flailed for solutions.
Work alternating days at the CIL? Half days?
Impossible. I’d come to Honolulu at JPAC expense. And Plato Lowery was anxious for an answer.
Take Katy to the CIL with me?
Definitely a bad idea.
I started to speak. “Maybe I could—”
“No, Mom. You have to go to work. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“It helps to stay busy.” Gently.
I braced for incoming. Didn’t happen.
“Yes,” Katy said. “It does.”
Suggestions leaped to mind.
No! yipped a wise sector of gray cells. Give her time. Space.
Rising, I hugged Katy’s shoulders. Then I went inside, changed to shorts, and strolled down to the beach.
The sun rode low, streaking the horizon and ocean tangerine and pink. The sand felt warm and soft underfoot, the breeze feathery on my skin.
Walking the water’s edge, childhood memories popped into my brain. Summers at Pawleys Island. My sister, Harry. Gran. My mother, Katherine Daessee Lee.
Daisy.
Triggered by the setting and my recent encounter with Katy, synapses fired images and emotions.
My mother’s eyes, green like my own. Sometimes radiant. Sometimes cool, refusing to engage.
A child’s confusion.
Which mother today?
A woman driven by social pretension? The newest spa, the trendiest restaurant, the charity event receiving current social column ink.
A woman in seclusion? Shades drawn, bedroom door locked, sobbing or silence within.
How I hated Daisy’s frantic party mode. How I hated her withdrawal into her lilac-scented cell.
Gradually, closed doors and distant eyes became the norm.
As a child I’d loved my mother fiercely. As an adult I’d finally posed the raw question to myself: Did my mother ever love me?
And I’d faced the answer.
I didn’t know.
My mother loved my baby brother, Kevin. And my father, Michael Terrence Brennan. I was eight when both died, one of leukemia, one drunk at the wheel. The dual tragedies changed everything.
But did they? Or had Daisy always been mad?
Same answer. I didn’t know.
I wanted a closeness with my daughter that I’d been denied with my mother. No matter the irrationality of Katy’s behavior or the unreasonableness of her need, I’d be there for her.
But how?
The cadence of the waves triggered no revelations.
Katy was gone from the lanai when I arrived back at the house. She appeared as I was washing my feet at the outdoor shower.
“You’re right. Moping is stupid.”
I waited.
“Tomorrow I’ll go parasailing.”
“Sounds good.” It didn’t. I preferred Katy safely grounded, not dangling a hundred feet in the air.
“Or I’ll sign up for one of those helicopter rides over a volcano.”
“Mm.” I turned off the faucet.
“Listen, Mom. I really am grateful for this trip. Hawaii is awesome.”
“And I’m grateful you’re here.”
“I took a dozen shrimp from the freezer.”
“Fire up the barbie?” Delivered in my very best Aussie.
“Aye, mate.”
Katie raised a palm. I high-fived it.
One dozen turned into two.
B IRDIE WAS CHASING A VERY LARGE DOG ALONG A VERY WHITE beach. The dog wore an elaborate apparatus with lines rising to a bright red parachute high in the sky.
Katy dangled upside down from the chute, long blond hair waving in the wind. Sunlight glinted from tears on her cheeks.
A gull screeched.
The dog stopped.
Katy’s chute deflated and she drifted earthward.
Fast. Too fast.
The gull’s screeching morphed to a very loud buzzing.
I raised one semiconscious lid.
The room was dark. The bedside table was vibrating.
I fumbled for my BlackBerry and clicked on.
Don Ho was singing “Aloha Oe.”
“How is my sweet rose of Maunawili?” A male voice. Not Don’s.
Another twist to the dream?
No. My eyes were open. One managed to drag the clock face into focus.
“Do you know what time it is here?” Seemingly a frequent opener on calls to Hawaii.
“Seven.”
“Redo the math, Ryan.”
“Give me a hint.”
“There’s a five in the answer.”
