Yesterday I put my arms around my 20-year-old daughter, Mary Susan, and held her tight as I’ve done thousands of times since she was first put in my arms. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of her perfume that has been the same since the days she smelled of baby powder and tearless shampoo. It was the same fragrance that kept me from her room for the first months she was 2,000 miles away at college-until I could begin to count the weeks down before she would be home for Christmas and be mine again.
She is my baby girl of seven children, the last of seven to leave home. When she had married the week before, she was the last of six to get married, when you don’t count my handicapped daughter who will never know that experience. You would think I would be good at it by now, but she was the last.
She hugged me back, and I gritted my teeth, determined she wouldn’t see me cry. But I wasn’t successful. When she let me go and turned to her new husband, waiting at the car, waiting to take her to Texas with him for a three-month internship before returning to school 2,000 miles away, I choked up a little and she caught me.
Walking to the car to get into the car door her husband was holding open, she turned and smiled. “Don’t cry,” she said, not a tear even threatening her eye.
I smiled weakly and waved, then watched as they drove up the same gravel road my children have used to innocently rip my heart out so many times.
She left happy and excited about her new life-just as I wanted her to, just as I have raised her to want. And that was the painful part of it.
From the moment the agony of childbirth turns into the ecstasy of motherhood, children suck the very life out of body and soul. They need, they need, they need, and then they wake up and need again.
They turn into teenagers and still need-rides to everywhere, money for cheerleading uniforms, help with English papers and a safe place to call home. They leave for college and still need. There are still English papers to read and a steady stream of expenses and problems to solve.
Then they find the young man or woman you have prayed they would find-that perfect person that you have picked out for them in your heart years before. You almost recognize that person before they do, and you rejoice for their happiness and understand their total immersion in their new love.
The wedding plans take every minute of your life and a lot of your savings, and suddenly they are married and walking away quickly to a tackily decorated car. But wait, there’s a hug. The same soft hair against your cheek, the same perfume. Then they’re gone for a honeymoon in an exotic place you’ve never been.
The daughter who has faithfully called every day she has been in college doesn’t call the whole week. She can’t, of course, and you convince yourself she would if her cell phone service allowed her to. Then the day she is to come home you find the message on the telephone whose message light doesn’t blink anymore.
On the way to the airport after her first night with her new husband, she left you a message. She thought of you! She’s thankful for all you did for the wedding. And she loves you. She still loves you.
It makes you so happy your heart hurts and you save the message, wishing it would never erase.
Then you realize you are the needy one. For now at least, until the first baby starts teething or falls down the stairs, she doesn’t need you. You still need her like you need fresh air after being in a stuffy room or that cold glass of water after an afternoon outside.
You need her , and you are totally dependent upon her to fulfill your needs-needs she isn’t even aware of because she needs no one but her husband. And who is he? I’ve been with him fewer times than the number of fingers I have. He promised as he shut the car door he would take care of her. But will he make sure her chicken has no veins showing in it, does he care her heart was broken in the tenth grade, does he know how excited she was when she made varsity cheerleader?
Will he want her to see me? Will he convince her someone else’s vegetarian lasagna is as good as mine? Will he think I’m a good enough grandmother to take care of his children? Will he let her call me? Will he let her fly home even if he has to work? Will he write a letter to Dear Abby about me? Will he let me come live with them when I am old and alone?
My head knows she is doing what I raised her to do, but how does my heart ever agree to understand? Where do I put all the memories of her, of all my children? Where can I put them where the very recalling of them won’t leave a raw, aching hole?
I don’t know, and I don’t know when I’ll know, when I’ll know where I can keep them without pain.
I just know it won’t be in her bedroom. For it is there that every pillow and discarded T-shirt still clings to the memory of her perfume.
