook her hand first, and when she could tell my mother wasn’t paying attention, Jane didn’t push for a shake from her. “Nice to meet you guys,” Kyle said. “Have you guys seen Emily?” Sara asked. “I think she might be changing in the dressing room down the hall, past the restrooms. I saw her heading that way. I’m assuming she’s changing,” Jane said. “Cool, thanks guys,” Sara said. She nodded her head toward the restrooms as if to suggest we were going to ask Emily right now if we were welcome to stay. My mother and I followed her down the hallway lit only by the glass exit door at the end of it to the dressing room. She knocked on the door. “Yes,” we heard a woman’s voice say faintly. “Emily?” Sara spoke loudly through the door. “Yeah, I'm not decent, or I’d have you come in. What is it?” 97 “I just have to ask you something, should I wait?” Sara asked. “Hold on,” Emily said quietly, shuffling around in the dressing room. She came over to the door and poked her head out. “Hey Sara, what’s up?” Emily asked. “Sorry, I was just wondering, I ran into my family outside, it’s just my mom and sister, two people, I was just wondering if they could stick around for the reception. Can they hang out? I know it’s so silly, Kate suggested it. It’s alright if there’s not enough food,” Sara left it there and showed her teeth to indicate to Emily that she knows just how strange this situation is. “Oh we have plenty of food. Too much, in fact. Please stay, by all means we’re happy to have you guys. I’m Emily by the way,” she poked her hand out from behind the door, “I’m sorry I’m not decent, otherwise I’d come out to introduce myself.” “That’s alright, we’re sorry to meet you like this. But I’m Ember, thank you for having us,” I said. “Thank you,” my mother said as she reached out to shake this woman’s hand. “My pleasure,” Emily said and pulled her hand back behind the door, “I’m going to quickly get changed, and I’ll see you guys out there, alright?” “Okay, thanks Emily,” my sister said. “Shall we?” Sara held her hand out to guide us back to the party. I guess we’ll all be staying. 98 Chapter Eight: Sara Why my friend invited my long-lost mother and sister to stay at this wedding of two women they’ve never met, and likely never care to actually know, is beyond me. And why my mother and sister whom I haven’t spoken to in years, and haven’t really wanted to, didn’t decline the offer immediately is a goddamn mystery. But here we are all, sitting side by side at a beautifully designed table with mismatched plates as no one had planned on them coming. My mother seems to be forgetting her life as it happens. Isn’t that rich, she treats her family like shit her whole life and in the end, that time when everything you’ve done that you deeply regret comes back to haunt you, she gets to forget it all. I’ve had to remind her of my girlfriend’s name twice now. It’s Sam, mother. Sam. And by the way she’s not my “friend” okay? She’s my partner. We’re in love and we make love, believe it or not, and we’re going to do that for the rest of our long, healthy lives, long after you’re gone and there’s not a single thing you can do to stop it at this point, though I’m 99 sure you’d like to try. Her name is Sam and I love her for so many reasons. One of which is how she’s handled all of this madness so graciously. She didn’t skip a beat when she found out the crazy woman crashing the wedding was my mother. She was kind to her, understanding of her illness, but not overly kind to the point of betrayal. She’s on my side. I had already told her about my mom a long time ago, when we were first getting to know each other, I warned her that I’m not close with my parents (my absent and emotionally abusive parents) because I know that’s a red flag. Maybe less so in the gay community. And probably even less so in the gay community in Salt Lake City, Utah. While the community is pretty large in this city, it’s made up of young, family-less people because parents aren’t always on board. I told her my mother is Mormon, but maybe more relevant, shallow and cares a little too much what her Mormon community thinks of her and her family. She chose her community over her daughter and I told Sam that I’ve yet to forgive her for that. She understood right away, despite the fact that her mother has been her closest friend her entire life. From time to time she’s encouraged me to reach out to my mother because she truly believes that I’ll regret giving up on her once she’s gone. Sam is empathetic, and good in her soul and I resent the fact that I have to introduce her to my insecure, selfish, poor excuse for a mother who will never appreciate Sam fully because she doesn’t have a fucking dick in her pants. Nothing against dicks, but honestly, it seems a strange thing to demand of your daughter’s partner. A mother raises a young woman, perhaps demure and lovely, and what she wants most for her daughter is to find a phallus, a long and hard, protruding appendage with the intention to thrust and thrust and thrust. And if that daughter didn’t want that phallus but instead 100 opted for soft and welcoming labia in a partner, the mother would not only be disappointed but utterly repulsed, to the point of abandonment. I’m not so sure I will regret giving up on her. Introducing Sam to Ember was slightly less irritating. I give her more of a break because she was a kid when she made her choice between me and our mother. Then again, she seems to have chosen our mother yet again in this later stage of her life. Keeping a close eye on her, making sure she doesn’t do or say something too strange, overemphasizing the severity of her illness to anyone who asks or seems the least bit interested or confused would probably be a better word. It’s like she doesn’t want Carrie to misrepresent herself in front of these strangers. But is her real self-worth representing faithfully? I’m pretty sure my friends would prefer this toned down version of our mother to the passive aggressive version from years ago. Also, Ember seemed way too excited to let me know that she had left the church when it came time to meet my girlfriend, like the church is the main reason she didn’t approve of my gayness. Way to go, you figured it out. Did the same person who told you that Joseph Smith was a con man tell you that family should come before faith? Why else would you be so eager to shake my girlfriend’s hand? “So Sara, how did you two meet?” Ember asked as we ate our catered wedding food, her and my mother’s plates with much smaller portions than the rest of us. I’d like to think that’s because they realize this food was not meant for them, but it’s more likely due to their obsession with weight. 