The Linchpin
Margo Griffin
Mama and I smiled at each other in the large mirror above the sinks as we washed our hands with the sweet-smelling, wintergreen-scented soap you could only find in the bowling alley bathroom at our weekly mother-daughter league. Too weak to bowl now, Mama came to the alley each week to cheer me on. The bathroom soap smells like Grandpa's chewing tobacco and the homemade sachets Mama placed in our drawers and closets to discourage field mice from taking up camp in our home again.
“I hid your birthday gift in my closet, but you can’t open it until your tenth birthday,” she said.
“But that’s two months away!” I protested.
My birthday did seem a lifetime away, yet time hadn't stopped or slowed. Mama's cancer made a final meal of her insides the night before I turned ten, and despite her oncologist's brutal honesty, her death caught me off guard more than mice in a sock drawer ever could.
Instead of blowing out candles and eating cake, my father and I spent most of my birthday going through pictures of Mama and making funeral arrangements.
"You look so much like your Mama," my father said when we finished, but did not look at me as he said it.
Later that night, I found my father passed out on the couch. He looked like a damp old sock wrinkled up in a ball, his cheeks still wet and an empty bottle of bourbon at his side. As my father slept, I went into my parents' bedroom closet. There, wrapped in my favorite baby blue colored paper, was Mama's gift. I gently pulled back the paper from my present and slid the tape recorder box and two cassettes out from the packaging as gingerly as I would pull Mama's arms from her sleeves when chemo left her too tired and fragile to undress for bed.
I inserted the first tape labeled first into the tape player, and my knees buckled when I heard my mother's voice.
"We tried for so long. I almost couldn't believe the miracle that would someday be you!" Mama recounted. “And you were so comfortable inside my belly, you never wanted to come out. You fought the doctor off for as long as you could, but you were meant for my arms. And when we brought you home, I got lost swimming in your sea-green eyes for hours at a time.”
I alternately laughed and cried as Mama retold her favorite stories of my childhood.
Finally, I inserted the tape labeled second. Mama's voice sounded as faint and hoarse as it did in those few weeks leading up to her death. My chest tightened as Mama told stories of what our future might have been.
“We’d have lunch at Ruby’s after spending hours looking for the perfect ruby red prom dress and we’d sit on their patio by the garden with all the tulips. I’d whistle louder than anyone else in the crowd at your graduation until you blush as the Dean hands you your diploma,” she said. “I’d brush your hair while you put in Nana’s earrings on your wedding day. And then, one day soon after, I’d come to visit you in the hospital, and you would be holding your beautiful baby girl in your arms,” Mama’s voice cracked as she continued and said, “It will be that moment you’ll realize just how much I love you!”
Mama had gifted me her memories and dreams for my future.
I rewound the tapes, and replayed them again and again until my stomach hurt so bad it felt as if a bowling ball had launched into my gut and split me right down the middle, leaving my ribs strewn across the floor like bowling pins.
I watched my ribs float by me in a river made of tears when a wooden ten-pin appeared with a baby mouse at its helm. The tiny mouse drew near and wedged the pin under my arm, steering me through my grief toward the scent of wintergreen.
Margo Griffin has worked in public education for over thirty years and is the mother of two daughters and to the best rescue dog ever, Harley. Margo's work has appeared in interesting places such as, Bending Genres, MER, HAD, The Fiery Scribe, Maudlin House and Roi Fainéant Press. You can find her on X/Twitter @67MGriffin.