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An Unspoken Life

The child in the photograph is about four years old. She is not chubby, but there is a sturdiness in her arms and legs, and in the set of her shoulders. The girl sits stiffly on a cushion with her left knee bent and that leg tucked primly under the other. The toe of a shiny black patent-leather shoe sticks out beside the opposite knee. On the foot that extends down, you can see that she is wearing a white sock with a thin satin ribbon laced through the top of it and tied in a tiny bow.

Since it is a black and white photo, there is no way to know the color of her pale dress, but I know that it is not white. It is freshly pressed, with the ruffles at her knees and upper arms starched into crisp puffs. My mother would have called the neckline of this dress scoop-necked: you can see where the girl’s neck curves into her shoulders and chest. A pale satin ribbon threaded through a strip of lace encircles the neck opening. The dress is straight and plain from shoulders to knees. Perhaps to compensate for this plainness, she has a length of wide, dark grosgrain ribbon, tied into a long bow, perched on her right shoulder—the one away from the photographer. The loop dips down over her chest, while the tails of the bow fall free from the end of her shoulder past her elbow.

Her left hand lies open, palm up, fingers spread, in her lap. She seems to be pressing on the palm of that hand with the fingertips of her right hand. It is, even stilled for 80 years, a nervous gesture. Her light brown hair is fine and wispy; it is curled slightly over the tops of her ears and cut into a crooked line of bangs across her wide forehead. Her skin is smooth, and her slight smile creases her pudgy cheeks in short, grave lines.

Her chin is lifted slightly, and over a child’s pug nose, my mother’s gray eyes reproach me. I know this look: it is the look of a person wishing desperately to deflect attention away from herself. I was told the story behind this picture long before I ever saw it. My Mom’s mother had arranged for professional photographs of her children—an extravagance for their 1920’s, schoolteacher-father’s income. Since Mom was the eldest, she was dressed first, in her best white frilly dress, and told to sit quietly in the parlor. But she had not obeyed, and the dress and she became muddy. I did not need a description of my grandmother’s actions as she removed the soiled dress, washed the child, and re-dressed her. I could imagine only too well the sharp scolding punctuated by the tug and snap of the clothing as it was removed and replaced.

I know, as well, the look in those eyes. As a teenager, I watched in horror as Mom would trip on uneven pavement and grab at a stranger for balance. She would look at me then, almost as if daring me to believe what I had just seen. The stranger would be staring at her, uncertain whether to be angry at an affront or to laugh over some kind of horseplay—possibly from an acquaintance? Mom would laugh mirthlessly and apologize profusely to the stranger, and then she would move on down the sidewalk as I followed, seeing then the look of pity or contempt on the stranger’s face. It was only after several years of this that I learned its name: Multiple Sclerosis.

Thankfully, the devastation that will come from an adult-onset illness is not in the eyes of the child, but the deferential determination with which she would handle the disease is clear from her gaze. She never discussed these episodes of stumbling, and she never asked us for help walking or climbing stairs. There was an expectation, conveyed in those same gray eyes, that the family would consider the whole subject not to exist.

The disease came into its own sometime in her early 30’s, while I was the age of the girl in the photo. Since it happened while I was immersed in my own childhood, I have no clear idea of the time of its onset. It was also a time when she loved to tell my sister and me stories of her childhood, so that now sometimes I am certain I experienced a childhood event that was really hers. Hers seemed like a large family to me: three girls and then, a little later, my Uncle Bob. Mom was old enough to remember taking care of Bob as a crawling infant. Her mother would put Bob on a large blanket in the backyard and instruct Mom not to let him crawl off the blanket. She soon learned that their dog, a miniature collie with all the traits of that proud shepherding breed, could be counted on to stay near the blanket and bark loudly whenever Bob ventured off it. My grandmother never realized that it was Trixie, and not her daughter, who minded the baby on all those summer afternoons.

It is said that Multiple Sclerosis is a sex-linked genetic disease, although the exact mechanisms were unknown then and unclear as I reached young womanhood. That more women suffer from it, and that it is somehow passed down through families, are characteristics of the disease. There were no stumbling, limping women in Mom’s stories, but I have memories of family reunions with twisted, older women sitting in the shadows.

