Dear Claire;

You be in me and I’ll be in you.
Together in eternity.
(”Wondering Where The Lions Are”, Bruce Cockburn)


Dear Claire:

One of my students, one of the little ones, brought me some grapes today; they were beautiful red grapes, firm and juicy. We ate them together at the worktable carefully building a little hill of seeds on a tissue. It made me shiver, he reminded me that much of you. You loved grapes so much but for you they had to be seedless grapes so the skins could be left unbroken, unopened by my cautious fingers digging out the seeds.

I find that I am more and more touched by these gentle little memories of our childhood since I’ve been writing to you. For so long I had consciously made an effort not to think about our past. I had a sense of dread about that whole time. When someone would ask me a question that made me look back into that part of myself, I would see a landscape that was harsh and uninviting, like an old black and white horror movie: angular, stilted, underexposed and a little foolish. Since I’ve been thinking of what I want to share with you I find a warm wash of coloured images seeping in to soften some of it.

One of those warm memories that came back to me was how mom would sometimes let me help her in the kitchen as she prepared her baking orders; I would have been about seven years old when I started working with her.

Mom sometimes worked from home, making muffins and specialty desserts for different cafes and restaurants. I began as the “nut and chocolate chip sprinkler” over shortbread crusts in the giant pans of squares she made each day. The nuts and chips had to be evenly distributed, completely covering the surface – right to the edges, a single layer, no overlaps.

There wasn’t much room for a learning curve in mom’s kitchen; you did it right or not at all. I think that may be where I became a good observer. I had to make sure that I could live up to her expectations without practice. I would go over the details in my mind, while my empty hand swayed in rows as mom’s did, over an imaginary crust, letting the phantom chocolate chips and nuts gently fall from my palm over the side of my index finger.

When I was a little older, my job was packaging the baking in those flattened cardboard bakery boxes. I would fold the boxes into their proper shapes, tucking the rounded edges into their slots, leaving the front flap down to allow the slab of brownies, or dream squares, or apricot bars to be slid in. I would then fold up the front panel and hook its edges into place, I’d lower the cover, tuck in the front tab and hold it down with a piece of tape. I always gave it one final tap on the top for good luck; it was my little ritual.

I liked being with mom when she was well and working in the kitchen. I would watch her movements – as if she were dancing. Her hard, brisk manner was softened when she was cooking or baking; her beautiful long arms would unfold as she stretched up to reach for a bowl, high in the cupboard; her back would arch forward – flexible, graceful – then she would straighten her pose – strong and erect – as she removed a tray of muffins from the oven.

I liked to watch her although I don’t ever remember thinking, as so many little girls do, that I wanted to be like her. I admired her beauty but I always feared both the loud harshness and the deep sadness where she spent most of her life.

Just as school let out the summer that I turned seven, we moved into the family-student residence at the University of British Columbia. Bill had been accepted to law school and these apartments were cheap and handy for him. It was to be our last summer on the road; Bill knew that he would have to work in the city on placements after his first year in law school.

When we came back to the city, at the end of August, mom tried to work from our new apartment but it was impossible: the kitchen was just a tiny galley with no counter space at all. Mom was so frustrated by this new set up that when I started back to school, she would take the bus with me to Mandala Rising, then continue on to work in the collective’s big industrial kitchen behind the restaurant.

I missed Bill. He had always been there to pick me up after school. Now, I would wait for mom in the Sunflower Day Care Centre next to the school. I felt so foolish at first, and much too old to be going to a day care centre.


Eventually, one of the little kids who kept asking me for help with his Lego, made me realize how much I liked playing with the young ones. I could read them stories or we would all build Lego structures together. The workers made a big fuss over how helpful I was. Most of the other kids who went there after school hung out together: girls in one corner playing with their Barbies, boys in another corner on a pile of pillows, reenacting Friday Night Wrestling.

I had a special friend at Mandala. Her name was Shadow and she was even quieter than I was; we would always look for each other when we had to be paired for an activity. I remember that Shadow had trouble reading. I used to tell her that all she had to do was look at the words, to take pictures of them in her brain, to try and remember them. After some time I just started reading for her. She was a good learner and could do anything with her hands by watching someone do it a few times. She would remember everything I read to her: stories, social studies books, mechanical directions, anything. But some of the kids still called her a “retard”. Shadow and I worked well together.