101 “I met Sam through Emily. She thought we’d be a good match so she planned a day for us all to go out and hike. Turns out she was right.” I wonder if stories like this make my mother uncomfortable. “Nice. Sam did you even know Sara had a sister?” Ember said, trying to acknowledge the elephant in the room, I’m sure. “Sara and I tell each other everything.” Sam said, with a kind smile, looking mostly at me. She knows what Ember did. “Sara, where do you live?” My mother said, finally chiming in. “We live in the avenues, in a little old place. We’ve been fixing it up though.” I said, looking in my mother’s eyes, gaging whether or not she actually cares. “How have you been fixing it up? What have you done so far?” Ember said. “We learned how to tile, so we retiled the bathroom first making it all white. It was this awful peach color before. We’ve done a white tile backsplash in the kitchen too. A lot of painting. We like a neutral, modern look so we’ve said goodbye to some janky paint jobs around the house.” I said. Ember laughed. “And we’ve installed some shelving.” Sam said. “That’s right. Shelves in the kitchen and bathroom. Just big wood slabs to contrast the light walls.” “Sounds really cute.” Ember said. “Why haven’t you come by lately?” My mom asked, clearly not interested in interior design. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Why do you never come to the house?” 102 “I haven't come to your house in years, mom. Why haven’t you invited me?” “You’re always invited.” She said. “Not exactly.” I said, irritated by her flippant attitude. I may be invited, but the feeling of being in that home sure wasn’t welcoming. Who does she think she is asking why I never come to her house? “What do you mean ‘not exactly’?” She is clearly upset by my reaction to her invitation. Does she honestly not remember what she did? How she treated me? “I mean I was never really welcome in your house. Not even as a kid, when I had no choice but to live in my parent’s house. Don’t pretend like I’m the bad guy here, just because there are people around. Just don’t acknowledge it if you don’t want, but don’t twist it.” “Mom, we can talk about this later.” Ember said to her, quietly. “I just miss you Sara. We’ll leave it at that.” My mother said. I’ve never heard her say anything like that. Admitting that she enjoyed my company enough to miss it when it ended. Who is this person? Ten years and a disease have rendered her unrecognizable. “Ember is with you now. You’ve got her.” I said. “I want both of my daughters back.” She said, tears forming in her eyes. I kind of believe her. But maybe this sorrow is well deserved and it’s not up to me to fix her. Servers come by the tables to collect everyone’s plates and silverware. The sun is starting to go down, and the pinks from the horizon light Emily’s dance floor. Music starts playing louder, a slow beautiful song by Joni Mitchell that I’ve heard so many times that I’ll never get tired of hearing it. “Circle Game.” Emily and her bride move to the middle of the floor and begin slow dancing. No announcement was necessary as 103 everyone narrowed their attention on the two beautiful women holding each other on their wedding day amongst tropical plants in a glass building in Utah during the golden hour of the day. Even my mom seemed moved by the scene. You know, even though she’s underdressed for the occasion, she does look quite pretty. The way the light is hitting her face makes her look young again, like how she looked when I was young enough to hug her around her petite waist. Ember holds her hand as they sway. When that song ended, a faster paced song came on and Emily and Alice waved the crowd over to join in. And everyone danced. Including my mom. What? She’s honestly going to dance right now, in front of all these people she’s never met? Okay, I guess so. Up until this point I had only seen my mother dance once in my life. She moved slowly to Tracy Chapman’s “She’s Got Her Ticket” when she thought no one was watching. The way she moved her child bearing hips, the ones she had always tried to hide with weight loss and garments, convinced me that it hadn’t been the first time she had danced, but maybe the first time since using those hips for their evolutionary purpose. Why didn’t she dance for us? Now she dances for no one and nothing. She didn’t even ask Ember to come dance with her, which Ember doesn’t seem to be happy about. Ember is still in her right mind enough to be insecure to flail in front of strangers, and she’s projecting that insecurity onto our mother. She probably would have liked to have been given the opportunity to talk our mother out of it. Not our mother though. She’s gone just mad enough to not give a damn what people think. A welcome change. For a second, watching her move freely but not uncoordinatedly, she looks beautiful to me. She reminds me of 104 that young woman I found dancing in her bedroom before everything went to shit between us. Back then I stayed hidden so I could just watch her. This time I think I’ll join her. I walk over to Ember sitting uncomfortably at the edge of an empty table. “Will you please come dance? Mom’s gone mad,” I say. “She really has,” Ember gave me a sad smile, “I guess we can dance. I probably stand out more just sitting here in my jeans.” I took my sister’s hand and walked her to the dance floor where our mother swayed her hips and closed her eyes to the music. “Mom,” Ember said. “Oh good,” our mother grabbed each of our hands so that for a few moments the three of us were connected. Ember and I looked at each other and laughed uncomfortably for a few seconds. It didn’t take long for the awkwardness to subside. We began dancing like our mother, uninhibited. Between shaking our hips and moving our arms we’d occasionally make eye contact, me and my mother and me and Ember. In those moments I became aware that the smile on my face had been constant. Sometimes one of us would break out a move different from our usual repertoire and the other two would laugh. My mother doesn’t seem crazy to me right in this moment. This seems the most natural and sane thing the three of us could be doing upon reconnecting. I don’t want any of us to say anything, I just want to dance and laugh like we’re doing now. I want my mother to be this person. And if she died tonight, I’d probably miss her. I’d probably think back to this moment sometime in the future and feel love for my mother and wish 105 that she were here. And just now I get goosebumps thinking about how far the three of us have come, and how far away from each other we’ve been in the past and how in this moment we’re all together, dancing like we never