Mothers and Daughters

I only know her by her Western name: Helen. Several years ago when we met in the YMCA changing room, she also told me her Chinese name, but then insisted on being Helen and I forgot her real name instantly. The result: every time I see her -- and it is usually on Sundays during the free swim -- my first thought is "She is not Helen." I don't, actually, know almost anything about her and the fact that her name is just a facade, picked so that people like me could associate her with a pronounceable string of syllables, makes things even more unknown, distant. I do know that her mother finally obtained the immigrant visa a couple of months ago (after a 3-year wait), and both of them came to the pool in the last few weeks (the mother, with hair cropped short and a permanent smile compensating for the lack of English; they often wore very similar jeans); I also know that Helen has a son, now about 8 years old, who is back in China. She says it is a temporary arrangement, until it is possible for Helen to have him live with her in Montreal.  She doesn't talk about him often, and I don't ask beyond the limits of politeness.

One Sunday not long ago I walked into the changing room, and saw that Helen was already there, but this time without her mother. We exchanged a few greetings, she told me her mother had found a temporary job cleaning in somebody's house on Sundays. and while we were preparing for the pool, I smiled and said that this time she'd have to dry her hair herself. She looked at me with an uncertain half-smile; I wondered if she would get my meaning -- I had noticed that sometimes she had problems understanding English. She didn't seem to get what I meant; the multipurpose smile and the blanket expression of general good-will remained unrippled by any sudden illumination on her face, even though she said a quick "oh, yes!" to my remark. I decided it would be too awkward now to explain what I meant so I didn't, but what I was referring to happened a couple of weeks back, on a Sunday when both of them were there, the mother and the daughter. After the swim, we were packing up our things in the changing room, and I happened to look in the direction of Helen just as her mother picked up one of the communal hair dryers and started blow-drying Helen's hair. Her head bent downwards so her mother could dry well her hair around the nape (something my parents also insisted on when I was little), Helen looked up and when our glances met, our thought frequencies instantaneously overlapped, making us burst out laughing simultaneously. There was something funny about Helen, a grown-up woman with an 8-year-old son, being treated as a child herself by her mother who was drying her hair; a huge contrast also with the way Helen lived for a few years prior to her mother's arrival: all on her own, by force fending for herself in a new country, and certainly without someone to dry her hair. Her mother was bewildered by our laughs and Helen had to explain in Chinese; but for the older woman, even though her smile widened slightly, there was clearly no discontinuity -- and therefore no particular reason for laughing -- between this particular moment in her function of a mother, and all those other moments some 20 or more years ago when she did similar things for her daughter.

I thought about my mother, and whether I would like to have her with me now, drying my hair. What exactly did I feel at that moment -- envy, because unlike Helen, I didn't have her? Sadness, because it wasn't even possible? Something in me relaxed and settled down comfortably when I felt that the answer was no. I didn't even seem to be surprised by this; I was overwhelmed by the relief that I was simply glad that Helen was not alone now and that I was at ease with the absence of my own mother. Later, on the metro, I was remembering how she used to braid and gather my long brown hair (somewhat wavy, which, to her chagrin, was not the case with hers, also brown and long) into a bun on top of my head, expertly pinning the sides of it with discreet pins so that by the time she finished, no accessories were visible (although my head was like a pincushion). She did this every morning before breakfast in my fourth year of high school, when I decided this was the look I wanted. After dressing up, I'd come to the kitchen and sit on a chair with my back turned to her; she would then first comb my hair, and then start working on it, patiently. I don't remember what we talked about (or even if we talked much in those early hours of the day) but usually the morning radio program was on in the kitchen, and with my mother's hands fluttering through my hair, this was a solid, reliable beginning of each day that made me walk through the rest of it with confidence, well-grounded. Even though a memory, this did not feel distant, and my mother did not feel like a character in a story of "once upon a time" but like my mother, who never ceased to be that even after she was gone, and whose fingers working patiently and lovingly left a permanent trace in my hair.

They left a trace in the beginning of each day, in fact. I wake up, and I'm still grounded, on those very same grounds that continue to bear the weight of my life easily, despite a few small cracks here and there. She did this very well, my mother. From the inconspicuous material of our daily life (something you wouldn't even think you'd remember later), she constructed my foundation, rock-solid. In the manner of all master masons, she made it so that it would keep sustaining whatever later architects added. What she was really doing, of course, was ensuring that I was at ease with letting her go in the future, that I didn't miss her if she wasn't there to dry my hair. That I understood and accepted -- one Sunday in the YMCA changing room --  the cruel and wonderful way of the world where you grow out of needing those that loved you; where to love, you don't need to miss.