She had the softest hands. I remember wondering how they stayed that way when everything else had turned rough. Stroking the backs of her hands was like running your fingers along the cheeks of a baby. She smelled like Chanel number five, like a woman. Her lips were often red, varied shades like “a perfect coral” or “coming up roses.” Her eyes were green and easy, they smiled without the turn up from her lips. She had blond hair the color of honey that glistened in the sunlight. Her laugh lit up a room. She had that sixth sense of intuition that must have skipped right past me. She was strong and compassionate. She loved children and animals. She was an elementary school teacher. She cried at movies and weddings. She was always looking for the best in people. She gave the most creative presents. She made everything a little bit more beautiful.
We liked to make chocolate chip pancakes, my mom and I, with whipped cream on top. We liked to drink Earl Grey tea with two raw sugars and a teaspoon full of the dry coffee mate. We watched “Felicity” together. We liked singing along to the oldies. We went to the beach every summer and walked barefoot in the sand, swam in the ocean, and told each other stories about everything. She told me I should be a writer or an actress because those were always what I dreamed I would be. She believed in me. She taught me to believe in myself. She told me I was beautiful when no boys asked me to freshman prom. She was front row at my first runway show and all of my theatre productions. She was my biggest fan.
She was goofy, like me. She would sing and dance and spin around the kitchen in her apron with the bow tie using her rubber spatula as a microphone. She rode the shopping carts in store parking lots even when people stared. She made me laugh until I cried. She swore off sweets at least once a week. She threw the greatest parties. When I was seven years old my mom taught me how to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. The “secret family recipes” I learned the entire catalogue by age eleven. I owe all of my kitchen skills to her, though she would argue all day that I am more talented, more creative, and an overall better cook than she ever was.
Chapter 1 Come December, Come May
I graduated from high school in June of 2003, marching forward in my hunter green robe and cap and reading from “Oh the Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss while my family cheered and videotaped the entire ceremony. I remember I stood next to my boyfriend at the time, and underneath my gown I wore a pink flowered dress and silver sandals, my long hair whipping through the wind and curling at the ends, every few strands getting stuck in my pale pink lip gloss. I don’t remember feeling nervous for the speech, but I imagine my palms beaded with sweat as they usually do when I’m apprehensive, and I’m sure that my voice shook softly for the first few moments I spoke into the microphone. My family thought it was such a big deal—my speech that day—but really it just marked the end of my senior class presidency, the final time I would stand in front of my high school peers and make a speech about the future as if I knew what it might hold for any of us.
There’s something so final about graduation, tossing your cap up into the air, declaring your freedom. Shedding tears over people that you may or may not know six months from then. I felt alive that day—as if my life was finally beginning—an excitement that comes with the unknown. I went home to a house filled with love, with food, with family and friends. The house that I grew up in on Manorwood Dr., that always smelled like fresh baked bread on the weekends, where I had summer pool parties, got my first bee sting, and made mud pies with my brothers in the wheelbarrow on the back porch. I barely noticed the ‘for sale’ sign today, the one that I had observed daily for the past three months as I thought about my move to Santa Barbara for college and my parents’ move to San Francisco for my dad’s new job. I thought how home would never be home again, or at least it would not be the home I grew up in, where my initials were carved into the deck alongside my brothers and where the rhododendrons grew so high up they hid the houses on either side of the fence. The fireplace I took awkward prom pictures in front of, the driveway where Adam Wadsworth kissed me in the rain, and the bedroom that I grew out of long ago, with Tom Cruise posters that covered so much wall space you could barely see the pale pink paint peeking through.
I rushed into the house hand in hand with my boyfriend, who is nameless because I knew I would break up with him after the party that night. He had told me some row boat analogy the week before about how I would never go on his rowboat because I was drifting in my own; but he would go on mine, and I took this to mean it was time to dump him before he got the chance to dump me. My mom was putting the finishing touches on the food she had prepared; an array of petite fours, finger sandwiches, and fruit and cheese selections. She looked beautiful, in her navy dress and red lipstick standing over the table of goodies and smiling at me when I walked in. Her Martha Stewarteque table spread looking straight out of Better Home and Gardens with a lemon centerpiece overflowing with fragrance next to the freshly cut stargazer lilies and dahlias from our garden.
