The March Hare

Yesterday I hung one of my mom's art pieces on our wall. It's a six-foot-long collage of sexy lady's underwear and strange jewellry which hangs from a series of garter hooks and earrings. She made it sometime in the seventies, so the backing is a little worse for the wear, no thanks to me and my ungrateful treatment, but it's still pretty amazing.

It's hard for me to reconcile this artist with the woman who once told me that my room was the room of a child with a severe psychological disorder. But this is who she was before she was a mom, and who she has been, somewhere under the surface of registered nurse and mother of three. I wish that she had been able to be that person always, without ever having had to subvert it.

I grew up around my mom's canvases, but I never saw her working on one. Lately, she has taken out unfinished work and very, very old art supplies, and has started a new piece, a large tapestry that she embroiders in smaller blocks. It's amazing to watch her thread a needle, pick up a blank square of cloth, and a world blooms across it without any planning, without any hesitance.

In our house, artistic talent was highly prized. While she always hid it well, my mother continues to be proud of my writing, and has saved my juvenilia even more assiduously than I have. She is always quick to point out the flaws in my work, criticism that it was difficult to disregard once I found a poem she had written in college that was absolutely amazing. She never wanted to be one of those moms who are uniformly encouraging; she prefers to make us work for it.

Two years ago, Clurg and I attempted to get into a Mardi Gras ball in New Orleans and were rejected because our costuems weren't good enough. My mom, dad, uncle, and aunt all got in and stayed out until seven o'clock in the morning, while Clurg and I had to go home burning with shame.

I just can't compete.