Shalimar-- The Abode of a Mother's Love

Grief shifts. Love holds steady—as it lingers in the scent, in the air.

Mother’s Day was around the corner, and so—I decided I would take more than the customary peek I give the room when I walk past it.

This time, I was going to do more than step inside to open the window just a crack, or to let the light in, or to smooth the already smoothed Wedgewood blue comforter that I insist on keeping wrinkle- free.

I’d do more than take a quick sniff of the Shalimar—the expensive perfume that I use as room scent because it was my mother’s favorite, and it smells like her.

I’m a little crazy about this room.

I mean, it’s the guest room, and I only let the guests in… begrudgingly.

I’m allowed to linger there though, and that was my plan today.

I was going to sit on the bed.

And look.

Look at things.

And think.

Think about her.

This is the moo-moo room.

Not because of the giant cow painting that hangs over the bed,

but because it’s hers—Mummu’s.

It’s my mother’s room.

Although, I must admit, she never slept there.

She’s never even stepped inside that room.

In fact, it hadn’t even become her room—until after she died—

when I decided that it had to be decorated with the color that sickened my entire childhood.

Every house we ever lived in was decorated in Wedgewood blue—

and that awful dusty rose.

Even the exterior of the New Jersey house was painted Wedgwood blue.

Wedgwood blue.

Is that even on the color wheel?

I can still hear her saying it—"Wedgwood.”

It sounded…exquisite.

Anyway, I plopped myself on the bed, and laid down, arms spread-eagle, legs dangling off the edge.

I got a whiff of something that wasn’t the Shalimar, and it wasn’t the lilac tree that sat outside my mother and father’s bedroom window.

But it was delicate and faint—maybe the honeysuckle we had planted.

It danced in on the light breeze, the same way the scent of lilacs did way back when. It brought me back…

Back to one afternoon when I had to slip away.

The house was too loud.

Too busy.

Too much.

It was the kind of noise that made my timid chest feel heavy.

I needed some place to breathe.

My mother’s room.

My mother’s bed.

And—I snuck in.

The plan—just a few minutes.

Just long enough for the noise to fall off me.

But the bed was soft, the sweet-scented breeze was light—and the quiet of her room wrapped around me.

I fell asleep, and it was for more than a few minutes.

I woke to my mother’s voice moving through the house, getting closer and closer with that frantic edge I knew too well.

Then, the door burst open.

And there she was.

I never knew which version I’d get—the one who could fly on a broom if she wanted,

or the one—that left me star-struck.

I got both.

A flash of relief in those Wedgwood blue eyes—and then anger just as quickly.

“What are you doing in here? Get out of my room.”

I’m sure there was only awe in my own eyes.

I adored her.

Even harried—kids hanging off her, flour dusting her apron, breath still short from the chase— she looked like someone who had just stepped out of a foreign film.

Her tawny blonde hair was swept up high in an elegant French twist, a few soft curls escaping—and brushing her neck.

That long, graceful neck.

She could have been a movie star.

But when she yelled, it scared me (as awestruck as I was), and I started to cry.

It wasn’t like I was snooping.

Or trying her lipstick.

She softened.

And then sat on the edge of the bed.

Her hand drew slow circles on my

back—the kind people pay for—as she whispered mother-advice.

I don’t remember so much what she said as how she made me feel back there in that room. There were five of us kids at that time, with one more to come, and we were all young.

Moments alone with her were rare.

And yet—somehow—I felt understood.

Not just loved.

Understood.

She knew the part of me that felt everything too deeply, even the things that weren’t mine.

How did she know that?

How did she know me?

When there really wasn’t time for me.

Not one-on-one time.

I opened my eyes and looked around the moo-moo room.

Three years.

Gulp.

The artifacts were all still there.

Hers.

My dad’s.

I had to give him some space too.

A teacup.

A cane.

A ceramic cardinal I had given to her—returned to me when she went and died on us.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

She always took us to the edge and then bounced back.

And there it was.

Her Bible.

It was stuffed with prayer cards.

Hundreds of them.

Maybe one for every person who ever lived then died.

I found my dad’s card tucked in the Song of Solomon 8:6-7,

“Set me as a seal upon your heart…for love is strong as death…Many waters cannot quench love.”

I pulled my mom’s card from my pocket—the real reason that I'd come into the moo-moo room that day—and slid it between the pages.

Right next to my dad’s.

Grief is a funny thing.

It keeps changing shape.

Just when you think you’ve finally named it, it becomes something else—a smell, a room, a color that’s been sitting in plain sight the whole time.

You try to get a hold of it, but it won’t stay still.

It moves.

It settles.

It rises again.

It never leaves; it just keeps shifting, asking you to meet it in new ways.

It plain old sucks.

And you know, I think it was that awful dusty rose I hated all along.

Not the Wedgewood Blue.