“Thanks mom! Everything looks great,” I kissed her cheek and she handed me a big yellow box from under the table.
“Happy graduation sweetie,” she said as I untied the large pink ribbon that covered the package, tearing at the corners and discarding the paper onto the floor.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, my eyes rushing to explore the fabric as I anxiously picked up the quilt out of its box and ran my fingers up and down it. The soft pink flannel that lined the back comforted the backs of my hands.
“I’ve been working on it for awhile. It’s all your favorite fabrics, for you to take to Santa Barbara, a little piece of home.”
“Oh, I love it mom! Thanks!” I gave her a hug and admired the beautiful pinks, blues, and purples of my quilt, with butterflies soaring across the front and with my mother’s inscription on the back, “to my beautiful Ashley, spread your wings and fly, I love you.”
The day flew by, sunny afternoon sun turning into brisk Seattle evening, and people reached for their coats and for a second piece of pink chiffon cake with fresh strawberries on top. My brothers were deep in discussion about some sports team I had no interest in, and my parents were out on the deck, visiting with my aunt Gloria and uncle Dean, who I adore. I sat in the green recliner of our family room, rocking back and forth with my three-year-old nephew Chase on my lap, singing him ‘tura-lura’, an Irish lullaby that my mom used to sing to me. Cinderella hummed on the TV screen as his eyes became heavy with sleep. I would miss him the most, I thought. Miss his little fingers that still wrapped around mine, and his sweet sighs that came only from a deep, dreamful sleep. I kissed his forehead and laid him down, going back outside to say goodbye to family and friends that were beginning to trickle out, and greet those that were just now trickling in.
That summer seemed to speed up, with the ease of laziness that permeates the air along with the heat that graces Seattle with its presence for a few weeks a year. I had broken up with my boyfriend and eased into a summer romance with Adam Wadsworth, the boy who gave me shivers when we kissed, the boy who was too dangerous to be a boyfriend, but who my mom said looked at me like I was the sun and the moon. We would go to matinee movies and eat chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on my front lawn, spreading out huge beach towels and staring at each other for hours. His blue eyes would warm my brown ones and in those moments I wished I wasn’t moving so far away, but I guess those are the kind of moments you have when you know it’s not going to last forever. At night we would sneak into the neighborhood clubhouse and make out, skinny dipping in the pool after dark where the bats would fly above and he would tell me that he loved me; but I would never say it back. When it was midnight and curfew, we would stay a little longer, in the struggle toward freedom that comes when you get a taste of something you desire and keep wanting more; like a baby’s first sugar, or when you fall in love for real. My mom would wait up for me and be standing in the window when he drove me home, his green convertible shining its lights on her disapproving face, covering a smile, until I came inside. I would tell her everything and she would tell me I missed curfew, but she knew just as well as I did that curfew nights were almost over and that these talks we had into the wee morning hours wouldn’t happen for very much longer.
In the mornings my mom and I would swim laps together in the pool, where we played Beach Boys music and pretended we were somewhere tropical instead of in the suburbs of Seattle. We would play “what if” games about the future and the boyfriends I would have in California, and how things would be different when I became a famous actress in the next ten years or so.
“And I’ll travel everywhere with you and we can get manicure/pedicures every week!” My mom squealed like a teenager, more excited about my dreams than I was.
“Well, you can come to Santa Barbara all the time to visit and we can go to the beach,” I said.
My mom and I love the beach in a sick obsessed way that means we go there even in the winter time in Washington, where the rain pours and the water is so cold that you don’t want to touch it with a fifty-foot pole. But we roll up our pant legs, put on our hooded sweatshirts, and take off our socks and shoes, running in and out of the water, our bare toes in the sand, until one of us can’t feel our feet and then we go back to the hotel room and soak them in hot water, painting our toe nails red and having dance parties to bad radio music from a staticky clock radio.