Her life was not an easy one. Widowed in her thirties with three small children, she had returned to the college she left to marry my father, now seeking a teaching degree. I heard of her struggles to maintain grades while running a household and raising us, but they came to me as triumphs: she graduated with honors, we were warm and fed all the while, and Christmas came every year. Once, in an art appreciation class, the professor had brought in a paper bag with something inside it. Holding it out to Mom, he asked her to put her hand in it and tell him what was there. She thrust her hand in and announced that it was a silk scarf.He nodded and asked her if she knew what color it was. She hesitated a moment and then said, “Purple. I think it’s purple, or perhaps a deep pink.” He then pulled a purple scarf from the bag, to the amazement of her younger classmates. I believe that his point was that the senses are more connected than we realize, but all I knew was that of course Mom would know a purple scarf when she felt one, just as she had known how to get the dog to do her babysitting.

When it came time for her to seek work, it is my impression that she found it quickly and without difficulty. She ended up teaching in an affluent community’s elementary school, and I knew precisely how those children felt when Mrs. Saller strode to the front of the room and began telling them things they needed to know.

Our life became a routine of school stories from each of us at dinner, Friday-night games of Rummy or Clue with popcorn and soda, and weekends most often spent outdoors working in our own small garden, raking leaves, or hiking in parks like Old Man’s Cave and Ash Cave. One of our favorite fall and winter activities was to get up early and drive to the rocky parks for a breakfast picnic. We would start a fire and make eggs and bacon and hot cocoa before heading off to hike the rugged trails among the boulders and caves. I liked to imagine myself living in the caves, curled up by a fire and awakening to rays of sunlight darting out from the wrinkles of leaves and globs of sky overhead. As we got older we were able to leave Mom at the foot of a nearly vertical climb and then wave down to her from perches where we knew Indians before us had crouched to hide from evil spirits.

I never knew that gradually Mom was actually unable to make these climbs. It was her teaching job and not our picnics that finally forced the introduction of the cane into our house. She had tripped on the uneven ground of the far playground at school while leading her second-graders out in a fire drill. Knowing how she felt when she tripped in front of strangers, I knew that tumble in front of her pupils had been devastating, but I also knew this was not a topic for me to discuss.

The cane was unremarkable: a light brown wooden rod, probably made of ash, that gleamed softly and had a simple curve for a handle. It stood awkwardly in the kitchen, leaning into the corner created by the refrigerator and the wall. That kitchen was huge—a sun-yellow room with cupboards and shelves, crannies and nooks, and a place for everything, except the cane. When Mom walked with it she kept it pressed at her side, willing it to be invisible. But it was the first thing I saw when I entered the kitchen.

I have no memory of having ever picked it up. Well beyond the age of playing dress-up, into my early teens at least, I was still fond of sitting down on the curved and padded dressing-table stool in her room and trying on her hats in front of her oval mirror. I would put them on and watch myself closely. When we shopped with Mom for her hats, she had a trying-on-hats look—eyelids lowered slightly and lips pursed. I think I was more interested in whether this activity created the same look in my face than whether I looked good in her hats. Why didn’t I try walking with her cane down the hallway to watch myself in the full-length mirror in the foyer?

I watched from that foyer once as Mom was watering flowers in the front yard, yanking the hose along as she and the cane maneuvered over the lawn. Suddenly, the cane was in the wrong place to help her, and she tripped and fell to her knees. I saw her begin to struggle up, when she abruptly sat down on the grass, her legs in front of her and the water still arcing toward the flower patch. I don’t know if I had intended to go out to help her, but before I could act I realized that the neighbor, Mr. Young, had just driven into his driveway across the street. He had seen her fall just as he passed, and he stopped the car at the end of the driveway and got out and crossed the street.

“Well hello, Mr. Young,” Mom called out, and he drew near and stood looking at her and the water and the cane by her side for a moment.

Then he gave a slight bow and said, “My what a refreshing way to water the flowers, Mrs. Saller. Have a good day.”