used to, and we’re happy. But she won’t die tonight, because she’s only in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, so the cycle will continue. The cycle of hope, like this, leading to inevitable disappointment and irritation and betrayal and then to loneliness, as a daughter without her mother. Eventually, I’ll be reminded of why we grew apart in the first place. Perhaps if we kept seeing each other after tonight our last moment together wouldn’t be a high point like this, and then perhaps I wouldn’t miss her when she died, or worse when she was still alive but her mind had deteriorated past the point of connection. My mother leaned over to my sister and asked for a drink of water. She’s thirsty. They stopped dancing. Ember looked at me and was going to let me know what our mother had said, but I already heard, so I lead them out to the hall where there was a drinking fountain. “You tired?” I ask my mother. “Yeah,” she laughed and took a drink from the fountain. “Is there a restroom nearby?” she asked Ember. “Right around the corner,” I said pointing her in the direction. She walked away to find it and Ember and I stood waiting. “We haven’t had much of a chance to talk. It’s so loud in there. But how are you Sara?” Ember said. “I’m good. Yeah, everything’s good. How are you guys doing?” 106 “Alright, you know. We’re just bored mostly. It was so fun to get out, and it’s just crazy that we ran into you.” She said. “I know. Weird, huh.” “It would be so nice if you came by the house sometime. I know mom came off pushy, but we really do miss you. We could chat more,” Often when people say they want to get together it’s empty. They don’t actually mean it. Ember seems pretty genuine. “Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just weird, you know?” “I get it,” She said. Our mother turned the corner with dripping hands. “Are you about ready to head out?” Ember asked her. “Yeah, I’m getting tired.” She said. “Okay,” Ember looked over to me, different than before, “Well it was nice seeing you Sara,” “You too. I’ll call you,” I said, empty. “Bye Sara,” my mother said. “Bye mom,” I said as my family walked to the front door of the visitor’s center to go back to our home. I’m not sure I want to spend more time with her after tonight. I may not call Ember to make plans to stop by and chat. I want to miss my mother when I no longer have the option to see her. 107 Chapter Nine: Ember Sara has finally agreed to come over to our mother’s house, after eight months of asking, and begging, and guilting her to do it, she is coming over tonight for dinner and I have no idea what to expect. I told her that going over old memories with mom, like the doctor suggested, seemed to be helping. I’m not sure how to quantify “help” in her last days. This disease will be what kills her and no amount of therapy will halt the progression of Alzheimer’s. I guess by “help” I simply mean soothe. I want to ease these last few months for her as best I can, and as far as I can tell, she enjoys talking through memories. “Mom, remember the time when you took us to Disneyland?” I asked as I pull the lid off of the slow cooker to check on the beef. It’s been soaking in citrus and spices all afternoon, ready to be shredded. “Disneyland? A little bit. What do you remember from that trip?” She sat down at the table. 108 I grab the bell peppers from the refrigerator drawer. “I remember driving in an old Kia Sephia from Salt Lake to Anaheim with no AC, do you remember that?” I take the onions from the bowl on the counter. “The Kia sephia, oh yeah. That old thing stopped working right in time for our big trip,” She chuckled. “Sara and I were so sweaty in the back.” “I rolled down the windows didn’t I? Where is Sara?” “Oh yeah, you did. On the highway, our hair was whipping around in the wind. It was so tangled when we got to California. We couldn’t brush it out until we got to the hotel ‘cause we needed the detangling spray,” I sliced the veggies on a cutting board with a dull knife struggling to break the skin of the bell peppers. “Sara is coming tonight, remember?” “That’s right. Was the spray green apple flavored or scented I guess? I remember a strong green apple smell.” “Yeah, it was. It was a green bottle with a purple octopus on the front. Yeah our hair was sweaty from being hot in the car but then it got whipped around in the wind when we cooled off. Perfect tangling conditions. Did your hair get tangled?” I cut the peppers and onions in long strips. “No, no. I had mine tied back. I should have tied your guys back. Sara’s hair was such a pain in the ass to untangle, so thick.” I know she enjoys this practice, of going through memories, because of her small chuckles. “Yeah, she got lucky with that hair,” I said. “Once we got to the hotel and got our hair untangled I think we went out for dinner.” 109 “That hotel was janky, wasn’t it?” I laughed at her use of the word “janky” remembering that the three of us used to say that word often to describe strange or run-down things we’d encounter. I wonder if she picked it up from Sara at the wedding. “Yeah, it was pretty janky wasn’t it. Didn’t it have like ripped bed skirts?” “Oh yeah, they were ripped alright. And yellowed. The comforters were 70s scratchy as hell polyester. I had you girls lay down your blankets beneath and on top of you so you wouldn’t have to touch those filthy things.” She doesn’t use her hands as much to talk. It used to bother me when I was a kid and she would talk to my teachers or people at church. She was so animated and I wondered if it bothered people as much as it bothered me. I think that’s why it bothered me, because of what they would potentially think or feel about my mother. I always worried about that. I wish I hadn’t been so worried and I was able to appreciate that about her while it lasted. “That night wasn’t the comfiest.” I said as I sauté the veggies in some olive oil to get them slightly brown before cooking them in the oven. “Oh yeah, no way.” “The next morning was worth it.” We just got a one-day pass, but we got the park hopper, meaning we had to cover both Disneyland and California Adventure all in less than 24 hours. “I hope so, I’m pretty sure those tickets were expensive. We probably had no business taking that trip,” she said. “But even I kind of wanted to go. I mean, I wanted to go since I was a little girl.” 110 “Really? So that was your first time?” I asked, disappointed that I didn’t know that at the time. It probably wouldn’t have changed my behavior as a young girl, but if I could go back I would want to make the experience as special for her as it was for me and hopefully Sara. “We didn’t go on trips when I