After swimming we would go home and eat oatmeal with fresh blueberries, and cinnamon toast on homemade bread. We would let our hair air dry on the porch swing and make fun of how hers was curly and mine was wavy without a blow dryer and then we would go to a movie or go shopping or go watch the meerkats at the zoo burrow in and out of their holes in the dirt. Some days we went to the valley to get farm fresh eggs and daffodils from a small roadside stand where we dropped our three dollars into an honor system tin can with a tiny slit on the top. On our way back we would pass a pasture with a donkey, the same donkey that always stood there, who stood out because his donkey parts were abnormally large and we would look at each other and laugh hysterically, until tears crept their way into the corners of her eyes, and my side ached with pain and satisfaction.
We took a cake decorating class together that summer. It was on the top floor of a J.C. Penny’s far away from our house. The meeting room seemed hidden, tucked away, as if it were its own little compartment away from the riffraff of the store itself. Every Saturday we would arrive at 10am armed with two sheet cakes each as our blank canvas, and pounds worth of store bought decorators icing that we were suppose to prepare ourselves but always ended up buying from our neighborhood Top Foods bakery department. We learned how to make roses and do borders. We learned how to decorate themed cakes with balls and clowns, my mom and I both hated clowns and laughed nearly the entire class when we were forced to make them. We knew that never in our lives would either of us again attempt to make a clown cake, ever. But that was the beauty of the class. That was the beauty of summertime.
~
Before I knew it September had arrived, and something inside me wasn’t ready to leave as I packed up the rest of my things into various size cardboard boxes and peeled the rest of Tom off my wall. I folded my butterfly quilt neatly and tucked it into my red Burton back pack and I let my eyes wander the ways of my empty room, looking even tinier now; void of all life.
“This is the last of it,” I called to my dad down the hall and he came to retrieve the final boxes, both filled with shoes.
“How many pairs of shoes do you really need Missy?” he asked, calling me by the nickname my family still seems to stick to.
“A girl can never have too many shoes,” I smiled.
I walked down stairs to see the piles of boxes stacked by the door, the majority of them holding clothes and shoes. I never thought about how odd it was that eighteen years of my life fit neatly into twelve boxes, sealed up tightly with tape and labeled precisely with categories. Now I think of it just as stuff, the stuff on my journey to find home; a feeling that doesn’t fit into any box and can’t be labeled or categorized.
Tomorrow I was leaving for Santa Barbara, and to ensure that I looked the part I had been running six miles a day and laying out in the hammock in the afternoons, sunning my buns in a bikini and oversized sunglasses. I put some blond streaks in my hair too—to my parents horror—and I was just getting back from an afternoon with Adam Wadsworth at a hippie/reggae concert in downtown when I walked into an unsettling emotional atmosphere; my parents sitting at the kitchen table looking unnerved.
“What’s the matter?” I asked walking in from the garage.
“Oh, nothing” my mom said, diverting her eyes from mine and managing a rapid smile.
And I continued to change for the gym and rushed out the door, not waiting to see if this would be the birds and the bees talk that I had avoided all of these years.
When I arrived home two hours later, both my brothers were over, Adam from college at Western, and Ryan home from a business trip. Tonight would be our last dinner as a family, and so I thought nothing of their presence as I ran in to give them both hugs and kisses in my sweaty gym attire, grabbing my three year old nephew Chase and swinging him onto my hip with showers of kisses. I remember everyone looked so worried, but at the time, I thought it was just nervous anxiety at the idea of change.
“Ashley, sit down,” my mom looked at me, but not in the eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting on our green and red sofa that reminded me of Christmas time.
“I had my doctor’s appointment for my back yesterday,” mom said.
“Is it okay?” I asked.
No one was looking at me and I could see the red in Adam’s eyes now, after the fact.
“Sweetie, I have cancer,” her words came out through a cracked voice and I could feel everyone swallowing tears.
“What?!”
“The doctor found that I have cancer, that’s why my back’s been hurting, I have two tumors on my spine.”
And I heard the words but I felt them first and I didn’t know what to do besides burst out my thoughts.
“Well, what can they do? How bad is it?” I choked.
“They’re not sure yet, they have to do some tests, blood tests, and an MRI and we’ll know early next week,” her voice remained steady and her eyes inquired for my reaction
“Early next week? Well, I want to wait, I can’t leave tomorrow, I can’t!”
And all there was after my protest was a silence so quiet that I could hear each of my thoughts as they whipped in and out of my mind like the wind through a long narrow tunnel. I shifted Chase onto the floor and sat down beside him, his three year old eyes not understanding my eighteen year old tears, he stared.
