Page 49 of Rootbound
I feel my face, wet with tears, hot and swollen. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but the simple and honest explanation makes the kernel of sadness, the one typically wrapped in anger, bloom. I always expected him to blame her… to say that she kept us away. I expected him to keep things surface level, maybe to blame work and then distance. The fact that he is owning up to what it all boiled down to—selfishness, hurt, and bitterness—has rendered my carefully considered responses to be useless.
I can’t help but wonder how I would have felt if I had been in my mom’s shoes. Cole’s family was fun, wonderful, loving. How would it have felt to have kids with Cole, before the split? To imagine the fun holidays with them, the new siblings they’d get with their other side of the family… to constantly be compared to Allie, to swallow my personal rage and devastation so that my children could go enjoy their holidays guilt-free, to then come home to a quiet house, and a broken-hearted Mom barely keeping it together, scraping by, trying to hide any unhappiness from them. It’s so similar to whatstilltook place in my upbringing that I lose my breath. I am suddenly so gratefulthat I didn’t have a baby with Cole. That I didn’t take that decision lightly. Because I know that kids aren’t an accessory to marriage, they’re not an extension of us. They justare…and I don’t trust that some of my own selfishness wouldn’t seep out onto them. I don’t know if I’d have the strength that so many parents have.
“Thank you. For sharing all of that with me,” I manage. “I think I’m glad that I ended up here. And, even though I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with all the years we missed together, I am still glad that I am here, now.”
Charlie’s eyes fill, and he says, “Your mom did an amazing job from what I can tell. And I’m glad, too.…”
James saunters over to our tree finally and asks if we are ready to go. We gather our things and load back up.
I feel Henry’s eyes on me, but I don’t glance his way. Too raw and exposed as I am.
We take off again, but this time I feel nostalgic, lost in memories, coming to terms with the fact that maybe, just maybe, everything did happen for a reason. After all, if Mom hadn’t moved us, I wouldn’t have met Cole. And even though that ended in disaster, without him bolstering me, I never would have pursued the career that I now love. I can stack the blocks of my life and make sense of them, this way.
A Garth Brooks song comes on the radio, and I smile as a memory surfaces…
I pull up in my Jeep to our little L-shaped house and immediately see Mom through the window. A smile plants itself on my face. It’s a good day, she’s in a great mood.
Mom is in the kitchen with rubber gloves, music blasting. As soon as I walk in the front door and toss my keys on the hook, she whirls around, singing into her dish brush with abandon. I join her and we share the mic,screaming a ballad about being shameless.
We laugh hysterically, hug and dance in the kitchen…
Mom and I that same night, going through wedding plans, looking over the timeline we printed off of an online wedding planning How-To page. I quickly Sharpie over the Father-Daughter Dance, and anything eluding to being given away.
“Tait,” Mom gently rebukes.
I look at her in confusion. “What?”
“I just don’t think… Well, I want you to know that I will be okay if you want to invite your father to be a part of this,” she says, leaving me stunned… I think that she must be saying this in an effort to check off some kind of Mom guilt reprieve list she has going on, so I don’t toy with feeling that out more, and respond with as much levity as I can.
“Why would I invite him to my wedding? To meet my husband for the first time? That’s silly, Mom. I don’t need him there. I’ve told you numerous times that I don’t even need this whole wedding. I’d be happy doing it at a courthouse.”
“I think you should send an invitation out that way. Who knows, maybe he’ll send a gift at least?” she counters, and I see right through her forced levity, too.
“And why would I want that now? He’s been perfectly happy to just pay you your support for us. He hasn’t pursued more, at least not for a long time, not really… so why should I be the one to try?”
She looks at me sadly, then, and her eyes start to fill with tears. Shit. Wasn’t it twenty minutes ago that we were dancing and laughing in the kitchen as we put away dishes? Now I’ve made her feel guilty, like I’m some angry, unadjusted young adult with Daddy issues. Look at me! I’m happy, I’m great, I’m marrying my best friend, and he’s as crazy about me as I am him. Ava is happy, she’s great. She’s got a new boyfriend, is away at college. She did good, we are enough, we made it. The three musketeers, all for one and one for all.
“Mom, I…”
“I have you guys. They let me have you guys. That’s all that matters to me. I just want this day to be about you, babe. I just want you to know that I support whatever you want to do. Don’t worry about me. I can face the music whenever you are ready.”
Easier said than done.…
I spent so much time worrying about determinedly and decidedly being fine for her sake, that I never considered that she might haveactuallybeen fine, then… and been genuine about trying to bridge the gap. Was she feeling sad that she hadn’t encouraged us earlier? Did she feel guilty over keeping and moving us, for us missing out on something? I had assumed that was what she meant by facing the music. Or did she feel sad for him, and whathemissed? I had made that call, along with many before that, in closing him out.
Twenty-Four
Tait
The silence in the truck for the ride home morphs into a comfortable, if not slightly melancholy one. Shortly after we took off a second time, Charlie discovered that they’d forgotten to pack the extra fuel for the rigs. So, rather than chance it, we turned around and headed back.
I find myself agreeing to dinner the following night, accepting hugs from James and my father, a distant wave from Duane, and an encouraging nod from Henry before I bid them farewell and head into my truck and back to the ranch.
I get to work as soon as I get back to my overheated cabin and start to upload the material from the day. I’m only a tiny bit embarrassed to find that I didn’t actually capture much. Too often, being a photographer means you’re forced to miss the beauty, because you immediately auto-analyze thelighting and angles of a landscape, rather than soak it in. Today was understandably distracting, reconnecting to this place that once was home, and it forced me to be present rather than work-minded.
Nevertheless, when I start uploading what I did capture to my laptop, I can’t help but fall in love a little bit with the terrain. Dry, dusty fields peppered with sage in one series fade into lush forests, mountainous views in another, then change back to what looks like endless flat meadows. Just a small section of Idaho looks like it could instead be three different states altogether. And this isn’t even my best work.
And then there’s the shot of Henry… I loose a sigh and then shake my head to clear it, kicking myself for sucking face with a stranger so soon into this trip. Wishing I could just take the edge off of… this… whatever all of this is.