WARMTH
My earliest memory: I’m sure it actually happened, that it wasn’t embellished from photographs or retellings because it resounds with a visceral imprint that can only come from first hand experience. But it goes against all that I knew about my mother. It is of her being tender. She was not a tender woman so I question its occurrence but the memory is strong and I like to hold on to it.
We’re in a sunlit room. There’s a couch but she prefers the floor. Cradling me in her lap, she lightly rocks back and forth, humming an ancient lullaby. On her red sweater is an embroidered tree with ruby berries that rise as silky bumps. Like a type of braille they read comfort and security. I run my fingertips over them, falling in and out of sleep. On the wall, sunlight dances with shadows of windswept trees.
Seven years later, on a warm summer night, my mother lost a grueling battle with cancer and left behind more vivid memories of her pale complexion, weak cold hands, and the staid hospital smells of bleach and urine. A darkness fell on the house. I adapted and silently observed all the changes. My 13 year old sister ran away from home (to the backyard shed). My father napped on the shag carpet in the living room, away from the television, away from us, alone with his loss and the hospital debt. With a phone book as a pillow he escaped to restless slumbers. We were early immigrants, strangers in a strange land with sparse community. We shut the curtains and rebuilt a world within.
Within our walls though, we had freedoms uncommon amongst our peers. Nothing was off limits, my mom’s preserved dresser, our dowry package which sat fading in the attic. Grandma in her old world ways, assembled choice items salvaged from her homeland exodus in hopes that some high quality grooms might be lured by oxidized chopsticks and mothball scented fabrics. My father’s storage cabinet was the motherlode. Sixty four little sliding drawers, all filled with thoughtfully categorized nuts and bolts, fishing lures, colorful wire, the artifacts of a family man. Each item superseded its original function and doubled as props for a lonely child's play. My bed became a broadway theater stage, the bathroom a beach resort, the kitchen a 5 star restaurant. My father never once complained about the displacement of his things.By fall, a mountain of hospital bills overshadowed all else. We cut back on every aspect of our lives. My father borrowed money from his brother which eventually strained their relationship, cutting us off from a haven of Sunday meals and small gifts.That winter we turned down the thermostat. Each room was connected via an extensive tunnel system of metal heating ducts which led to a central dormant furnace. Colonies of ants could be seen crawling in and out of the floor vents. I watched them parade in meandering lines carrying small grains of sand to build a home under the one that crumbled around us.
My sister and I sat by an old kerosene heater watching reruns of Bewitched. With a wiggle of a nose, magical poof clouds transformed whatever was in its wake. We were addicted to the ease with which any problem was solved. It offered the much needed false assurances regarding the underlying dangers of accidental house fires and poisonous fumes.
On Christmas morning my dad came into our bedroom, dressed in a red v-neck sweater, a gift from my mother, and declared,“We shall have warmth”. Still groggy from sleep, we followed him into the family room where in a triumphant gesture, he flicked the thermostat up to 78 degrees. As the distant low rumblings of the furnace stuttered and kicked, and the fan that distributed the heat cranked to top circulation, I ran to the vents to witness the ants in a greater state of panic than I scattering in all directions. Before I could turn and warn the family, a maelstrom of sand and insect shot out, blasting our Christmas spirit to oblivion. A poof cloud of harsh reality materialized in every room transforming our hopeful mood into despair. I remember my father’s red teary eyes, and me hoping it was from loose dirt. I remember the unsettling warmth of the room and the persistent hum of the furnace.