*
“Stage three kidney cancer; a rare form that only affects 20,000 victims,” the doctor said as we all sat quietly in the tiny rectangular room that smelled of drying paint and hospital.
“Usually, it affects smokers, and since you are not a smoker, there’s a chance that its stress related,” he went on.
“It has spread to your blood stream, to your brain, and to three vertebrae of your spine, also residing primarily in your liver and kidneys.” He said it so matter-of-factly that I felt like slapping him in the face just so he could feel one one-millionth of the sting that the rest of us there felt. My tears flowed openly, mimicking the tears of both my brothers, and my dad held my mom’s hand; both of them dry eyed.
“We will do surgery in two weeks, removing as many tumors as we can, taking out two vertebrae and replacing them with a titanium rod. We will follow up with radiation to treat the tumors that are unreachable by surgery,” the doctor went on but in honesty I stopped listening at this point and started praying, I begged God to save her, to save my family, I told Him I would do anything and everything for the rest of my life for Him, if he would do this for me.
I drove her twice a week to her radiation treatments in Seattle. I waited for her in the office outside the room, where I saw the faces of women going through the same thing she was—some younger, some older—all fighting to live a little bit longer. I used to look into their eyes to try and see their pain, but what I usually saw was my own pain staring back at me.
In December, the radiation was pronounced ‘unsuccessful’ and we started a round of chemotherapy treatments both in office and at home. My dad was traveling back and forth each week from San Francisco, back to his business and forth to be with us. When he was away I gave her her shots, she told me she liked it better when I did it, that I had soft hands and a gentler touch. But I knew she only said this because of my immense fear of needles, because if she wasn’t stronger than me to talk me through it, I would have broken down every evening.
During most afternoons my aunt Gloria would be over, spreading her beauty and warmth over our house with her love and the meals she would cook. She is the most like my mother, her sense of humor and kindness mirroring my mother’s nature precisely. I can’t understand their connection because I don’t have a sister, but they seemed to relax each other, to put each other at ease in a way that I could never do for her myself. I was thankful for these moments in the day, the heavy weight taken away for glimpses of an afternoon, where everything felt comfortable and the way it should be.
I slept in her bed at night and listened to her breathing, much like she used to do when I was a baby. She told me she would wake up six times a night and put her finger underneath my nose when I was sleeping, just to make sure I was still breathing in my bassinet next to her bed. Now, I would wake up in cold sweats of panic, frantically listening for her breath and crying tears of relief upon hearing it. I never felt fully asleep or entirely awake, I was somewhere in between, where dreams and nightmares align in the light of the day.
The day in February when Hospice brought a hospital bed to our downstairs family room is the day my childhood home became dark in my memory. I lived in that house all my life, my entire existence was wrapped up in it, wrapped up in her. I had Christmas mornings there with eggs Benedict and a real live Christmas tree and footy pajamas. I lived for the smell of freshly baked bread on the weekends and that faint scent of Pinesol from the linoleum floor. I loved when it started getting cold and we would light a fire and fight over marshmallows for our hot chocolate. I love that she made us real hot chocolate, not the powder stuff. Now, when I go home to Seattle I cannot even drive down our street, afraid a glimpse of the house will wash over the light with the dark. My memory refuses to separate the two.
I remember little pink colored throw up cups from the hospital, placed all around our house, white sheets that looked scratchy with dark blue lines down one side. I tossed these sheets and only put on high thread count Egyptian cotton, cheery, colorful sheets. I remember telling the same stories five days in a row because she started forgetting them. My brothers painted her bedroom a deep, dark red, because she’d always wanted it that color. I remember the shower being installed in our downstairs bathroom because she couldn’t make it upstairs anymore at all.