Mom had a rough winter that year. I remember many days when Bill would take me to Shadow’s house early in the morning so that I could take the bus to school with her and her mom. I liked spending time with them, I never pretended that they were my family but I liked watching as her mom brushed Shadow’s long black hair into a thick braid before we left for school I liked thinking that someday I would have a little girl, and I would brush her hair and hug her and kiss her nose and tell her that she was my precious angel – like Shadow’s mom did.

It would have been in the spring, about April, I noticed a change in mom: she was tired, she took naps each day but then she would get up to be with us at supper time. She was gentler, softer than usual. In the evenings she would sometimes sit on the futon in the living room and pat the cushion beside her, motioning for me to sit with her a while. She would ask me about school, and what I was reading, and if I still minded going to the day care centre in the afternoons. This was a warmer mom than I had ever known; she was tender and aware of me and I tried not to wonder how long it would last.

Then in May mom told me she was going to have a baby in the fall. I was stunned – I didn’t know how I felt or if in fact I was entitled to have feelings on the subject at all. But as she told me she spoke with such an assured gentleness that I couldn’t help feeling secure. This peaceful mom was the first gift that you gave to me, Claire.

That summer I spent most of my time with mom at the collective’s kitchen. She was still doing their pastry orders but was also cooking for the restaurant too, as the regular workers took time off for holidays. Sometimes after work, we would bring a sandwich and take the bus to the beach. Mom would sit, leaning back against the boulders along the shore, her legs sticking out from her cotton skirt, her belly making a tent of it that spread from her breasts to her knees. I would throw pebbles into the water and climb on the rocks that stood in the surf on the beach. I would sit by her and rub her feet as she lay there, her head back, her eyes closed, letting the sun and the sound of the waves wash away some of the day’s weariness.

Sometimes, as we took the long bus ride home from the beach, she would fall asleep leaning in towards me finally overcome by the potion of work, pregnancy and ocean air. She was more beautiful than I had ever seen her, and she seemed most precious to me then just because we were together.

Bill was so busy all the time since he started at law school. I really missed him. It almost felt that life could only afford me one parent at a time – while mom was distracted and busy during those summers on the road, and while she was only partly balanced during my earliest years, Bill took care of me. He watched over me, he was the dependable one. Since he started back to school, I hardly ever saw him and we never got to wrestle or play anymore. But mom had changed so much and she was the one that I was more connected to now.

I started back at Mandala in the fall and we all fell into our own routines. The weather got chillier and mom got even bigger. The midwife came to the apartment more often as the weeks went on. She would bring her bag of tools; it reminded me so much of the bag of hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches that they had for kids to play with at school. Sometimes she would massage mom’s back and I envied that so much – I wanted to be the one to touch mom, to make her feel better, to work my fingers into the skin of her shoulders.

You were born in our apartment on a very windy day in November. There was so much going on, so many people. I tried to stay out of the way.

The next morning I woke up feeling anxious. I made my way to the living room where mom had slept on the futon for the last couple of weeks. I remember being nervous, almost frightened, as if I was creeping up to peek at something strange and forbidden.

Mom was asleep, and you were cuddled into the hollow of her body as she lay curled on her side. Only your head peeked out from above the cotton blanket that was wrapped around you: a little cocoon. I sat down on the floor beside the futon. I could feel the warmth of mom’s body on the pillow and smell your baby scent.

I was afraid to disturb you by touching you with hands that seemed too big. I explored your face with my eyes – each curve over downy forehead, cheeks, double chins, the perfectly formed mazes that were your tiny ears. They drew me in, closer to you. The more I looked at your face, the more I recognized the bond between us. It was more like remembering than recognizing: no sense of surprise or discovery, just welcoming you home. That was the first morning of your life, Claire, my sister, my soul mate.