was growing up. We definitely didn’t have the money. Neither did I, I guess, but I’m happy I made it happen.” “Remember getting to the gates first thing in the morning? There were already lines 40 minutes before opening,” I said. “And we gladly waited. We wanted to be the first people on Peter Pan. Remember that? My coworker told me that the line for that ride gets long quick and it never dies down.” She laughed. “We booked it,” I laughed with her. “I just remember trying to speed walk after a worker told us not to run. My stocky legs couldn’t get going fast enough.” “I don’t even know what the ride was like now, I just know that we really wanted to get there. It probably wasn’t even that great.” She said. “I mean, it was a kid’s ride,” we both laughed. “I think it did float though. Like we were flying or something.” I take two forks and shred the beef inside the slow cooker, letting it marinate in those sauces as long as possible. “Do you need some help?” My mother asked. “If you want to get some tortillas ready, that would be helpful.” I said. 111 “Sure.” She stood up slowly from the chair and took the tortillas from the counter. She took the pan from under the oven and sat back down. One by one she laid out tortillas in the pan, folding them so that more enchiladas could fit. “What is Sara up to?” She asked, again. “She’ll be coming over here tonight, mom. Remember? We’re making dinner for her.” “Oh good. What are we making?” I looked down in the pan and she that she has stacked multiple layers of tortillas in the small pan. One right on top of the other. “Thanks mom, I’ll take these. We’re making enchiladas. You’re helping me.” I said, clarifying as her face looked confused, like she had forgotten what she was doing as she was doing it. “You’re welcome.” She said. The sun lingered in late summer so that dinner at 6:00 felt elderly, almost like we were accommodating our mother to be eating at such an early hour. Sara parked on the street having to put her parking brake on to stay on the steep hillside instead of comfortably in the driveway. Why does she insist on being distant? She walks to the door with a tray of something. I didn't ask her to bring anything. “Sara, you didn’t have to bring anything,” I opened the door before she could knock. “It’s no problem. I just bought some rolls. I should have asked what you were making probably, but I figured rolls go with everything.” She said. 112 “Yeah, I mean I’m making enchiladas, but sure.” I said, laughing to make her feel comfortable. “Oh god,” she rolled her eyes, “I’m sorry.” Before I closed the door behind her I noticed grey clouds hovering above the mountains near our house. Sometimes the sunset shines nicely across textured sky. Sara set the rolls down on the kitchen island without addressing our mother on the couch in the living room. How could she have missed her? “Do I get a hello?” our mother asked her. “I didn’t see you there.” Sara said without turning all the way around from the counter. “How are you, mom?” “I’ve been better. It’s good to see you again.” She said without getting up from her seat. I open the blinds on the kitchen window to let in the evening. We hear sprinkling on the pane. Our parched Utah ecosystem could use a summer rain. “Did I ever take you girls on trips?” My mother asked out of the blue. Sometimes she has these moments of remembering something we just talked about, but not remembering that we did in fact just talk about it. . “Remember mom? We talked about our Disney trip not too long ago,” I said, trying not to embarrass her in front of Sara. She didn’t say anything, but kept her eyes squinted as if trying to remember. “The janky hotel. The green apple smell, do you remember that?” “Oh that’s right. I’m starting to remember. The beds had those awful comforters,” she said. 113 “If by the beds you mean your king size bed. You made us sleep on the pull-out. Remember that?” Sara chimed in. I can’t tell if she’s joking or trying to be rude. Why did she come here if not to make things right between us? “I’m sure our bed wasn’t much worse than mom’s.” I said. “Do you remember Peter Pan mom?” “Did we see him or something?” She asked. “No, we did have those character autograph books though, is that what you mean?” I said. “We didn’t get his autograph?” “No the ride, mom. Do you remember being first to ride the Peter Pan ride?” I asked. “I don’t think we were first,” Sara said. “Mom, remember when you got kind of mad at us for not getting there fast enough? We had to wait in a short line rather than being first because of, I think you said it was Ember’s fault.” “I’m sure she was joking. We were pretty much first in line. Remember mom?” I said, not letting Sara’s anger taint out mother’s memories. “Peter Pan, I can fly, I can fly, I can fly.” Our mother sang. “Is that right? Doesn’t he sing that?” She chuckled to herself. “Yeah, mom. I’m pretty sure they sing that on the ride. Remember California Adventure with the roller coasters?” I asked, maybe Sara will want to join in. She might realize that the truth isn’t the most important part of this exercise. “Upside down,” She said. 114 “Yeah. Yeah, one of the rollercoasters tipped us upside down. That’s right mom.” I said. “Remember how mom wouldn’t let us buy the photo that it took of us because our faces were crinkled and ugly?” Sara said, insisting on being negative. “That was pretty sad.” I pull the pan of enchiladas from the oven. “Let’s all sit down to eat, shall we?” I ask, changing the subject. “Smells good.” Sara said. “Are you eating tonight mom?” “Yeah, I’ll have an enchilada,” She said, not picking up on Sara’s passive aggression. What is her problem? We all sit around the dinner table, the one we rarely all joined for family dinner as kids. I just want us all to enjoy each other’s company while we can. “What other memories have you guys been going over together?” Sara asked before taking a bite of the steaming enchilada. “We were talking about the picnics we used to go on in the park a few blocks over. Those were fun.” I said, “We probably went on two picnics total, Ember.” “And they were fun. They were memorable.” I said. “Are you forgetting how mom refused to let you eat, what was it the cheese? I think it was cheese. She didn’t let you eat the rest of it, so it just went bad in the fridge for weeks after that. Remember that?” “What are you doing Sara?” I asked, having lost my patience already. 