Zibby Mag

By Elyse Chambers

“Hey mom, can you come pick me up from chemo? I don’t have a ride home today. Andrew’s home with Faye and they’re in the middle of dinner, I don’t want him to have to get her in the car seat to drive up here.”

“Oh, well, I’ve got a pot of beans on the stove…”

“Can you turn off the stove and come get me? I’ll be done in about thirty minutes.”

“Well…it’s just that, you see, the beans are on the stove and they are coming to a boil.”

I pressed the phone to my ear, the drugs making me clumsy and slow. “Okay, I guess I can ask Andrew to come.”

“No, no. Never mind. Of course, I’ll be there. I’ll turn off the stove and I’ll be there.”

I watched the bag empty into my IV, wondering if I had heard her correctly or misunderstood the importance of cooking beans. Later, we would laugh about it. The beans! I would say. You wouldn’t come and get me because of the beans. My mom would shake her head in disbelief. I don’t know what I was thinking, she would exclaim. Where was my head?

I understood. It was too much to bear — you could only focus on what was in front of you. The beans. The office gossip. Clicking around the internet for baby clothes and plastic, blinking, musical toys shipped from places like Vietnam or Mumbai.

Friends would tell me that they ran into my mom at the grocery store and she cried unreservedly. She never cried around me. There was an implacable optimism in her fixed smile and cheery disposition. Or else she was busy at work, unable to help, unable to watch her daughter suffer. She talked to everyone about me, anyone who would listen, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk to me directly.

Now that I have my own children, I think about what it must be like to watch a child experience such pain, unable to stop it or take their place. Pick me instead, I imagine her saying. Choose me, spare my child.

She does her best, tries to make things easier. She sends a cleaning company to wipe down the oven and scrub the shower, but these strangers make the dog bark, and then Faye begins to cry. She sends a CSA box weekly, brimming with vegetables that I don’t have the energy to cook so they wilt on the counter. You and Andrew need a night out, she says, but I can’t pull myself off of the couch. She sends lotions, face masks, a new vacuum.

I just need you, Mom, I want to say.

I don’t need things, I just need you to sit with me at chemo or take Faye for an afternoon or learn how to use a Google map so you can drive me to an appointment. I just need my mother.

She is made small by her grief. Her hair thins, the texture wiry and coarse. She stops caring about her looks, wearing slippers to the office, cracked heels hanging over the edge. Her pants have grown baggy around the knees. She needs a more supportive bra, I think. A haircut. A dentist. The line between mothering begins to blur. I am the mother and the child at once.

Then Faye reaches for her, calling out Nonie, and I am filled with such happiness. They talk with their faces pressed together, tickling and laughing and clasping fingers. I watch as they walk down the street holding hands, talking about princesses or spiders or fire-breathing dragons. It’s a window through time, like watching my mother with me as a child, and it fills me with love.

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Elyse Chambers is a marketing professional by day, aspiring memoirist by night. Chambers lives in Napa Valley with her winemaker husband and two daughters. When not providing quality control for her husband’s wines, she can be found walking in the vineyard, making the perfect pot of beans, browsing the farmers’ market, and working to reclaim her health.

The piece above has been excerpted from a memoir Chambers is currently writing. Read here and here for more excerpts.

Follow Elyse on Instagram.