Your first two years were the happiest times I ever knew as a child. I was surprised to hear later on of how many women suffer post partum depression – even women who have always been stable. I never remember mom being so peaceful or balanced as when you were first with us; it must have been the way the hormones reacted in her. She was gentle and attentive. We would bathe you together, watching the streams of water roll from your neck, over your chest and belly when I squeezed the water from your sponge. When you were older and sitting up by yourself in the tub, you would wait until mom and I were in close to you, then you would slap at the water and giggle as we both jumped back laughing, to avoid the spray.

You were like my pet: other kids have dogs, or cats, or hamsters, but I had you, Claire. I would dress you up and clap your little hands. When you got older, I fed you cereal mush and mashed bananas. You began to crawl reaching for toys I would hold out to you. You learned to walk holding on to my fingers. At night, we would lie in the big bed that we shared and I would tell you my secret thoughts and dreams, while you slept.

You were so easy to please. In the spring, I spent hours reading in the little yard behind our place with you beside me, in the hammock that mom had slung between two trees. You would lay there, peaceful, clapping your hands. I would tell you of the stories that I imagined, and you would gurgle about the birds you could see in the trees.

It was in November, just after you turned two that you got sick. I don’t ever remember being sick myself; a runny nose now and then but nothing like what I was seeing in you.

For days you cried with piercing screams that would go on late into the night until you were exhausted. This scared me so much; I couldn’t make you smile anymore. Mom would bathe you with cool water and try to give you special teas for the fever and the infection, but nothing helped. Then one day you stopped crying and just lay there very still, your eyes glazed and empty looking. Mom got really scared when she saw that, and we went to the hospital.

As soon as we arrived, they rushed you into the examining room and put you into a metal crib that looked like a high cage on wheels. We knew that you were really sick by how quickly the nurses reacted when they saw you. Mom sent me with some coins to call Carly, her friend from the collective, to ask her to find Bill.

When I came back I could see mom through the parted curtain that went around your crib. She wiped away the tears on her own cheeks with the cold face cloth that she was using to cool you down. I hadn’t seen mom cry in a long time.


When Bill and Carly arrived, I ran to hug them. I had been sitting in a corner watching you laying there, wishing to be anywhere but where I was. After a time, Carly suggested that I go home with her, and I was so relieved. Before we left I kissed my fingers and poked them through the metal bars of the crib to place the kiss on your head. You lay there, so still and helpless, the heat of your body burning my fingers through the kiss.

Carly had such a wonderful apartment, not like ours at all. She had a real couch and chairs in the living room that were facing a television set. Television was such magic to me. I sat in the big armchair hovering between my fear for you, and loosing myself in The Flintstones and Happy Days reruns that were all new to me. Carly brought out a bag of Oreo cookies, forbidden food at our place – they became my comfort food. I ate each cookie slowly, pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth to feel the fine crumbs mixing into the icing.

A commercial for some kind of Foster Parent Plan organization came on the screen showing sick and hungry children from some foreign country looking deep into the camera with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. I remember one child had a fly walking across her face and I couldn’t understand why she would not brush it away. Then, quite suddenly, superimposed on the face of this child and the suffering in her eyes, was your face, your eyes, your suffering. I understood then that the child no longer had any will, nor the energy to care that the fly was walking across her cheek, and I realized that you were just like her. Your image on the screen was so vivid, I nearly asked Carly why Claire was on T.V, but as I was getting the words together to form the question, the image was just as suddenly gone, and I was left feeling frightened and bewildered.

You stayed in hospital over two weeks. Mom was there all the time and Bill would go in the evenings, coming to pick me up at Carly’s on his way back to our place. I never asked to go and visit you in the hospital. Images of the last time I saw you in your crib, and pictures of dying Indian children blended into a ferocious potion in my ten-year old imagination. I desperately avoided thinking of you in that cage by fixing wonderful memories of youinto my mind: your beautiful smile, your curls and deep blue eyes. I installed this memory sister right there beside me in our bed, where I could talk to you in my heart.

It didn’t shock me that you looked so different, smaller and weaker, when you came home from the hospital; I expected that. The greater surprise to me was seeing mom. She seemed smaller too, but the real change was in the way that she held you: cradling you loosely in her arms, your face turned slightly away from her body as if she wasn’t really aware of what she held. She never looked down at you.

