Monotony, Spontaneity

My mom was a quiet woman. Her composure was always stoic, and she made sure to keep me and my siblings in a straight, well-kept line. She went to her 9-5 job every day where she worked in human resources. Dealt with work conflicts, rules, and unhappy customers every single day. Started each morning at 7:00 am with a cup of coffee with a splash of cream and oatmeal with brown sugar and berries. Her life was a well-practiced routine. I only saw her break it when we went on vacation or someone had a soccer game or a doctor’s appointment. 

She was a woman built by routine, and as monotonous as it seemed, she liked it and took care of the routine she created. Each time something new was brought into the mix like when she had my younger brother, her routine would just evolve and develop to fit the new aspects her life had given her. 

She was fierce but quiet. A loyal companion to my dad, as spontaneous as he could be, and an unnerving, phlegmatic presence. I tried to embody her as I grew up but learned to love the randomness that came along with a free-flowing lifestyle. I had much more fun saying yes to adventures that promised to break the routine I tried to embody until the new routine that I had created was full of spontaneity. 

She was an enigma to me. Would sometimes make off-handed comments about her life and the places she had been when she was younger. But never enough for me to know who she was before me. She felt like someone who had lived many different lives, but I only knew mom. The routine struck but otherwise, boring, woman. 

Ironically, her final act was breaking her routine. She died while walking the dog like she did every day after work from a heart attack. She never got to eat dinner with my dad as she did at 7 every day. Instead, she fought to come back, returning to her monotony for two days, until her heart gave out. A routine forever broken. 

I went to college across the country from our suburban town that she had lived in her whole life, determined to explore what I believed she had never found. After college, I moved to New York City and created a start-up newspaper company with an all-female crew. After a couple of years it took off, and we spread our company to include branches dedicated to poetry, art, pop culture, and music, on top of the news and opinion pieces we had originally started with. I met my wife while interviewing her for a story on bias in academia, and now we live in a Soho apartment I could’ve only dreamt of, with a cat and a rooftop. 

We created our own routine together, intertwined with spontaneity, and coffee with a splash of cream. It was a life I had dreamt of. And my mother loved it for me. 

I got the call that she had a heart attack while watching a true-crime documentary with my wife, one of our favorite hobbies. We jumped into action and booked a flight home. Leaving the documentary on. My wife held my hand the entire flight while I looked out the window at the darkness of night. When we landed I combed my eyes across the skyline that lived forty minutes from my house. Not knowing if I would ever hear her voice speak to me again. 

My wife drove our rental car forty-five minutes to the hospital. We didn’t even take the time to drop off our luggage, busting with clothes for a trip we had not planned and did not know when it would end. 

My younger brother met me outside and brought us into the hospital, and into the room where she was. Pale, and sickly. Harboring a shaky breath connected to a ventilator and an even shakier arrhythmic heartbeat. I had never seen her broken before. She was always neat. Hair done, nails done, outfit chosen. She was rarely ever sick when I was young, and this moment does not compare to the measly sick moments she had when I was young. She looked like a shell of a person, no longer the woman I knew, and never to be again. 

The next two days passed like a dream. I sat and watched the hands on the clock swing, occasionally getting up to hold her hand and place a cup of coffee by her bed. It was 2 am when her heart stopped. 2:01 when they pronounced her dead. 

As the prepared woman she was, her will contained simplistic directions for her funeral and her estate. We buried her in the same cemetery as her parents and brother, with a headstone similar to their look of theirs. I realized the day before the funeral that I had forgotten to bring any black clothes. I wore her black blazer to the funeral. 

After about a week we realized that we would have to leave soon. My wife booked a flight for the following week, so we would have time to go through her belongings and take empty mementos of her back home. 

She wasn’t a minimalist per se, but she mainly had what she needed. There wasn’t a lot to go through. On our last day, my brother climbed into the attic to see if there was anything left up there. He brought down two boxes that my dad didn’t know existed. They were unmarked, uncharacteristic for her. 

We dug through the boxes and found old extravagant clothes from her days in the 70s and the 80s. Photo albums of each trip she had taken, and journals filled with all of her memories. Her hints throughout my life were enough for me to realize that she had a life she kept hidden from us. But I didn’t know how much until these boxes. 

Each journal was carefully documented. I read about the births of my siblings, her monotonous days, and her reaction when I came out to her. Filled with moments I never knew she had, thoughts I didn’t know she kept. Shaping her in a completely different sphere than the one I had previously known. 

At the bottom of the box were five rolls of film she had never developed. They were unmarked, and no one knew what to expect of their contents. I kept one of her journals, that black blazer, and we all split the rolls of film between us. 

I can hardly remember the flight back, or the day that followed when I slept and cried and finally turned off the TV. My wife suggested that I go get the film developed, just as something to do. 

I walked alone to the film place, wearing the blazer that I did not need amid New York spring. I did not need to tell the worker that I was distraught because they could see it on top of my face, but I told them anyway. About the mom, I had and never truly knew before me, and the pictures of her that I had never seen. He looked at me solemnly, took the film, and said it would be ready in a week. I walked home cold and with fresh tears, and went to sleep for what felt like an eternity. 

I went back to work in the middle of the week. Determined to continue my routine, if not for myself, for her in the way that she had done. Work and life were a blur, and then I got an email that the photos were ready to be picked up.

I took the subway to the film place after work and walked into the same man smiling at me. He handed me the photos and a flash drive and winked as I walked out the door. When I got back on the subway I opened the envelope of photos to see what he had been alluding to. There was a portrait of my dad when he was young, with the lights of Paris behind him. A picture of her in the most 70s outfit I had ever seen outside of a club smoking a cigarette. Another of her and my dad on a hike in the jungle. Another of my dad was in one of those boats in Vienna. A picture of an old European couple shopping. Another of a child running on the street in Spain. 

But my absolute favorite was a picture my dad had probably taken. She was sitting on a balcony at sunset, where you could see the Eiffel Tower and the streets of Paris behind her. She was looking off into the distance, a small smile on her face. Wearing a white button-down shirt with flared blue jeans, and the same blazer I had loved draped on the seat behind her. 

She looked beautiful, and content. I wished I had known the woman she was before the routine. The woman who smoked a cigarette, flaunted her body, and went to clubs. It makes sense why she loved me for my spontaneity, it was something she had loved too. We were more similar than I believed. 

Framed at my apartment is the photo of her. And draped behind my desk chair at work is the blazer that reminds me, always break the routine.