115 “What are you doing? Lying? Are you just going to let mom live in this fantasy that she never made a mistake?” She asked. “Sara, what is the point in going over the bad stuff? She’s sad enough already from day to day, why make it worse?” “Why make it better?” She said through a shaky voice. “Doesn’t she deserve to feel sad for all the sadness she caused?” “Now? Why now?” “Girls, stop.” Our mother said. “You two shouldn’t be fighting. We’re supposed to be having a nice dinner.” “You’re right, we shouldn’t be fighting. We should have been a better family, but you brought us to this.” Sara said, directly to our mother’s face. Our mother started crying, something she’s done a lot of lately. “I just want my girls to eat dinner at my house. I just want us to be together.” “Why did you come here?” I asked Sara. “I didn’t really come to start a fight. I came to tell you that I’m engaged.” She said, putting her fork down. “What’s his name?” My mom said, recovering quickly from crying. I don’t think she got the pronoun wrong to be rude. I think she honestly forgot that Sara would be marrying a woman. “His name is Sam.” Sara said, not bothering to correct our mother. Probably not wanting to relive the first time she came out, and everything fell apart. She got her things and walked out the door, into the now pouring rain out to her car, parked on the hillside. We watched her go and go back to eating our now cold enchiladas. 116 “Where’s Sara?” My mother asked. 117 Chapter Ten: Ember Sara’s wedding will be in the Rose Garden. We call that area the wedding lawn because so many choose to have their special day within that grass circle surrounded by flowers from the rose family with a pavilion in the front that frames a waterfall twenty feet back. It’s picturesque. Not as well as it could be currently. In late Spring many of the flowers are just starting to bloom filling in their nearly bare branches. Other perennials have already bloomed and the petals have suffered at the hands of late season snow. Like the small yellow flowers of Lady’s Mantle hanging onto their thin, bending stems. It’s my job to deadhead flowers like these to make our garden fresh for the wedding. I can’t bring myself to do it knowing that Lady’s Mantle was my mother’s favorite plant. I found that out when the two of us came to the garden to spend a day outside, away from the house, and we ran into Sara at her friend’s wedding. I’ll skip them for now, prune them last. I’m happy to be in charge of prepping this area of the garden for my sister’s wedding. Deadheading flowers and planting fresh creeping thyme to fill in gaps in the 118 ground. I wouldn’t want any of the other horticulturists to call the shots for her for one. But it also seems a nice indication of where we stand. When she announced her engagement, it felt selfish to me. I knew at the time she didn’t care to apologize or receive an apology from our mother, she rather just wanted the two of us to know that she was fine without either one, she had found her family. I wasn’t happy for her. I was bitter. I was bitter until our mother was lying on her bed taking raspy breaths over and over and I called Sara to beg her to come over, but I didn’t have to beg, she didn’t make me, and she came right home, by my side, and we sat right next to our mother on her bed as she struggled to breathe and we held each other for as long as our mother had to live and for minutes after she died and she even cried, which I wasn’t expecting, but she actually cried into my shoulder and I into hers, and neither of us were sure what to do next but we figured it out, we figured out who to call and what to do about a dead body in our home together, and together we watched as some men just doing their job coldly carried our mother’s body to be taken to a mortuary and it was the strangest thing either of us had ever seen so we sat together for hours after just trying to wrap our minds around what had just happened, but we couldn’t, and even as we were dressing her body for cremation it didn’t sink in, and when we got a hold of the ashes it felt even less real and we found ourselves in disbelief that the contents in that box could actually be in some way related to the body we had seen carried out of our home, and the mother we knew as children, and the woman I came to know over the previous years, and Sara never made me feel weak for missing that woman and for not knowing what to do without someone to take care of, and for a while she cared for me because I needed her to, and after all that I wasn’t bitter anymore. I haven’t been since even though she never did work it out with 119 our mother before she died. That was her choice. She had the right to make it even if I felt it was wrong. And because I haven’t been bitter toward my sister, I’m happy to be the one prepping this area of the garden for her wedding. For once in my life I feel older than my younger sister, like I know some things that she doesn’t, or at least I figured them out sooner. I know that our mother needed help, and that we were the only two people who could have provided her with what she needed. Part of that help included working through her past and coming to terms with who she was and how drastically that clashed with who she wanted to be. No one knew our mother better than we did. Even still, I feel I’m in a much better position to help her now than I was when I first moved back home. I know my mother now. I know that Carrie was young when she had us, much younger than Sara and I are now, so she was bound to make some selfish mistakes as a mother. She was twenty years old when she had me, and twenty-two when she had Sara, at the height of insecurity and uncertainty about her future. She had to decide quickly who she was going to be and that decision was influenced greatly by a religion that didn’t allow much leeway for women, a husband who wasn’t prepared to be a father, and two small girls who required everything from her, down to the milk in her forever after unsexualized breasts, in order to survive. So she nursed us, and gave up those years she’d look back on as the time she was her most beautiful and youthful to do so. She’d never stop chasing that youth with retinoids and frequent root-touch-up salon visits until a disease would take its place at the top of her priority list. Age got to her mind before it had fully sunk it’s claws into her facial skin. I gave our mother what she needed for those last few years of her life. I came back home so as to clear the air with her. I’m not sure I quite accomplished that. There 120 were points at which I felt my mother and I had reached common ground, and we stood together again though that time not against the common enemy of my sister like we did as younger women. I remember vividly the times when we would look at each other and smile because we each knew what the other was thinking. We got to that place a few times but something she