January 5, 2015

Jo closed the magazine, placed it on the table and, finally, decided to walk through the door. She was done, and she knew it. She ignored the trembling of her fingers as she clasped the overstuffed purse beside her. Lips and back straight with decision, Jo rose from the old-fashioned couch. She blinked, momentarily surprised at herself, and realized she really was going to leave, permanently. Her eyes focused steadily ahead, and she took a step.

“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded the room’s only other occupant, a steel-grey-haired woman enthroned in her stiff pine rocker, plucking querulously at her scratchy afghans.

Jo wondered how the familiar door could seem so far away. Steadily, she put one foot in front of the other. She pushed through the tense air as if she were wading neck-deep through a pond, thick with clinging water plants.

The old woman snorted. “You never did know what was good for you. You mouse. Afraid of a little truth? Go ahead and leave, cry baby, but take that magazine with you. Maybe it’ll teach you not to be so worthless.”

Her heart was pounding in her ears, thankfully drowning out the eternal harping of the voice behind her. No more “improving” magazines to read, thought Jo, feeling lighter as the door swam closer. No more sarcasm, or wet blankets, or dripping layers of … of undeserved guilt.

“Don’t you walk away when I’m talking to you. You listen to me, young lady! I’m your mother!”

Jo stopped, one hand on the doorknob, and sighed a big, deep, cleansing breath, up for air for the first time in her life. She hung onto the reassuring solidness of the door, validating her own strength of purpose in the worn wood that had withstood years of kicks and slams by the house’s matriarch. She was done. Done with it all.

Turning slightly, Jo gave a long, last look upon the woman behind her. The unusually firm, quiet decision in her face surprised the old lady into momentary silence.

The two women looked at each other across gaping years of crushed hopes, low expectations, and shredded spirits. One pair of eyes wide with realization, the other pair narrowed in angry confusion. Finally, Jo spoke.

“I never had a mother.”

She gave the old woman her back and opened the door, stepping out of the murky waters and into a future that, at age 49, she could finally call her own.