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My Mother's Other Life
Before we would go out to dinner or a movie, after a long day of who- knows-what, cleaning, certainly, straightening the confusion from four sloppy sons and a husband who had his own private headaches, my mother would stop in the middle of our rushing around and hollering about who gets to ride in the front seat and say, calmly, just a second, sitting down on a black-cushioned, straight-backed chair placed beside the door solely for that purpose: to rest briefly, to deeply breathe in and out until her heart slowed down and her face calmed. No matter how much in a hurry we were, through the yellings of my father's voice and my brother's hastings and my own, the motor running. Who knows what settled her? Perhaps she returned for that brief spell to when she was a girl alone on the gigantic porch of the rented yellow duplex on 153 Street off Kinsman, near the small shul, reading Gone With the Wind cover to cover, her mother studying for her citizenship, her father's horse and buggy clopping down the cobbled street with its cargo of fruit and vegetables. She was where we weren't, her name her own, her other life. Slowly she'd look up and slowly she'd rise in the sudden silence, ours, to face the world and us once again.