The Tent (2007)
“ Bring back Mom.
who wanted to be a concert pianist but never had the chance and made us take piano lessons, which we resented – Mom, whose aspic rings and Jello salads we ate with greed, though later derided – pot-roasting Mom, expert with onions though anxious in the face of garlic, who received a brand-new frying pan from us each Christmas – just what she wanted – Mom, her dark lipsticked mouth smiling in the black-and-white soap ads, the Aspirin ads, the toilet ...paper ads, Mom, with her secret life of headaches and stained washing and irritated membranes – Mom, who knew the dirt, and hid the dirt, and did the dirty work, and never saw herself or us as clean enough – and who believed that there was other dirt you shouldn’t tell to children, and didn’t tell it, which was dangerous only later.
We miss you, Mom, though you were reviled to great profit in magazines and books for ruining your children – that would be us – by not loving them enough, by loving them too much, by wanting too much love from them, by some failure of love – (Mom, whose husband left her for his secretary and paid alimony, Mom, who drank in solitude in the afternoons, watching TV, who dyed her hair an implausible shade of red, who flirted with her friends’ husbands at parties, trying with all her might not to sink below the line between chin up and despair – and who was carted away and locked up, because one day she began screaming and wouldn’t stop, and did something very bad with the kitchen scissors – But that wasn’t you, not you, not the Mom we had in mind, it was the nutty lady down the street – it was just some lady who became a casualty of unseen accidents, and then a lurid story .MoreLess
who wanted to be a concert pianist but never had the chance and made us take piano lessons, which we resented – Mom, whose aspic rings and Jello salads we ate with greed, though later derided – pot-roasting Mom, expert with onions though anxious in the face of garlic, who received a brand-new frying pan from us each Christmas – just what she wanted – Mom, her dark lipsticked mouth smiling in the black-and-white soap ads, the Aspirin ads, the toilet ...paper ads, Mom, with her secret life of headaches and stained washing and irritated membranes – Mom, who knew the dirt, and hid the dirt, and did the dirty work, and never saw herself or us as clean enough – and who believed that there was other dirt you shouldn’t tell to children, and didn’t tell it, which was dangerous only later.
We miss you, Mom, though you were reviled to great profit in magazines and books for ruining your children – that would be us – by not loving them enough, by loving them too much, by wanting too much love from them, by some failure of love – (Mom, whose husband left her for his secretary and paid alimony, Mom, who drank in solitude in the afternoons, watching TV, who dyed her hair an implausible shade of red, who flirted with her friends’ husbands at parties, trying with all her might not to sink below the line between chin up and despair – and who was carted away and locked up, because one day she began screaming and wouldn’t stop, and did something very bad with the kitchen scissors – But that wasn’t you, not you, not the Mom we had in mind, it was the nutty lady down the street – it was just some lady who became a casualty of unseen accidents, and then a lurid story .MoreLess
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