*The first in a series of – oh – little essays about my mother, a complicated woman I loved very much and hated in almost equal measure. A daily task is forgiving her, and myself for not being able to help her, change her, make it better for her and for myself, while she was alive. A daily task is allowing myself to feel and think what I feel and think while acknowledging the pain of her existence, so much of which she dumped on me, making me the conduit for all her darkness. A daily task is letting go.
Dorothy Jean Byrnes was her name; in early childhood, her nickname was ‘Beauty’ but then, twice or three times, she was hit in the face on the playground, the metal bar earlier generations swung upside down on smashing her perfect and perfectly straight nose, breaking it, squashing it down, shaping it more like a boxer’s than a little girl’s. That repeated misfortune lost her the title of family beauty. That repeated misfortune made her ashamed, and angry. She would suffer with spontaneous nose bleeds for the rest of her life.
In college, where she nannied to help pay her bills, to have a room in which to sleep and study, she became known as ‘D.J.’, which suited her. She had three skirts and two sweaters, a pair of rubber boots for winter or rainy weather, and another pair of loafers. That was it. One winter coat, one wool scarf. One pair of mittens and such care not to lose anything, ever, as it costs to replace; money was always tight. Books, pens and pencils, paper, notebooks, study materials and the like are expensive, are a priority, a way up and out.
She didn’t date; she was shy. Many of the men she attended classes with were already married, war veterans utilizing the G.I Bill to make themselves into something more, fully aware of the chance they’d been given, one denied to other, less fortunate men who hadn’t made it back to their girlfriends, wives or young families. She admired them; they added gravitas to the academic atmosphere; this suited her. Silliness, pranksters and jokers put her off, and flirting with even the single men in her classes was unthinkable, not her style, at all. Still, she envied the more popular girls, the pretty ones with straight noses, the ones who could easily afford a new silk scarf, new shoes, the newer styles regularly; these girls didn’t have to work to afford college classes.
D.J. did her best to keep her head down, focusing on her areas of concentration: secondary education, Latin and French. She knew envy was a sin, and prayed at mass every Sunday for relief from its sting. What spare time she had away from studying was taken up by her charges (the children of a professor and his wife), and by time spent in the college library referencing books she could not afford to buy.
Her summers were much the same, sans the studying; she traveled to live with one or another of her brothers and their children, again playing mother’s helper. She was an observer of women, smart women, her sister’s-in-law, running around, cooking, feeding, making do while doing endless loads of laundry, changing diapers – envisioning for herself a life spent supporting her siblings families in this way over many summer vacations going forward.
She believed to her core that she was born to live her life in solitude, alone, unmarried. She loved children, or at least was fond of them (she had to be, given the limitation of her choices), but didn’t want any. She was not a physical person, never exercised, loved anything and everything sugary, lived for classical music and conversations about literature and art, and truly believed her sister-in-law Eleanor had the perfect life: married to a college professor, able to attend lectures, concerts, games, while affording the best things in life, 1940s version. And, a good Catholic, the thought of any sexual contact outside marriage was not possible. She would not, ever, admit it, but D.J. hated her body.
She had witnessed the difficulties of her mother’s life up close, and paid for them: left behind to work as a nanny at fourteen years old when her mother moved back in with her parents after her husband’s death, taking her two youngest children with her. D.J. was old enough, it was felt, to both help out (she would send her wages to her mother) as well as to make it on her own. It was also believed to be important for her to finish high school where she started. A dutiful child, wanting only to please, Dorothy didn’t fight it, but it crushed her.
Her adored mother died five years later at the age of sixty-three. This event was shattering. Was this her future? Pregnancy after pregnancy, high blood pressure, hypertension, early death? Even Eleanor, the most perfect wife and woman, had her struggles, was often frustrated and even resentful, left alone with seven kids while D.J.s brother Bob was traveling for work, away for months at a time. Important work, no doubt, helping to found and expand the CIA, but – was this how her future would unfold? Was it fair? Was it good? Was it worth it? Yes, Eleanor and Bob could afford a cleaner, and child-care, including giving D.J. a small wage during the summer, but was it enough?
There were, it seemed, many ways to be alone, and lonely. Which would she choose? Which life would present itself to her, and what road would she take?