Celia

Celia (from Persephone’s Notebook)

I talked to Celia, Mom, today. She calls from time to time to check in, keep up to date. I call from time to time when I need to blubber or be cruelly sarcastic about childhood memories that erupt disquietingly, or just because once in a blue moon I feel like a daughter. Today she was the one who wanted to talk about memories. I was feeling squeezed by the deadline for my Lammas piece which was refusing to come together. We talked at cross purposes for a few minutes.

Aunt Marie died 17 years ago next month, which means my as yet unmet half-brother is about to be 17 years old. Not an especially commemorative year. I guess he would be going into his senior year of high school, except, as I recall, they were being home-schooled so as not to miss any educational opportunities. Gwen liked to pick up and go en famille on a whim without having authorities or institutional calendars to consult.

Danny’s new family (though not so new by now) was only peripherally on Celia’s mind. Mostly she talked about me, asking about what projects I was involved with and intimating that she would like to see me, get together, share some quality time, when it might be convenient. I know, I don’t visit her enough. She really has always been there for me, despite our difficulties. I admit I am at least as difficult as she is. It’s never been a question of love or loyalty. We have very different styles, ways of being, enthusiasms. I don’t blame her anymore for my broken-home upbringing or the glaring differences between our family and those of my neighborhood peers that I suffered for. Yes, I did blame her, unfairly I now see, for a lot of my years. I know better now. I’ve told her so. Still, I manage to avoid spending much time together. It seems better that way. Perhaps, well more like definitely, there are issues we need to work out. Perhaps in the fullness of time we will.

I guess I could start thinking toward arrangements to visit for her birthday in September, Virgo on the cusp of Libra. Well and good, but this decision hasn’t done a thing for this twisted feeling, just short of anxiety. My sure cure — I can go talk to Tom about it and feel safely secured within his protective psychic and physical embrace. That’s what this human thing is about — sharing the little bumps and bruises and irrational moments with someone who gets it and gets me and is happy to be that place of safety and love. Why not be there when we can?

“It’s not that I don’t want to be self-disclosing. I just think no one wants to see me disclosed.” Celia told me. The last time I was living with her, after the whole adolescent rebellion thing that kept our conversations minimal, after my whole wrecking my life thing, yet again, stalwart Mama stepping in to take me home and care for me. After I got sufficiently bored with my self-pity, we had some good, deep conversation, now and then. I tried to let her know that what she disclosed I cherished, even while reserving my right to be a brat.

Time seems to be moving faster lately. I have to get my brain in gear and work out the logistics of my visit to Celia for her birthday, less than a couple of weeks away. Tom had wanted to fly her in, put her up in a swank hotel, wine and dine and entertain her for a few days, including bringing her to the Mabon celebration, which would also allow me to participate. I ran this by her, and she would have none of it. She wants me to herself without distractions, she says. She always has been essentially very private. I can see that she might not be comfortable amongst a large gaggle of witches, mostly strangers to her. It’s her birthday. She gets to make the rules. I’ll have my work in in plenty of time for the holiday, so I may be missed a bit but not needed. Tom said he would rent me a car since I refuse to deal with airport security, and it’s only a few hours’ drive. Usually I take the bus. I want to go a couple of days early so it won’t be a rush, so I’ll have time to acclimate.

Celia moved out of our old neighborhood a couple of years ago, once she realized I wouldn’t be returning. She found a smaller place, top floor of a two-family double-decker, a condo, closer to her work. I won’t have to deal with old neighborhood memories. I haven’t made any memories in this new neighborhood. I’ve only briefly visited, not often, and spent that time with Celia, not the neighbors. I know she has friends at work, but she likes to compartmentalize and doesn’t bring them home much. There’s just her and Pandora the cat, who replaced the now long dead Mao of my childhood. This will be good. We will be adult women talking about our lives, our relationship, working on that primal mother-daughter bond. Then I will come home, back to my life, renewed, enriched by this familial experience. It’s all good. It’s golden, like autumn leaves.

I’ve got to get my act together to get it on the road tomorrow. On my sacred mission to celebrate her birth with my mother, just at the changing of the seasons. It seems appropriately, what? Generational? I’ll be leaving from here, Tom’s place. We are spending our last few precious hours of Summer together, since by the time I’m back next week it will already be Fall. We got together shortly before Spring, kind of a half-versary. Bed and breakfast a la casa with Tom, dinner with Celia, a long drive’s worth of transition between.