I remember watching so many cooking shows I thought I would have enough recipes to last forever. I remember wondering how I would ever get through life without her, holding her hands, still so soft, and telling her I loved her just so she would remember, just so I wouldn’t forget how much. I remember when my brother downloaded all the family video tapes and we watched them together, it was the first time I ever saw my dad actually cry. I remember our last Christmas together how I went to four malls looking for the little Italian hand painted music box I had to get for her. I remember how hard she cried when she opened it and it played our song. I remember sitting there unwrapping presents under the tree and knowing that Christmas would never be the same again. I remember watching my brothers and dad doing the same. I remember going to the family room to open stockings and having to wait for her to get in and out of her wheelchair to lie down. I remember cooking the eggs Benedict myself that year. I remember cooking Christmas dinner myself that year. I remember wondering how I would ever learn to master the perfect deviled eggs with so little practice. I remember burning two pie crusts before I finally got one right. I remember when she came home from her second surgery a few weeks after Valentine’s Day and she couldn’t make it up the stairs, the stairs she carried me up as a child. I remember thinking that time would only move quickly now, even though everything in me wished it to slow down.
In March by oldest brother, Ryan, took me to visit all the colleges I was accepted to. I had reapplied after last year, when Santa Barbara wouldn’t hold my admission I decided not to go there, because I couldn’t imagine going to a school that wasn’t understanding enough to hold my admission at a time like this. I applied everywhere this year, places I never thought I would get into, and ones I knew that I would. In the end there were ten schools on my list, and Ryan insisted we see them all. Looking back, this was probably an attempt to get me out of the house, out of the state, to shake my depression away for a week or so. We rented a convertible in Los Angeles and drove to all of the California schools I was considering: Malibu, for Pepperdine, UCLA, Santa Cruz, Cal- Poly, and San Francisco; a blur of beaches and college towns and cities and restaurant stops. Our hair blowing with the top down as we drove up the 101. We talked about how things would be now, me unable to let go of holding on tightly to my belief she would get better, and Ryan telling me to “expect the worst, and hope for the best.” He said that’s all we can do in life, and I told him we can pray.
“I gave up on that a long time ago,” he said, his eyes fixed on the carpet of our hotel room floor.
“You can’t,” I told him.
And that was the first time I realized that one of us no longer believed she would get better.
After California, we flew to Texas. It was my first time ever being there besides a brief drive through on a road trip when I was younger, when we blasted country music and all sang along to ‘Amarillo by Morning’ while my brother Adam stuck his huge smelly feel right in front of the AC vents just so I would get a whiff of the odor in the airflow to the backseat. We stopped at this tiny place for breakfast in Texas somewhere, and we drank ice tea with fresh lemons out of huge glass jars and we ate tortillas and chorizo with salsa on top, all of us regretting it a few miles down the road where we spent the next hour trading off time in the bathroom of a tiny gas station, where no one spoke English and there were only paper towels available to wipe with. Coming here now, six years later, with Ryan, was a completely different experience. We flew into San Antonio to look at Trinity, a small liberal arts school with a down to earth feel and a sun so warm that it made even a Texas skeptic like me believe. It wasn’t love at first sight when I looked at the small campus, its red brick buildings and large oak trees adorning it with southern charm. But my best friend Stephanie was at Baylor, three hours away, and the trees were blossoming with springtime, and there was a feeling here that I hadn’t felt in the harshness and superficial appeal of California and its beautiful people.
I came home undecided, and upon my arrival I remember my mom looked better, healthier.
“I should go away more often!” I said, hugging her lightly. She had become so fragile now that I felt like the slightest movement may crush her breakable bones.
“I missed you! I’m feeling good today,” she said.
She was sitting up in bed eating eggs and color had returned to her rather jaundiced cheeks. She was wearing the hot pink Juicy sweat-suit I had given her that matched mine and I sat next to her in bed for a long time that day, telling her about our trip to college campuses.
“Where do you think Missy?” She said, and my dad listened eagerly from across the room.
“I dunno yet. Probably California, maybe Cal-Poly, so I can be close to you and Dad,” I said.
“Don’t base your decision on that,” my mom said, her eyes looking downward.
“You’re going to be fine mom, look at you!” I said.
“Well, just make sure you choose for you, not for being close to me,” she said.
“I will, but I want to be close to you, so I can drive home on weekends.”
Later that night she would tell me she wasn’t getting any better. She would tell me that I needed to be strong, that I needed to move forward, that she needed to know my decision so she could hold onto it, so she would know I would be okay. That’s the night I gave up on God; that I knew Ryan was right, that I decided to let anger take over my sadness and embrace my whole body, letting my faith float away.
