Three truths and a lie

When people meet my mother for the first time, there are three things that they invariably comment on: how she carries herself, her hair, and her eyes.

My mom is the poster child for good posture. She has that beautiful, straight backed look that makes you think of balanced invisible books on her head. Her walk is like an announcement of who she is: confident, purposeful, and strong, but with a joyful spring to it. There is a line from a Turgenev novella--Spring Torrents--that describes a character's walk as "[she] walks as if she is bringing your life's happiness to you", and I think every man and possibly every woman my mom has ever walked to would agree with the sentiment where she is concerned.

Good hair is a genetic predisposition in my mom's family; there is not one person who has not had an excellent head of one. Even here, though, my mom stands out, because there never is a hair out of place, from the second she gets up in the morning to the second she lays down at night. I can't recall, for as long as I can remember, anytime when my mom's hair didn't look just perfect. I don't necessarily mean coiffed, although my mom ensures her hair has the right curl and bounce in it with the those soft sponge rollers* that somehow magically make their way to her head without anyone ever being the wise. I mean that her hair simply always looks right, even when there is a gusty wind blowing through it or it's pelted with rain.

*(My Aunt P.--my mom's oldest sister [who is six years younger than her] once said that my mom never goes anywhere without her curlers, an iron, and her lipstick. Left at that, she makes my mom sound like someone who just cares terribly about looking good. The fact is my mom's a terrifically smart, astute, and successful doctor and business woman who cares terribly about not looking slovenly--and that's a completely different thing to care about.)


My mom's eyes aren't exactly large, or deep set, or thickly lashed. They're not doe eyes or cow eyes or puppy eyes. There's nothing spectacular about the color. But...there is something about the way they look at you, something about the way they seem to laugh at you and with you, question you and invite you, seeing into you and through you, that grabs your attention. It is impossible to look away when she locks her gaze on you and, quite frankly, you can't think of a good reason to do so anyway. I've never seen anyone even want to try.

***

I should probably be using a different tense for these past paragraphs. For the past several months, my mom's hair is all but gone. For the past couple of months, her ability to walk and then stand has greatly deteriorated, to the point where she can only get around with the greatest difficulty, and a lot of assistance. And for the past couple of weeks, her eyes don't focus as well, and once in a while the look in them holds no recognition, from a few to sometimes several seconds at a time.

***

I was greatly angered by the book Atonement when I finished reading it a few years ago. I felt cheated and used as a reader, and I felt the points being made about what is real and what is imagined, and the responsibility of the author to the reader with respect to those two circumstances, came at a cost that was unfair to me and the time I had invested in the book and the characters and the plot. Still, here I am, having done somewhat the same thing, and wondering at the end of it all, who does the truth serve, anyway? What good does it do you, to know those physical attributes are no longer applicable to my mom? What good does it do me, to be honest and upfront about what was and what is?

There is no god where I live my reality. What is so terrible about being one where I live my creation, then?