By Callie Feyen
@calliefeyen

I was 7 or 8 when I took a spill off my bike, that, while I didn’t need an ambulance, and there was no 911 call, there was a fair enough amount of blood that I think it’s fair to say my mom rushed me to the hospital.

The short of it is I thought my bike could turn like a Big Wheel, and I learned from a caught knee in the fender, a yank to free it, and a spray of blood like a rainbow over my head that my bike cannot, in painful fact, turn like a Big Wheel.

The neighbor guy who wore flannel shirts, and who I thought was a lumberjack or the Marlboro Man picked me up and brought me home that summer afternoon. I remember the sun was out, and that my brother pedaled furiously in front of us, ready to tell my mom what had happened.

I don’t remember being handed off to my mom, and I don’t remember her screaming, or really reacting at all. The entire moment has an evenness to it—like tossing a bouncy ball with a friend, or finishing an orange popsicle before the syrup runs down my arm.

My mom will tell it differently. She will start in the hospital room while I was getting stitched up.  That’s when she will say she broke down. She would tell of feeling nauseous, and of walking to the window in the hospital room, opening it, and sticking her head outside while the doctor took the flap of skin that was hanging off my knee, and sewed it back in place.

Before she walked to the window, my mom gave me a calculator she had in her purse. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an effort to distract me, or distract both of us, from what was happening. While the doctor, also a mother, stitched me up, and the two of them took turns giving me math problems to solve. 

***

Now, I am standing in our family room rearranging a few pictures on the piano, when Hadley walks in carrying the laptop and starts talking to me about math.

This is not a normal situation, both that my daughter is asking me about math, and that I am rearranging photos. First, strictly speaking, it is safer for everyone if I don’t attempt math. I think people will live a lot longer, and also be a lot happier if math and I don’t integrate. Second, it is mid-morning on a weekday. I should be at work. Hadley should be at school. There should be no time to rearrange pictures, and Hadley should not have to rely on me to understand multi-step algebraic equations.

But here we are.

Hadley tells me she got the right answer, but she did it using the wrong formula.

“Do you see,” Hadley says placing the computer on top of the piano. I give a courtesy look at the screen, but tell her that I really only know how to use parentheses in my writing.

Hadley rolls her eyes. I shrug.

“But I got the right answer,” she says, looking at a picture of my mom and her two sisters when they were all little girls.

“Who’s that,” she asks.

“That’s a picture of Grandma and my two aunts.”

“Which one is Grandma?”

“Which one do you think?”

Hadley points to the girl with her arm tossed around her older sister. The girl is in mid eye-roll.

“That’s her,” Hadley says, laughing.

“It sure is.”

I am speculating of course, but probably, this picture was one of several and my mom was tired of sitting still for all of them. She’s wearing a dress and I know she wasn’t happy about that (my mom and Scout Finch would’ve been besties had they grown up together). My Grandma had probably been saying, “Grace, smile. Sit still and smile. Put your arm around your sister and smile. Grace. Grace!”

My mom has a face that gives her away before she utters a word, and that’s what I love most about this picture. I know it’s a big part of what Hadley loves about my mom. The two of them seem to have conversations with each other without speaking.

Many times, I think I’m raising the daughter my mom was when it comes to Hadley. The two of them have the same sense of humor. They are both fiercely bright. They both live with the faith that the world is theirs to discover and be at home in.

I have never had that boldness. I wonder if my Grandma did. I wonder if she ever wished she could be someone different for her daughter. This is a thought that I’ve had since the words “unprecedented” and “pandemic” became part of our everyday language.

I’ve known this about Hadley since she was a toddler, and her first full phrase was, “Bye, bye,” as she tried to put her shoes on and walk out the door. She loves the world, she loves people, she yearns to be a part of something bigger than herself. I don’t always know how to foster that, and I realize how much I’ve depended on school, soccer, my friends, and our church to help me. Now that it’s all taken away, I have to face my fear.

My fear is this: What do I do when Hadley gets hurt? I know I can’t prevent it, but how do I pass along the courage and the confidence to keep living the vivacious way she wants to live when I don’t think I have any to pass along?

I shift the picture so it’s at an angle Hadley and Harper can see while they practice the piano. I wonder where my Grandma was when this picture was being taken. My youngest aunt looks like she’s barely two years old, and is smiling the smile of a child who sees her mother or father. Or both. She is not smiling for a stranger. And my mom’s position is a message to her mother. I suppose it could be interpreted as disrespect, but I think more, it’s one of a daughter feeling completely comfortable expressing herself in front of her parents. My grandma isn’t in the picture, but she is there. I see it in her daughters’ eyes.

“I think there are a lot of different ways to get the answer,” I tell Hadley.

Hadley waits—a courtesy pause, I am sure of it—then says, “Yeah, I’m gonna go ask Dad,” and leaves the room.

 I rub the photo frame to get rid of some of the dust, and think again to the day I fell off my bike. To this day, I cannot hear my neighbor’s voice, or my brother’s, though I know they were both talking. I don’t hear myself screaming or crying, and I know that was happening, too. Sound comes only in that moment when my mom hands me the calculator, and then walks to the window. I can hear her lift the window, probably something she wasn’t supposed to do, but you really can’t tell my mom anything. I can hear her taking deep breaths. I can hear the clank of her car keys when her purse fell off her shoulder. That’s when the doctor looked over at her, then looked at me. It was the doctor that began giving me math problems.

Maybe this is a memory revised, but I know enough about my mom and my grandma to know there are different kinds of boldness. My grandma got on a boat that she wasn’t supposed to be on, and with her husband and two small children, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to America not for a better life, but so they wouldn’t die. I know my grandmother was shy. I know she was soft-spoken. I know she knew pain and hurt that she would be defined by for the rest of her life, but bold does not begin to describe what she did for her family over fifty years ago.

And while it is on a less dramatic level, I don’t think my mom thought any less of herself because she took the help of the doctor to not only make it so that I could begin to heal, but also, so that my mom could steady her breath and return to herself.

Maybe the boldest thing a mother can do is to trust that her child has everything she needs, and will find her way in this world that is both terrifying and beautiful. Maybe the boldest thing a mother can do is to acknowledge that, and then step out of the way.

 It is when I hear sound that I begin to remember sensation: the tap of the calculator’s buttons, the pull of the thread in my skin, the stiff starch of the doctor’s jacket. The giggle forming in my stomach when the doctor tries to come up with a really hard problem, and from my mom looking at me because she knows I’ll figure it out.

My memory ends at the sound of my voice, giving them both the answer.

Words and photo by Callie Feyen.