As I think back to these changes that I saw in her, they were dramatic but because they were quiet changes they didn’t frighten me. I recognize now that they were the changes of someone who has been brought to the edge of loosing something that is too precious, too vital to them; when it’s finally restored they detach themselves for fear of loosing it again.

Over the next few weeks I saw mom pushing all of us away. When I would ask her for something, she would always say that she was busy, but this was nothing like the busyness that she had once been able to turn into a storm of productivity. If you cried she would say : “Starla, go play with Claire. I’m busy,” but she wasn’t doing anything. She would sit at the kitchen table, her empty coffee cup giving her hands something to hold. She would watch the trees in the yard as the rain soaked branches swept across the window. Her movements were empty yet strangely determined, the way that a person can concentrate so hard on a very simple task, to avoid connecting with other people. She never went back to work at the collective but stayed home with you, watching the rain.

And although mom was home with you every day, she didn’t look after you. I would change your diaper and give you cups of Cheerios and grapes for breakfast before I left for school. Some days when I came home, you and mom would still be wearing the same clothes that you had slept in. I would bathe you and change you and brush out your hair; then I would make us a snack, probably your lunch.

Often when I came home in the afternoon, if you were napping on our bed, I would pick up a stuffed toy and tickle your cheek with its fluffy paw until you would open your eyes. I would prod and search for a giggle but you would lie there on your stomach, looking at me from your sleepy eyes, not wanting to move or play. Every day for the first few weeks I would repeat this ritual, hoping that the baby sister that I had known had returned; I was sure that she was buried somewhere inside you, Claire, masked by whatever experiences had left you and mom so distant.

Although you rarely smiled anymore, I felt that you were content to be with me. One day when I saw you looking at the trees that had given you so much to babble about as a baby, I realized that silence had become part of your world. You no longer tried to talk and you never laughed. The only time that you would use your voice was to let us know that something wasn’t right with you. If you suddenly realized that you were alone in a room, you would let out an anxious moan that would get louder until you saw someone. If we tried to hug you, you would push us away with a grunt. You seldom made eye contact with anyone.

At ten years old, I didn’t realize that your reactions to the world were all that unusual. You were just…Claire; you were my sister and we shared a soul. After a few weeks, I barely noticed the changes in you, I simply got used to the way that you were.

I wonder how Bill felt, so pulled from our lives by his school and work commitments. He was with us a bit every day, but these were functional times: making meals some days, giving you a bath, taking me with him to shop for groceries. Time was such a precious commodity in Bill’s life, he had little patience or ability to read what you and mom were saying to him in your silence and sullenness. Sometimes when he came home to find that the apartment was a mess and that mom was a mess too, they would fight. He would yell things like: “I don’t need this in my life, Sarah. Wake up!” Then he would take his jacket and his bag and leave again. Every time the door slammed, I wished that he was taking us with him. After he left, you and I would go together into our room and I would tell you stories of wonderful places with castles and talking animals and elves. You would lay there, quietly, neither absorbing nor rejecting my stories; they just flowed around you, like a soft breeze, disturbing nothing, penetrating nothing. But they made me feel closer to you, comforting me while I comforted you.

Some of mom’s friends from the collective would come to visit. They always brought something for us to eat– muffins, a casserole or soup – very soothing, very old fashioned. At the beginning, mom would try to be nice to them, she would sit and talk for a little while then she would try to smile and say in an agitated voice: “Thanks for coming, but it’s time for Claire’s nap.” She would stand so that they would know that she wanted them to leave. Later in the spring, when her friends would come, she wouldn’t even go to the door. If I was home I would answer it and say that mom was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her. I was like a bodyguard to some movie star, protecting her from those who cared about her.

I was sad that mom had gone back into her darkness. I remember being angry for letting myself believe that she was better, cured, different from what I remembered when I was little. You had brought her so much peace, Claire. And it had lasted nearly three years; I had wanted to believe that it was forever. I didn’t want to imagine that it could ever be otherwise.

The positive side of this time without mom was that you and I became closer, each in our own way. We were like sunflowers growing around each other: intertwined, inseparable, dependant on each other, yet ultimately reaching for different light sources.

I love you, Claire,
Starla

Copyright 2003