Glitter and Glue

by Kelly Corrigan

Lovey!” He’s a Life Eater, my dad.

Love the Life Eater concept!

There are no narcissists in eulogies. Nobody raises a glass to Aunt Joanie, passive-aggressive, at a wake.

Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue. I never knew how their roles were distributed, whether they fell out naturally from the get-go or they evolved over time, one creating the other through negotiations and tiny adjustments along the way. I suppose early on she got a sense of what Greenie could handle, and what she could tolerate not being done her way, and compensated accordingly.

Because only she could handle it.

The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf.

where she can find it in the night when she starts fretting about something that wouldn’t have a chance against her in the light of day,

What happens to her happens—in some weird refracted way that seems slightly dangerous—to me, too. And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

Awesome!

But now I see there’s no such thing as a woman, one woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should’ve figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all that Motherness blocking out everything else?

Isn’t that what we all want? A future that’s familiar but a little better than what we knew as children?

Lemme tell you something, Kelly, you changed me a lot more than I changed you. I didn’t know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kilndried. I never understood that when we fought my mother was having actual emotional reactions. I assumed her behavior was a front—a calculated show—designed to yield the best and safest possible kid.

MONEY ISN’T EVERYTHING, BUT IT SURE KEEPS THE KIDS IN TOUCH.

What is it about a living mother that makes her so hard to see, to feel, to want, to love, to like? What a colossal waste that we can only fully appreciate certain riches—clean clothes, hot showers, good health, mothers—in their absence.

Raising people is not some lark. It’s serious work with serious repercussions. It’s air-traffic control. You can’t step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.