would say or do within the next day or week or month would undo our connection and again I would be reminded of my purpose. Those moments of connection and disconnection became fewer the longer I stayed, and eventually I was simply there to feed her healthy meals, watch her closely throughout her day so she wouldn’t wander, change her sheets when she had accidents in the night, take her outside to enjoy the sun on her face, and tell her stories of her life that she loved to hear. And I stayed. I stayed longer beyond the point at which I could have achieved my goal. I didn’t stay for me. I stayed for her. Even now, only a year after she’s gone, I sometimes remember the things she instilled in me as a young girl that have stifled me as an adult. I remember her lack of gratitude (or perhaps lack of expression of gratitude) during most of my time back home away from the life I was starting to build in Washington when I was there to care for her. The difference now is I’m not so sure those things take away from the connection we felt at other times. Must they cancel each other out or can they add up to something whole? Something real. I’m beginning to think the latter. Has Sara figured that out? I’m not sure she has. Since the first few weeks after our mother’s death I haven’t seen Sara cry over her. When we talk about her, she is understanding of my sadness but doesn’t express any of her own. Little comments she makes cause me to think that she hasn’t forgiven our mother. Perhaps she thinks of her 121 only in anger now, if at all. She has to think of her, doesn’t she? I think of her nearly every day though always in a different light. I can’t imagine that thoughts of guilt haven’t entered Sara’s mind for her lack of effort there at the end, or that they won’t eventually catch up to her. Having taken care of my mother every day for the last years of her life I still have guilt for not raking her leaves those first few years into her Alzheimer’s, when I was too busy with my own life to check in on hers. I feel guilt for things I hadn’t thought of for years before, like the time I called her a “cold bitch” days before I left her and home. Or the time when I was a teenager and she seemed genuinely happy to be having a conversation with me about my new friend and her eagerness irritated me. She could read the irritability on my face, so she cut the conversation short. I remember so many moments like that now against my wishes. Sara must have moments like that too. And that kind of guilt, that deep, unrelenting guilt, she too will realize, stems from love. I love my mom. I have to believe that Sara loves her too which is why I won’t cut the flowers off of the Lady’s Mantle in the Rose Garden, where she’s getting married in a few weeks. They will have undoubtedly wilted and dried by that time, but won’t those fallen petals look beautiful on the sidewalk around my sister’s wedding. I promised myself I’d take care of one more thing after finishing up at work today. I’ve kept my mother’s ashes inside, on top of the piano that her mother gave us, right next to that ornate sculpture of a mother holding her child, for a year now. I know she’d rather be outside. I’d never seen her happier than the times we’d come to the garden to walk slowly and enjoy the new blooms at different times of the year. If she had been more able bodied, I know she would have enjoyed walking up into the natural area, where plants grow freely along the creekside and tall with their year-round water supply. 122 I take my backpack with the sealed container out of the rose garden, into the wildflower meadow, all the way back to the trailhead into the natural area. She would have liked to see all of the yellow lichen on tree bark lining this dirt path. She would have like to stop in her tracks, surprised by a squirrel crossing the trail and a bird flying as quickly from one branch to another on her other side. I would have liked the chance to take her on a hike. Why didn’t she reach out to me sooner? Was it pride that kept her from calling me? Was it anger? Maybe she had the right to be angry at her daughters as we left her alone just like everyone else in her life. Near the creek, I can smell those beautiful yellow flowers that you would never blame for what they emit into the air. Western Skunk Cabbage. I keep walking up past the tree line, where I can see out over my city. And I can see the golden Moroni playing his horn on top of the white, angular structure around which our city streets are oriented, first north, first south, first east, first west of the temple. I can see the capitol building, where Utah legislators could do nothing about the federal legalization of gay marriage, to their chagrin I’m sure, but to my sister’s benefit. My sister who will one day soon be getting married to a woman who had the chance to meet our mother, in the rose garden, which I can see from where I’m standing. And from here, when I look south against the mountain I can see where the rock separates to create Millcreek canyon, from where my family only lived a mile. I feel much more at home at this particular spot, where I can see everything. I can see my childhood in a home that made me feel trapped. I can see the garden where my mother and I were freed, where Sara will be freed in a matter of weeks when she starts her own family. I can see my mother from here in a way I was never able to in her home. I feel better leaving her here than I would leaving her in that house, where 123 she was never fully able to be herself in front of her daughters. I wish she knew that I saw her. And I wish I could believe as firmly as she did that one day I’d see her again. 124 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Virago, 1989. Angelou’s story is heartbreaking, but powerfully so. In the past, I have shied away from taking on serious or tragic subject matter from fear of coming off sentimental or cheesy. Angelou’s poignantly told novel gave me the courage to take on tragedy for the sake of something more important than my best quality writing (which up until this point has come through in comedy): honesty. Atwood, Margaret Eleanor. Oryx and Crake. Anchor Books, 2004. Like much of Atwood’s work, this novel has elements of science fiction. It takes place sometime in the future when human-like creations outnumber humans and the natural environment is virtually destroyed. I was able to learn from her ability to make that which is not real seem real through detailed imagery. Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Translated by William Weaver, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1981. This post-modern and meta-fictional text is about the experience of readers reading fiction. It’s original and very funny. While the genre of my novel is realism, I took cues from this book on how to transition for one idea to the next. Calvino uses several points of view, he covers many different points in time that don't all lead from one to the next, and different styles of writing throughout. One important lesson the post-modernists taught us was that experimentation is good. There are not as many strict rules in creative writing as we've come up with. Reading this book reminded me of the freedom I have as a creator. ChurchofJesusChrist.org. 125 This website was useful in portraying the LDS church accurately. One of my characters is an active member of the church, one is no longer but has fond memories of the times she went to church as a kid, and one resents the church. Regardless of which point of view and attitude was discussing the religion in my story, I wanted the information on doctrine to be accurate. On this website I watched talks by the prophets, I read articles targeted specifically at youth and children of the church, and I read excerpts from the Book of Mormon and the Bible. This research not only expanded my own knowledge of the LDS faith, but also made my fictional novel more rigorous. Cwel.usu.edu Utah State University does a lot of research in botany and horticulture. I found this website in particular to be helpful when researching water wise plants suitable for the climate in Utah. Friendsofalta.org This website was a great resource for discovering native species in a particular area, namely Alta. Gills, Michael. Why I Lie. University of Nevada Press, 2002. Michael Gills was my thesis mentor, and I figured it would be best to know his writing style before having him influence mine. This particular book also deals with the theme of parenthood which was relevant to the book I was writing. While I found several aspects of his novel helpful, one of the main things I took from it was the sense of place. Gills takes us to the south and fully immerses us in it down to the 126 materials buildings were made of, and the spices used in recipes of the community. I aimed to do something similar with Utah, the Midwest, in my story. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. James R. Osgood, 1891. Hardy's tragedy about a young woman named Tess is hard to read given the brutal subject matter of rape, loneliness, betrayal, and physical and emotional pain. Many of Tess's struggles were unique to women (not to say that men do not struggle, but generally not in these particular ways). Hardy's novel reminded and encouraged me to write about the distinct ways in which women experience the world. Iannaccone, Laurence R., and Carrie A. Miles. “Dealing with Social Change: The Mormon Church's Response to Change in Women's Roles.” Social Forces, vol. 68, no. 4, 1990 This article discusses the ways in which the LDS church has responded to social change, particularly in relation to women’s empowerment during second wave feminism. My novel deals with women’s roles and how women may be affected (both positively and negatively) by a religious upbringing. I also discuss the particular implications of a lesbian woman growing up in a church resistant to social change. I found the conclusion of this article helpful in that they claim the Mormon church has to strike a balance between older members not being open to change and younger members liable to leave the church without some changes. The article also pointed to the fact that churches that bend completely to society lack credibility and are rendered unnecessary. This insight helped to me view the LDS church in a new light and therefore write a more believable religious character in my novel. 127 Invasive.org I used this website to learn more about the invasive species thriving in Salt Lake City. Joyce, James. Dubliners. Grant Richards Ltd., 1914. This small collection of short stories has a lot to offer a writer. I took cues from two stories in particular, "A Mother" and "The Dead." "A Mother" is about a woman so concerned with status that she sabotages her daughter's chance at actual success. This is interesting in that the mother does not have her daughter's best interest in heart, which is a familiar theme in mother-daughter stories. Having read this story, I allowed myself to make the mother figure in my own story more complicated than a woman who wants the best for her daughters but sometimes fails. She, at times, does not prioritize their wellbeing and success over more shallow goals like her standing in a religious community. Upon my mentor's suggestion, I also used "The Dead" from this collection as a guide on how to end a story. Joyce ends this particular story (and the collection as it appears at the end of the book) by zooming out. The narrator takes us from a specific physical moment in time, to looking at his surroundings outside, to considering the world as a whole and how all three of those things connect. I tried doing the very same thing by ending my story on a Utah Mountainside where my narrator could see physical representations of important themes throughout the story (the LDS temple, Red Butte Garden, the mountain further south by which she grew up, the lawn on which her sister will get married, etc.). Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Harper and Row, 1984. This novel is a work of philosophical fiction dealing with the question of whether to live 128 a life wrought with meaning or to avoid "heaviness" altogether. I used this novel as a guide on how to discuss bigger ideas within a specific story. While I didn't end up writing in the modernist style that Kundera does, I was able to mimic his philosophical quandaries using my first person narrator. She often ponders the essence of guilt and forgiveness. Morris, Keith Lee. The Dart League King. Tin House Books, 2008. This novel follows the lives of several characters over the span of a short period of time. Each chapter switches to the point of view of a different character telling one story from multiple angles. I had originally planned on writing my story from the main character's point of view. After having read this book, I decided to add chapters from the other sister's perspective as their experiences were wildly different (despite living in the same house in childhood). The Dart League King also taught me how to distinguish one voice from another: some characters swear more than others, some are more bitter, less intelligent, funnier, etc. All of these qualities can come through in the voice if written thoughtfully. O'Connor, Flannery. The Complete Short Stories. Farrar, Stratus and Giroux, 1971. O’Connor is a master. My thesis mentor says that he believes everything she ever said. One reason he may have found her so believable is the detail with which she writes characters, and their flaws particularly. In reading her short stories, I paid close attention to the ways in which she explained character’s flaws. She often narrows in on particular mannerisms or phrases that seem insignificant, but later turn out to be quite telling. My story deals in large part with human flaw, so I tried to mimic O’Connor’s style several times. 