here today

 

saved by a woman

We went to brunch, my mom and I, normally a meal that arouses suspicion why can't they just call it breakfast or lunch. Normally she would ask me that then worry about which fork to use while ordering the cheapest thing on the menu. Sunday I choose the restaurant with a prix fixe buffet and at a civilized hour we sat across from each other my mother and I she the subject of so many talk, Gestalt, imaginal, Jungian, interpretive dream sessions. She the invisible passenger at whom I yell and rant and rave and Express My Anger. She the pillow in my therapist’s office that I speak to because I do not speak to the real person the one across the table from me going back for dessert from the Mother’s Day brunch buffet at the Golden Valley Brew Pub in McMinnville, Oregon. My home town and I remember when the radio chose that Springsteen tune as I was driving in for a visit not long after my divorce when I was feeling as if I might never get out of life’s tiny barbed wire cage and there I was returning to that small town with twenty churches but only one good coffee shop.

My home town.

We went to brunch, my mom and I and I looked at her this person who is unable to make space in her heart for who I am. This person who fears the answers so much that she cannot bring herself to ask even a question as small as how are you how is school. And I, the invisible child, the one who does not who did not cause trouble in a house full of trouble, I normally don’t breathe again until I can see the signs for Portland up ahead and know that I am going home going back to where I am me. Sometimes in the car I answer the unasked questions. I am well, I say, though school is hard and is stretching me in what feels like impossible ways. I was hoping you would ask, I say.

This Sunday I talked as if she had. As if she had waded through her fears to a place of wonder. I wonder how my daughter is doing I wonder what she thinks about hopes for. I wonder how her experiences are different from mine. I created for her a world of wonder and though at times she held very still as if I were sending arrows out instead of words as if by speaking the truth I were speaking ideas lit on fire that might consume her. This Sunday this mother’s day brunch I answered the unasked questions and while I spoke she held very still until the waiter came by and handed us each a carnation. I gave her mine and she held them both as tenderly as she must have held me when I was a baby before I became something someone separate from her something someone unknown. My mother she cradled these gifts there and thanked me for the brunch and underneath that thanking she seemed also to be thanking me for all of the rest of what I had said. I do not know if this is true but I do know that on my drive home I sang along to Ray LaMontagne. Trouble, he sings about trouble and how he was Saved by a Woman and each time that lyric hit me I yelled it out to the world I’ve been SAVED By a Woman.

and the woman doing the saving the woman in the song that woman was me.



TROUBLE

By Ray LaMontagne


Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born
Worry...
Worry, worry, worry, worry
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone
We'll I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Trouble...
Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Feels like every time I get back on my feet
she come around and knock me down again
Worry...
Oh, worry, worry, worry, worry
Sometimes I swear it feels like this worry is my only friend

We'll I've been saved...
by a woman
I've been saved...
by a woman
I've been saved...
by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Oh..., Ahhhh....
Ohhhh
She good to me now
She gave me love and affection
She good tell me now
She gave me love and affection
I Said I love her
Yes I love her
I said I love her
I said I love...
She good to me now
She's good to me
She's good to me

Posted by: 120pages at 10:22 | link | comments (3) |