After he had returned to his car and pulled it into his garage, Mom used the cane to pull herself up, getting only a little water on herself as she fought to get upright. She brushed off her slacks, looked around briefly, and then moved on to calmly water the next bed of flowers.

For Mom, manners and propriety could cover any flaw. I remember being surprised when I went to college in upstate New York that other girls shivered as they walked the snowbound quad between classes. They were more surprised that I didn’t, but I assured them that my mother had simply taught me when I was a child that ladies don’t shiver. I don’t know how that edict provided me with the strength to withstand cold, but I do know that I can stand in the most biting sub-zero temperatures and feel miserably cold, but I do not shiver.

It was while I was away at college that Mom made the decision to take a disability retirement from teaching. Home on holiday break, I perched on the edge of her dressing-table stool as she rocked in the large wooden rocker in her room.

“Mom,” I asked, knowing I was betraying the code that linked us. “Why, if you can’t even work, am I returning to college like nothing has happened?”

I was stunned to see tears appear in the corners of her eyes, but she said in a steady voice, “Because it is what you are supposed to do. I promised your father all those years ago that all of you would go to college no matter what. And I intend to see to that.” Her chin quivered slightly and she rocked a little harder, but she quickly brought up another topic and we conversed as if that moment had never happened.

It was just after my brother had finished high school and had been accepted by a college that I was summoned home by my Uncle Bob.“Katie, this is your uncle, Robert,” he had said on the phone from Ohio. “I’m sorry your mother has passed away.”

Confused by the name, and certain that the news was wrong, I said, “Uncle Bob, is this some kind of joke?”

He assured me that it wasn’t, and added that it appeared to be her heart.

“How can this be?” I wanted to shout. “She’s only 50 years old and MS doesn’t even affect your heart.” Instead I said, “I see. Well, I appreciate your calling. I’m sure it wasn’t easy. Do I need to call my sister?” But that was already taken care of, so we agreed that I would call back with flight information and politely hung up.

It wasn’t until the morning of her funeral that we found the suicide note. It was among a stack of papers that basically laid out, as if to be followed like clues, what three children would do to bury their mother, sell her house, move the son who still lived with her to an apartment, and return to their lives. Her note simply announced that the burden of now not being able to do things for herself, after all those widowed years of having to do everything, was more than she wished to bear. We each read it silently, noted that the logic was difficult to fault, and began the process she had outlined.

We attended the funeral and put on a strange parody of mourning an unexpected loss while coming to terms with the truth that this had been her choice. With nothing to give her now but the courtesy of a thorough job with her bequest, we packed up her things, divided them appropriately, and established our brother in an apartment near campus.

My husband and I loaded the last of the items we were taking home into our car, and then added three boxes of things that we would put in the Goodwill drop-off box on our way out of town. The Goodwill receptacle was a large wooden structure, as big as a child’s playhouse, with a wide roof over it and a large square window cut into the side. This was a Monday morning so the box was nearly full. After pushing two of the boxes in, my husband had to take the items out of the last box and stuff them into cracks and crannies. The last thing he pulled out of the box was Mom’s cane, so he hooked the end of its crook over the window and left it dangling there. It swung back and forth gently as he loped back to the car. I looked out the back window when we started to drive away and nearly shouted for him to stop and turn the car around so I could run back and get it. My last view was of it hanging awkwardly on the box before I turned around and folded my hands in my lap.

I have wished every day since then that I had that cane. I would show it to my children and tell them stories of Games of Clue, and of stubbornness, and of cooking breakfast over a fire and then climbing like Indians through caves and rocks. We would take the cane out into the yard and I would hold it out for them to feel the weight and strength of it. Then I would lift it high over my head so we could see it in the sunlight. I know it wouldn’t break when it hit the ground, but I also know we would all shriek with delight and then giggle as we picked it up and took turns walking while leaning on it.

-Kate Saller is currently a horticultural and nonfiction writer, with articles published in Organic Gardening, Horticulture, American Nurseryman, and many newspapers. She has served as a reader for Richard Burgin’s Boulevard magazine, and holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.