If you’re reading this, you may or may not know my Mom. That’s okay.
I’m going to tell you about her.
When my Mom was a junior, she went to Vermont. I’ve forgotten details about it. I know that she’d become a Mormon by then and
that she was staying with a Mormon family.
It was far from the industrialized rust of Michigan. Away from the complications of parents and
brothers. She was gone for almost a
year. An eon in teenage life.
It’s not even the story.
It’s the way my Mom tells it. The
excited quality of her voice. I’ve tried
to write a poem about it multiple times.
Here’s examples of lines from the poem:
It’s okay to say
Vermont like that,
like a prayer-word,
like a rainstorm—
And this later:
It seems odd to want
my own undoing,
but many times I wished you in Vermont.
Because I wonder what life would have been like for my Mom
if she hadn’t left there. If she’d
stayed. A lot of her story, of the man
who helped to create me and Candace, how young she was, and how it spun her
away, is her own. Only she can tell you
of those later years. I can't retell her story. I can only tell you a story I imagine.
She told me how in Vermont the neighboring asylum wasn’t
great with security and how the full moon drove the patients crazier. She’d find them wandering on the lawns. The father of her host family was a doctor
there. I imagine my mother, long haired
and wild-eyed, racing out in the night, leading these nomads of the mind back
to their rooms. Barefoot in the dew settling on Vermont.
To me, my Mom in Vermont is forever barefoot.
I’m sure she’ll tell you that we, her kids, are her greatest
joy. And I’m sure we are. And like all experiences, it’s hard to say if
we would trade that experience for who we are now. The amalgamation of ourselves is a hard thing
to argue against. The Lord has granted my Mom a lot of strength and foresight
because of her life. You can’t dissect
that out from her.
In Vermont, she lived in a mansion. She was the New Girl. She was alone and full of destiny. She could recreate herself. She could be any version of her she wanted. When I picture her, I don’t want her to meet
my Dad. I want her to stay. Visit her
family in the summers and roadtrip far to the North. Go to Prince Edward Island. Look out over the
ocean. Know that she could swim it if she wanted to.
I’m an adult now. I’m
well adjusted despite the rollercoasters of childhood. Our Mom pulled us through all that. I don’t think she had a bad life or wasted
it. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying that as an adult I want the most happiness for
her. As a child you only want happiness
for yourself. Now I wish I could go back
and give her Vermont. Give her the place
that puts the most light in her voice.
Even if it derailed my life. Even
if I never happened. I would want my Mom
to have any existence she dreamed. Vermont ever after.