129 Plantnative.org This website helped me gather information about the native plant species in Utah. Pasupathi, Monisha, and Milton E Strauss. “Primary Caregivers' Descriptions of Alzheimer's Patients' Personality Traits: Temporal Stability and Sensitivity to Change.” Alzheimer's Disease and Associated Disorders, vol. 8, no. 3. Monisha Pasupathi is the Associate Dean of the Honors College. She studied Alzheimer's disease as an undergrad and wrote this article about personality changes in patients with the disease. I found this study to be very helpful in creating a realistic character suffering from Alzheimer's disease. I was relieved to find out that there are significant personality changes among patients as one point of my story was to have the daughter try to understand who her mother was as the daughter grew up (her intentions, her desires, her regrets) as she (the mother) is becoming someone different, and as she is forgetting who she used to be. Pasupathi, Monisha, et al. “Concordance Between Observers in Descriptions of Personality Change in Alzheimer's Disease.” Psychology and Aging, vol. 8, no. 4, 1993. This article is similar to the previous one and I used it for the same purpose. Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1966. This surrealist mystery covers philosophically interesting and important topics in a humorous way. Reading it over the summer reminded me to allow for some funny moments in my story despite it's serious subject matter. Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping. Farrar, Stratus and Giroux, 1980. This novel is about a family of women torn apart by suicide, lifestyle differences, and 130 geographical distance. As the subject matter was similar to my novel, I used this book as a guide on how to create believable female characters that are imperfect yet still likable. I took note of how family functions when the members are estranged. I chose to write my novel in the first person after having read this novel as I felt it capture the female mind better than the third person might have. Saltlake.gaycities.com I visited this website to learn about the gay community in Salt Lake City. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Translated by Robert Baldick, Penguin Books, 1965. While this work of philosophical fiction was challenging to read, I found it useful in that the author put a larger idea on existentialism into a particular character's story. While the goal of my novel is not to write a philosophical treatise, I did include philosophical questions and ideas throughout. Sartre's book was a nice guide on how to do that without detracting too much from the fictional story. Sinor, Jennifer. “Out in the West: The Mormon Church Is Going Mainstream--and Leaving Its Gay Members behind. (Essay).” American Scholar, vol. 80, no. 4, 2011 As a heterosexual woman I have no idea what the experience of a homosexual woman would be like in Salt Lake City, Utah. I turned to resources like this article, which includes several vignettes explaining what a gay person may experience as a Mormon or as a person surrounded by Mormons, to inform my writing of a lesbian character. Stegner, Wallace. Angle of Repose. Braille Library of Victoria, 1972. Our class read Stegner over the winter break and discussed each section in depth every 131 week of the following semester. His novel is about a man writing the history of his grandparents’ marriage, which ended in tragedy. It isn't until later in the novel that the reader finds out he is writing their story to work through his own troubled marriage and decide what he should do in light of their story. This novel made me think hard about the motives of my characters. When children become estranged from their parents, what motivates them to care for one that is dying? Takepart.com This website was another resource I used to learn about the gay community in Salt Lake City. Utahpridecenter.org Same as previous. VisitSaltLake.com Same as previous. Winter, Caroline, et al. “Latter Day Lucre. (Mormon Church's Earnings).” Bloomberg Businessweek, no. 4288, 2012 This article discusses the various sources by which the church earns significant profit. While I didn’t end up writing anything in my novel concerning the LDS church’s finances I found this article helpful in getting me in the mindset of one of my characters. The character is a former Mormon who still harbors some resentment for the church and the doctrine in which she was raised. This is exactly the type of article someone like that would be interested in reading. It was much easier to write from a new point of view with some knowledge that that person would have. 132 Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Hogarth Press, 1925. This novel is about a party, but in true Woolf style it is much deeper and darker than that. The party is representative of life and within it many characters have to deal with death. Mrs. Dalloway in particular contemplates the significance of another character's suicide. I found this scene to be helpful in formulating my own contemplation scene after my mother character dies. To mirror Woolf, I didn't want the scene to be too sentimental. I wanted my character's thought to have a philosophical point while still seeming genuine, as if from the mind of an actual person after losing someone they love. Woolf was certainly able to achieve this in her novel. Wright, Richard. Black Boy. Harper and Brothers, 1945. Wright tells the story of childhood powerfully within just the first few chapters of this novel. I used his introduction as a guide on how to convey a lot of important life events in a short space. An entire lifetime has far too many events to cover in one novel. His book demonstrated to me how to choose moments that resonate and how to skip over periods in time that are less significant to the story. Youn, Monica. “Proposition 8 and the Mormon Church: A Case Study in Donor Disclosure.” George Washington Law Review, vol. 81, 2013 I read this article about the LDS church’s political and moral interest in Proposition 8 for the same reason I read the Winter piece on the money in the church.