First a little about me and my little family. At age 36, I am a first-time mom of a nine-month-old baby.
The little one is Laura. She’s named after my mom who died of ovarian cancer a month before Laura was born. My religious friends tell me Laura knew her grandma because I was there with my mother when the little one had her ears and toes and an active brain, albeit tucked in my belly. They say my mom was speaking to little Laura after she passed.
My own beliefs don’t run in that direction. I’m a member of an old Methodist church in downtown Anderson, and little Laura faithfully attends daycare, if not Sunday services. I’d describe myself as more a person of science – which, by the way, I don’t think has to conflict at all with faith. That would make me a big-picture God person. How could there be no God, I would tell a skeptic, in a world with sunflowers, Mozart divertimentos and the color green?.
I love green.
But my mama in the sky talking to my unborn baby? Not so sure. My mom didn’t want to see the pictures of little Laura’s ultrasound, and she didn’t want to watch the DVD of little Laura floating around in my belly. Mom made a that-makes-me-queasy face when I asked, and I think the idea of seeing a granddaughter she would probably never hold was more than a little overwhelming.
My mom never cried in front of me or complained about getting sick. I knew it was really really bad a few weeks before she died when she told me “I just want to feel good.” It was the beginning of a hopelessness, I see in retrospect, that took her away from us faster than any of us could have predicted.
So for my mom, bodies and body parts and my womb were just things she had no interest in talking about, let alone seeing in black and white.
We talked about other things. Mom asked me about my stories and my co-workers and my dogs. We chatted about politics, books and reality TV. Mom loved reality TV – including the worst kind. Dad would walk into the den and find my mom transfixed with Judge Judy. This was a woman with an English degree from Stanford.
I was supposed to be introducing myself. But to talk about Anna Mitchell in January 2010, I had to start with that big event on Feb. 11, 2009.
I’m a mom without a mom and trying my best to figure out, by myself, the inscrutables of a child who speaks no English.
My journal here is called “Second Shift” because I also work full time during the day as a reporter. Little Laura is my other full time job during the non-sleeping hours that I’m not here at the Greenville Journal. Oh, and I have a very caring husband.
I’ll catch up with you again in a few days …