Work alternating days at the CIL? Half days?
Impossible. I’d come to Honolulu at JPAC expense. And Plato Lowery was anxious for an answer.
Take Katy to the CIL with me?
Definitely a bad idea.
I started to speak. “Maybe I could—”
“No, Mom. You have to go to work. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“It helps to stay busy.” Gently.
I braced for incoming. Didn’t happen.
“Yes,” Katy said. “It does.”
Suggestions leaped to mind.
No! yipped a wise sector of gray cells. Give her time. Space.
Rising, I hugged Katy’s shoulders. Then I went inside, changed to shorts, and strolled down to the beach.
The sun rode low, streaking the horizon and ocean tangerine and pink. The sand felt warm and soft underfoot, the breeze feathery on my skin.
Walking the water’s edge, childhood memories popped into my brain. Summers at Pawleys Island. My sister, Harry. Gran. My mother, Katherine Daessee Lee.
Daisy.
Triggered by the setting and my recent encounter with Katy, synapses fired images and emotions.
My mother’s eyes, green like my own. Sometimes radiant. Sometimes cool, refusing to engage.
A child’s confusion.
Which mother today?
A woman driven by social pretension? The newest spa, the trendiest restaurant, the charity event receiving current social column ink.
A woman in seclusion? Shades drawn, bedroom door locked, sobbing or silence within.
How I hated Daisy’s frantic party mode. How I hated her withdrawal into her lilac-scented cell.
Gradually, closed doors and distant eyes became the norm.
As a child I’d loved my mother fiercely. As an adult I’d finally posed the raw question to myself: Did my mother ever love me?
And I’d faced the answer.
I didn’t know.
My mother loved my baby brother, Kevin. And my father, Michael Terrence Brennan. I was eight when both died, one of leukemia, one drunk at the wheel. The dual tragedies changed everything.
But did they? Or had Daisy always been mad?
Same answer. I didn’t know.
I wanted a closeness with my daughter that I’d been denied with my mother. No matter the irrationality of Katy’s behavior or the unreasonableness of her need, I’d be there for her.
But how?
The cadence of the waves triggered no revelations.
Katy was gone from the lanai when I arrived back at the house. She appeared as I was washing my feet at the outdoor shower.
“You’re right. Moping is stupid.”
I waited.
“Tomorrow I’ll go parasailing.”
“Sounds good.” It didn’t. I preferred Katy safely grounded, not dangling a hundred feet in the air.
“Or I’ll sign up for one of those helicopter rides over a volcano.”
“Mm.” I turned off the faucet.
“Listen, Mom. I really am grateful for this trip. Hawaii is awesome.”
“And I’m grateful you’re here.”
“I took a dozen shrimp from the freezer.”
“Fire up the barbie?” Delivered in my very best Aussie.
“Aye, mate.”
Katie raised a palm. I high-fived it.
One dozen turned into two.
B IRDIE WAS CHASING A VERY LARGE DOG ALONG A VERY WHITE beach. The dog wore an elaborate apparatus with lines rising to a bright red parachute high in the sky.
Katy dangled upside down from the chute, long blond hair waving in the wind. Sunlight glinted from tears on her cheeks.
A gull screeched.
The dog stopped.
Katy’s chute deflated and she drifted earthward.
Fast. Too fast.
The gull’s screeching morphed to a very loud buzzing.
I raised one semiconscious lid.
The room was dark. The bedside table was vibrating.
I fumbled for my BlackBerry and clicked on.
Don Ho was singing “Aloha Oe.”
“How is my sweet rose of Maunawili?” A male voice. Not Don’s.
Another twist to the dream?
No. My eyes were open. One managed to drag the clock face into focus.
“Do you know what time it is here?” Seemingly a frequent opener on calls to Hawaii.
“Seven.”
“Redo the math, Ryan.”
“Give me a hint.”
“There’s a five in the answer.”
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