Swimming in Blood | Part 1 | Mother Mary

E&G | Issue 145

Her name was Mary, just like Mom. Mary Frances Coleman. I never knew her but I want to know her now. I have asked for her guidance so many times, as if somehow she can drip down some sap of wisdom from heaven that will help me at this age, about the age she was when she died. Hit by a car when crossing the street, Mom says that she was always rushing around and this was probably why she died. She used to soak cucumbers in ice water and salt, Mom’s favorite after school snack.

Mom, if you can believe it, was a hellion of a child. Lightning temper, her mouth spilled forth the contents of her brain before her brain even knew what she was thinking. “Wisha wisha wisha. What am I going to do with you?” her mother used to say to her. I see myself, face hot and soaked with tears, sitting in the backseat of our puke green Gremlin at the Hanover Mall. I wanted to get my haircut at the place with the bird, Mom pretended to not know what I meant but I knew that she knew and all her lying PISSED.ME.OFF. I had to be dragged out, by her, to the backseat of that Gremlin. “Wisha. Wisha. Wisha. What am I going to do with you?” Now Maire, my Maire, she knows not why her blood runs hot and love runs deep. She puts her hand on my face when my eyes fill with tears; she punches and kicks her brother when he PISSES. HER. OFF. This maternal sap-like substance in our veins, I have to know what it is made of and how it works. So I dive in; it feels tepid, viscous, and soft, like the waters of Cranberry Cove where this strange little white girl first learned to be brave.

I sit in the sunroom of this multigenerational home, stomach growling as my writing often forces me to postpone my needs (but never postpone my coffee). Through the glass door that separates me and Mom, I see her in her powder blue terrycloth robe, tapping away on her iPad as she glances now and then at the TV. She has grown accustomed to my need to write and the trances I go into when it hits. A million other things I could and should be doing but instead I am here, with you, swimming in my blood. Soon I will open the refrigerator and search out a heavy protein to stop my trembling and salivation. It’s 9:41 and I’ll probably choose one of my homemade meatballs, the recipe for which I followed from the book of her recipes that she once wrote out by hand and gifted to me. It is, I think, my most precious possession.

My proximity to her is for a reason, this I know. The many things I don’t know are what I will dedicate myself to writing. I just finished The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and, like most of those who have read it, I am in awe. I remember our cousin Ginny discussing it about 30 years ago in Mattapoisett and clutching her chest. Now I know what she meant. As cousin Kerry says, “It is amazing-it is one of those books that sticks in your soul.” Sure, I know that after you read something you want to tell everyone in the world to read it too so that they can feel what you felt. However, this book for me was more about how stories are vital and to tell them is to be a conduit of both the living and the dead. The pages of details about the horrors of the Vietnam War landed me in tears at the beach the other day but it was his words about storytelling that settled in and invaded all of the molecules that make me, well, me. “I did not look on my work as therapy, and still don’t. Yet when I received Norman Bowker’s letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse.” O’Brien says of his piece on a friend who ended his own life after coming home from the war, stymied by an inability to talk about what he went through and surrounded by an audience that would never have understood. Those were the words that stuck in my soul. “What’s the matter?” J.D. asked me as I clutched my chest. “This book. You need to read it.” I said. Only 13, he shrugged—both child and man, he does not yet know the power of his one life.

So, yes, a book about Vietnam and storytelling has joined me in this sanguine swim. “We kept the dead alive with stories”, O’Brien wrote. I want to reach out to him to thank him myself for nudging this dive. “I’m still 13.” J.D. said to me when I told him he should read more instead of frittering time away on the Xbox. “I’m just a kid.” he reminded me. “Yes, yes you are.” I answered. With that, I stood up and waded into the waters of Buzzard’s Bay and dove in. I swam and swam, the buoyancy of the salt water always pulling me back up to the surface. I lay on my back and let the waves carry me for a while, thinking of how I used to do the very same thing when I was his age. I looked back to the shore and noticed he and Maire were gone from their chairs. These two, cut from the same cloth, struggle to get along. I watched as they waded into the water together, probably worried by my emotional state before I dove in. “Come on in, the water’s warm!” I told them, donning my best Boston accent for effect. For that moment, we were all the same age.

This piece is the first in the Swimming in Blood series that will soon be subscription only. As always, thank you for taking these dives with me. Your readership is what inspires me to keep going, keep writing.