Here’s to you, ma

by Marcella

“At thirty-four I became the matriarch of my family.”

So writes Terry Tempest Williams in Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, her memoir/exploration of what was happening to the birds near her home in Utah  when the Great Salt Lake began to rise to unprecedented levels.  I had to read the book for a class a couple of years ago, and it’s on my mind tonight for the above quote.  I was thinking about my mom, wishing I could call her and ask for advice, but she’s in Colombia, her own place of history and family. “I can’t call her,” I thought, “so this is what it would be like if she were dead. I’d want to talk to her, but couldn’t.” And then I began to think about how someday she WILL be dead, and I won’t have her to talk to at all.  It’s not like she’s very good at giving advice– she’d rather talk about work or her friends or even the dog than think about a useful way to answer my questions–but  I’m finding that there’s something nice about at least having a mom to call.  Like, just the fact that someone who loves me unconditionally exists and is available to call is nice. Even if she gives me shitty advice, or in most cases, hardly even listens. She hears, but listens… no.

As I lay on my bed thinking about this–mom, not having a mom anymore (Tempest Williams’ mother and grandmother both die of cancer in her book), being a matriarch, and being old and established enough to be a matriarch, I began to feel rather doomed.  I, who want my legacy to be in books and parchment and words, began to think about how sad it must be to finally be at that place–alone, the only one of your kind–and what it must feel like.  Like being the only person left in the world?  Probably not. That’s pretty dramatic. But it’s also incomprehensible to me right now.

Incomprehensible, but spooky.