A few days later I got a letter in the mail, from the modeling agency in Milan that my Seattle modeling agency had sent my portfolio to. They wanted me to come there for the summer, to test shoot, to do the fall runway shows. I ran to tell my mom, who was thrilled, and I knew this is what I wanted to do; this is how I would leave everything behind. My dad was not as thrilled with the idea, the realist in the family, he said college came first, I needed an education, and I was too smart to get by on my looks. And that I’d gotten too thin in these past months and it wasn’t okay, that I was staying and going to school, period. But in the afternoons my mom and I would talk about my adventures in Italy, about my fame and couture fashion, about the cities I would visit, the people I would meet, the dream I would live. The next day she would forget everything, she would re-read the letter, look at the pictures, and we would have the same conversation, but I never tired of telling her.
In May, mother’s day came and went. I made brunch and I gave her embroidered pillow cases, green with bright yellow tulips. My brothers came over and we all sat around the living room, watching her sleep through the day, holding her hand late at night. I wonder now if it hurt Ryan the most, the oldest of my brothers, because he had been with her the longest, because his son would never get to know her in a real way, but only through the memories that would escape him and be replaced by false realities that he would cling to later in life. Or maybe Adam was hit the hardest, not yet finding his way without her. But my dad sat in silence, holding it all in, getting angry, detaching himself; and for that he would hurt the most, silencing his pain. He would never be what I needed, my dad. He would never understand me in any real way; until later when he realized I am just like her.
My dad came in my room the next morning and told me that she had died in her sleep. He said it aloud and then he walked out and my brother Adam sat next to me on my bed crying; but I couldn’t muster the tears. My life felt like a bad dream, like a haze had washed over everything beautiful and repainted it with shades of grey and black. The sun shone that day through my window but I refused to see it, the tiny dots of light that it spread across my pale pink walls and stoic face. Ryan came over later, eyes blood shot from loss, and I envied the emotions that poured so freely out of his body; my body seemed empty and void, stripped of any life.
The following Monday we held her service, a life celebration with nothing that involved death: no casket, no burial, and no mention of the word. We played slideshows and people sang and friends hugged me all in a blur of black and sniffles and my internal screams that I stifled in the face of my family members. Adam Wadsworth held my hand and sat next to me as I sipped a glass of water and gazed off into the empty space that nothing seemed to fill.
“Do you need anything?” I remember him asking, but I didn’t respond. After all, what was there left to need on a day like today?
“I want to go home,” I said finally, glancing around at sympathetic stares and saddened, empathetic head tilts.
“I want to get out of here,” I said louder.
“Okay, just a little while longer,” he said, his voice calm, soothing. His purple shirt tucked into his black dress pants, his blond hair slicked into a perfect mold. I’ll always remember how handsome he looked that day, among all those other people. It’s funny how memories work that way.
Time passed by and we finally left, going to my aunt’s house a few blocks from the church, opening bottle after bottle of wine. No one cared that I was drinking or how much, no one seemed to care about anyone but themselves and their own pain, though I tried to feel the connection we had to each other, I tried to feel something. I worried most that my brothers would drink and drive, but even this thought washed away with the wine and the dark and the night hushing my thoughts. I don’t remember who drove me home, or how I got to bed, but the next morning I woke up feeling like maybe she was still downstairs; maybe I could kiss her cheek and feel the softness of her hands against mine one more time. But I was the only one home.
I walked downstairs sometime between afternoon and evening, silence ached against the walls of the house like my head pounded on both sides of my brain and I saw the white envelope sitting on the breakfast bar in the kitchen. I forgot she had written me a letter, I didn’t know when I would receive it, but as soon as I saw my name in plain black ink I tore open the licked-on seal. I read the letter now, sure she had left us, and afterward, I read it once more. Later that day my brothers and I went to the ocean to spread some of her ashes; we drove six hours to take her to the place where she loved to dip her toes in the sand and search for seashells in the low tides. She wrote letters for all of us, but to me she wrote two—one for whenever and one for my wedding day. Maybe that’s why I’m so scared to attach myself to another person, because when I finally do, it will mean I no longer belong to her. That second letter is always hovering, though tucked away safely in a safety deposit box thousands of miles from me; somewhere in the San Francisco bay area. I hear it sometimes, calling me softly home.
