(because she was the best uncle I ever had.)
Her unconditional love for Rory and I has a big room in my heart that I visit each time I need a hug.
I walk into the house in 1964. I’m 10. The first thing I see is a pair of bare
legs on the inside of a closed window and the rest of the body isn’t in the
apartment. I’m praying to God whoever it is doesn’t fall, the soapy glass
prevents a clean identification of the person sitting on the outside sill, but I
kind of figure it’s my mother by the unmistakable fluffy slippers dangling from
her toes. Now I’m flipping out because I’m scared of heights. She’s four stories
up, 50 feet smack over the concrete backyard. My heart’s outside my chest doing
a Mexican Bean dance on my T-Shirt. Finally an arm starts swirling away the
soapy water and I see Mom’s face through the glass and she smiles at me. I love
that smile, and for a brief moment I was not frightened for her I was just
amazed at how hard she worked to keep our small apartment clean.
When I was boy, right through my teens, if I was away a day or longer from the house she’d
surprise me and cleaned my room like something out of a movie. It looked so good
I thought I was in Beaver Cleaver’s bedroom. This blew my mind, I’d run through
the apartment and grab my mother and kiss her over and over saying, "thank you,
Uncle Mommy, thank you." All Mom said while being tackled, “Watch my head, I
don’t like people touching my head.” Last week, I washed eight windows. When I
got to my daughter’s room I felt Mom’s spirit sweep through me, she made several
passes.
As I cleaned my daughter’s space (dusted the old knick-knacks, too) Mom
stayed with me for two hours. I felt the love she experienced doing this for me
countless times many years ago. Growing up in Yorkville, my family and all my
friends lived in small spaces, most with two or more kids. A tenement mother had
a difficult job. Keeping a home when the challenges to clean were relentless.
I
think most city moms had a brittle grip on their sanity. But their love was so
sturdy it never gave up. While I was I polishing Mom's Aries knick-knack
figurine, behind me I felt that same smile I saw through the soapy window when I
was 10. Thank you, Mom.
