I don’t want to write about my mother.

I don’t want to write about the way the sun shone through her afro like a halo or the way she danced with me and my sister in summer snow atop the Rocky Mountains while my father watched impatiently. I don’t want to write about the beautiful dresses she sewed, letting me pick out the pattern from the giant books at the fabric store. I don’t want to write about kneeling on the kitchen stool and feeding slippery chicken breasts into the meat grinder so she could make Chicken Cutlets Pojarski. I don’t want to write about the sweet-salty crunch of those golden chicken patties.

I don’t want to write about the time my mother and I wallpapered my bedroom, the limp, sticky sheets hanging over our giggling heads like tongues. Or the shopping trips to Loehmann’s and its communal dressing room, where we laughed with our eyes at the grandmas in their giant panties and pointy brassiers. Or the time she came home from work to find me vomiting in the half bathroom with the black velvet wallpaper and walked me around the block without once scolding me for being drunk in the middle of the day.

I don’t want to write about how it was in her eyes that I saw myself. I don’t want to write about the me she wanted and how I tried so hard to be that me. A happy me. A bubbly me. A me who thought her mother was everything.

I don’t want to write about the times I cried into the belly of Mrs. Beasley—her fur worn to a nub, her once wide smile a sharp-edged slash of red—when seventh grade pressed down on me. When telling my mother felt impossible.

I don’t want to write about my backseat vigilance on summer road trips. The ways I watched her watch my father. I don’t want to write about the breath I held as my parents struggled with tent poles in the rain, the way I adopted my mother’s silence as we tiptoed around my father’s anger.

I don’t want to write about the way she looked at me when she told me they were getting divorced. The way she asked me to tell her it was all going to be ok.

The way I did.

I don’t want to write about the last time my family was together in that station wagon as we drove to my mother’s alma mater, now mine. I don’t want to write about the sweaty grip of my sister’s hand, my mother’s hug that went on too long, my father’s wave. The way I turned my back when they left.

I don’t want to write about the silly cards my mother sent me when I was away at college—“I’m taking a class where we make everything out of raisins. What’s new with you?” Or about the time she visited me there, slept in my dorm room, ate poor-man’s pizzas from Johnny’s Hot Truck with me and my friends at two AM.

I don’t want to write about how proud I was when she crossed the finish line at the New York City Marathon, her white gloved fists in the air, “Macho Mommy” printed across her rain-soaked t-shirt. Or how proud she was when I graduated law school, drafting “subpoenas” to invite people to a party in my honor.

I don’t want to write about how that pride seemed to evaporate when I married a man she didn’t like. The way my stomach clenched at the sound of her voice on the phone. Or the sight of her thinned lips and flushed cheeks.

Her angry, needy eyes.

I don’t want to write about the things he said about her. How he’d call me by her name when he was angry. Or punishing. Or shaming.

His angry, needy eyes.

I don’t want to write about the hurtful things I said to her at his insistence.

The way I chose.

I don’t want to write about the ways I disappointed her. Or the ways she disappointed me.

I don’t want to write about the sight of her back storming out of a restaurant, leaving me with the tab and the ache of abandonment. I don’t want to write about the sound of her voice when she spoke of her fear of losing me. Or the awkward session with her therapist.

I don’t want to write about how much I needed her. How I missed her, deeply, painfully, desperately. How I couldn’t tell her that.

I don’t want to write about the terrifying years when I feared that she would die and I would be unable to say kind things at her funeral.

That she would die without feeling my love.

That she would die.

When I left, it was to her I turned. And she was there.

We don’t talk about the dark years. We both have our truths.

But now I get to make her giggle again. I get to hold her hand as her husband shuffles slowly toward death. I get to sneak dark chocolate peanut butter cups from her purse in Broadway theaters. I get to join her daily for Zoom cocktail hour and watch her drink too much wine without once scolding her.

I get to forgive the choices she’s made. Forgive myself mine.

I get to tell her how much I love her, and feel her love me.

I get to look in her eyes and see us there.