She’s always been always in motion. My mother the verb. So constant that it’s just the background of the life we shared. She has her routines, her daily habitual motions. Happy to chatter about whatever topic is in the air, or quietly intently listen, or fall into hypnotic precise patterns of movement: puttering with plants, chopping vegetables for soup, sweeping away clutter, knitting or embroidering as a nervous habit, something to do with her fine, quick fingers while she talks or watches a news program on tv “to keep in touch” or listens to music while swaying along, then dancing as she stands to move to another task. She’s never slept much.

Neither Celia nor I were the kind of girls that had slumber parties with our girly friends. Though generally well liked, Celia had no time for friends when she was growing up. There were always chores, responsibilities, managing to keep up her studies in available moments to keep up stellar grades while helping at home with housework and watching over her younger sisters. Her mom, Grandma Angie, was busy working, as a high school English teacher and on projects of community and school politics she considered part of her career. Then, as Celia got older there were whatever jobs she could fit in after school, weekends, summers, to save for college, along with all the rest of those responsibilities she seemed to have been born to take on. She would tell me of her younger life without complaint or rancor, but to help explain her habit to take on responsibility, to explain some of the contentious differences between her ways of being and mine.

I was just unlikeable by the kids I grew up around. Cute and clever had not yet found their way into my social strategy, except with the more sophisticated grown-ups of my aunt’s crowd who always made me feel so adored. The kids in my neighborhood and their parents just found me weird and intolerant. It was some kind of private badge of honor for me to feel superior and apart. This was not an attitude I dropped at home. But there were those late nights when neither Celia nor I were into sleeping. We would make up silly stories or snuggle over cocoa and late night tv movies, or share a quiet space each involved in private projects.

It must have been tough for her to grow up so alone, except for the familiar company of work. The story, as I’ve gotten it in bits and pieces over the years, was that old one of unplanned senior year high school pregnancy, quickie marriage, young dad fulfills his working class family’s dreams going to college, while young mum juggles work and momhood living with disapproving in-laws happy to constantly share their grievances against her. Apparently Grandma Angie learned about birth control, in defiance of the Church, because Celia’s younger sisters, Donna and Linda, waited to be born until after Angie had gotten her college degree and teaching job, gotten her life in order. By that time Celia was old enough to be a real help around the house. She says they didn’t pressure her about good grades, didn’t even seem to notice as long as she caused no trouble and did whatever needed doing. I don’t now how harsh it really was. She talks very little of her childhood and family. It’s like she’s embarrassed to have been so worthless to the people who mattered to her. I could express my outrage that they didn’t appreciate the priceless jewel they had, but how hypocritical is that? Celia can disappear into the background so easily. She is such a magical presence that we don’t see her, just the sparkle and afterglow of her constant working without appearance of effort, making no demands. She trained herself well, finding no advantage in rancor or bitterness. Often she seems quite happy, buzzing along. Quite ethereal, like a force of wind and spirit, flowing through her moment to moment doings, she has long since made her peace with reality.

She takes notes when she reads, takes reading seriously, as if still in school. She writes classical poetry, endlessly edited. She likes 60s/70s era classic rock and jazz, sings bits of songs as they wander through her head. When I was little she would dance me around the room, picking me up, twirling me about, losing our separateness in the music. Today we can dance around the room together as equals, to the old tunes evoking memories. She likes to dress comfortably in cotton and wool, sturdy leather shoes with flat heals, no make-up except when socially expected, her mid-length brown hair loose or tied in a sensible knot securely pinned. Her manner is more wistfully practical, gently ironic, than no-nonsense. She doesn’t complain or catastrophize. She likes everything in its place, including emotions.

She never argued with me about my beliefs or in any way suggested them invalid. Celia has a marvelous way of compartmentalizing “you” and “me”. She lives and believes as she does and lets everyone else do the same. I hope I am right to think I picked up that trait from her along with a few others, absorbed that underlying paradigm from its early and constant presentation. I know I don’t always express my opinions diplomatically, having picked up the habit of open, loud, display from Danny. Celia is more likely to avoid contentious topics. If they are broached, she is capable of sharply, intensely, stating her view, and moving to another topic so deftly you never notice how the conversation went from there to here. This is a subtle woman, my mother. Naturally I, like so many, have long undervalued her. Maybe that mistake has also caused me to undervalue the parts of me that are like her.