The Ties That Bind

To my dismay, I have my mother's hands - stubby and short fingers - so every two weeks I make the time to have my nails shaped and polished. It's more than just vanity, I don't like to look at my hands and be reminded.

Her nails were always ragged and grimy. She favored bright red lipstick that often smeared on her teeth and the corners of her mouth. She would apply her makeup unevenly then slap on face powder and the effect was clownish and sometimes grotesque. Under it all, there was an odor of decay and alcohol and urine, it seemed to come from her very pores and saturate her clothing. I couldn't bear to have her touch or be near me. She took to wearing discount polyester pants, gaudy cheap tops and misshapen shoes and carried a plastic purse. It was like being around fruit slowly rotting, swollen and collapsing in on itself.

She spent her weeks alone, closed up in a filthy little house with only the tv and a cat for company. Her trips out were for beer, cigarettes, and bingo. Alone and unhappy, her body as well as her mind began to deteriorate - she developed diabetes, chronic bronchitus, obstructive lung disease and dementia. She began to live in sync with the television soap operas and game shows, following them obsessively as if they were real life. My daddy came on weekends and despaired of the state of the house but said nothing. They lived around each other, sleeping in separate rooms, having limited and meaningless conversations about nothing and arguments about everything. They had each constructed a life apart from the other and although they remained married, their relationship had become like stale cigarette smoke. They were trapped in a windowless room, unable to work together to find a way out, unwilling to tolerate each other, but still dependent each on the other, one out of fear, one out of guilt. One needed care, one was willing to provide it - whatever remained between them stayed between them, whatever kept them together was passive but powerful. They had found a way to accept and reconcile their circumstances without interfering in each others lives and while sad and tragic and wasteful, it served.

Perhaps we are not truly meant to understand the lives of others or the ties that bind them.