Lessons for Eve

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. The clouds were home to a sort of haunting that time couldn’t seem to heal, and Eve found this befitting. Tonight, she found her heart home to heartbreak fabricked with the sort that doesn’t seem to puncture. She wasn’t afraid of being alone, but she knew loneliness and being alone were two very different things.

That was the first lesson her mother taught her. 

Eve was not a bubbly little girl. She found company in arts, crafts, and scribbled drafts and she found humour in replying to compliments with “...I know.” She didn’t play nice with the other kids, but that was mostly because the other kids didn’t want to play with her at all. The first time Eve cried on the playground, her knees were unscathed but her heart may as well have been bruised and bloodied. Eve was lonely, and her mother decided that that simply wouldn’t do. She taught herself everything there was to learn on the monkey bars, and her mother taught her that it was a lot easier to tune out the other kids when she was tuned into the swing of things. She did hate the phrase “getting back into the swing of things” though. It reminded her too much of her fifth grade teacher – too dismissive, too nonchalant, too indifferent, and most of all, a little bit too smiley. Eve didn’t like being told to smile.

The second lesson her mother showed her was that she didn’t have to smile for anybody but herself. 

Eve wasn’t interested in boys until a little bit later. She got sick quick of being told that boys were being mean to her because they liked her, and by the time she learned to be mean to the boys that she liked, she got sicker quicker of being called a bitch, and by the time she learned to be a little bit nicer to the boys that she liked, she wanted to give up because of how they wanted her to give it up. Her mother had none of it. She instructed Eve to put herself first and proselytized that “boys will be boys, until they become men, but they’ll never have the strength of women!” She was a cool feminist before it was cool, but her third lesson?

Never do something just to seem cool. 

Eve did not become a bubbly young woman. She wasn’t a stranger to the universal spirals of adolescence, and she wasn’t unfamiliar with the enticing invitation of coolness – a flavor of coolness that she would never be allowed into. High school was cliquey, as it tends to be, and Eve was a depressed teenage girl, as they tend to be. But her mother had nothing to fear, and certainly not pubescent fear itself. Curfews were enforced, doors double-deadbolted, and phones collected every night. Eve was not a fan, but it grew on her the night she needed to turn down an insistent prom date who wanted her to stay the night. She didn’t mind it so much then.

She was a studious young woman, and that always helped when she conflated loneliness with being alone, or when she worried about never being the pretty one. She was a studious young woman, and that helped a lot when she got her very first desk job. The first time Eve fell in love may have been with her salary. It was a gorgeous metric of how far she’d come, and she wanted nothing more than to make the pretty number even prettier – even bigger. 

Her mother declared that the fourth lesson to bring to the table would be about work-life balance. 

Eve worked and lived and balanced a little more. Her mother demanded regular family time and would occasionally send care packages – cookies wrapped in all-uppercase reminders to take breaks and rest up. She obliged and cooperated, but mostly for the cookies, because white chocolate chip was her favorite. She fruitlessly frequented bars, but no one ever really made sense to her until James. 

James was dorky, but he was a studious young man. Eve thought he had pretty eyes, and James thought she had a pretty smile, and they delighted each other for a few years. 

James had pretty eyes, but he was not perfect. As Eve climbed corporate ladders to her heart’s content, he thought it necessary to tear her down a little with every rung. Work-life balance became pressure to start a family, partnership became badmouthing with in-laws-to-be, and the tenet of “you and me against the problem” became “you are the problem.” And Eve’s mother was not fond of these problems. She thought it was about time for her fifth lesson:

A relationship is worth having only if it makes you and your life better. 

Eve listened. It hurt to end things with James, but she found herself happier when she wasn’t coming home to resentment. She was happier on her own, of course, in part because she had known for so very long that loneliness and being alone are not the same thing at all. Her mother’s lessons had never failed her and this one was no exception. Her mother had never failed her. 

Her mother’s health was failing her.

Eve got her own copy of the white chocolate chip cookie recipe, because it was a big ask for her mother to bake them on her own so frequently, even though she didn’t like getting her hands floury. She stopped telling her mother silly stories about first dates, because they weren’t so easy on her heart rate. She moved a few hours closer to home – the new job didn’t exactly pay better, but she just wanted to be closer, just in case. 

Her mother thought “just in case” was an absolutely ridiculous reason. What happened to her no-nonsense Eve? She had one more lesson in her tool belt: everyone has their time to go.

Eve would not have it. Her mother was wrong and it wasn’t fair and she told her just as much. Every lesson made sense. Every lesson was about strength, even on your own, and it just wasn’t fair that her mother thought she wouldn’t have that strength anymore. It wasn’t right, and Eve wasn’t having it. 

Truthfully, Eve knew the difference between loneliness and being alone, but it was damn near impossible to admit to her mother that maybe she had never really been alone. Surely this could not be the swing of things. Eve knew the difference between loneliness and being alone, but she was a million times more sure about the difference between holding her mother’s hand while she scolded her about not eating enough and holding a pamphlet with flat, faded handwritten bullet points about oven temperature. 

It was so terribly cold, the sort of cold that can’t really be warmed by white chocolate chip cookies. Snow was falling, and on the bus ride home, Eve could recite every spreadsheet shortcut if asked, but she couldn’t remember which direction her mother applied Band-Aids to make them stick better. It was almost dark, and for the first time in a terribly long time, Eve wasn’t sure if being alone would be lonely this time. Everyone has their time to go, but Eve’s mother wasn’t just anyone. She was the sort of stern warmth that could heat up any home, the scolding sun that could put any cloud in its place. She was structure and strength, and she didn’t smile at anyone, except for Eve, sometimes. She was strict, stubborn, steadfast, and very, very sick. 

It was so terribly cold the night Eve lost her mother. She found her heart home to a sort of heartbreak that forms when loneliness and being alone become one and the same. She was afraid of being alone, because it was time for the only person she’d ever force a smile for to go. She was afraid of being alone, because it was time for her source of strength to go. It was time for the only relationship that unconditionally made her and her life better to go; it was time for the coolest person she knew to go; it was time for her mother to go and no lesson out there could have properly prepared her. 

It was so terribly cold when Eve realized in time that the clouds will never truly lift. It was terrifyingly lonely when she understood that there is no short and sweet grasp of grief, that sometimes there is no lesson to be taught. It became a little bit warmer when she understood that it didn’t matter so much that she wasn’t lonely, and the snow melted a little bit when she thought about how she did not have to carry on alone. But really, she found her heart home to a sort of healing that comes about when the snow falls and the sky gets dark – the sort that spreads like white chocolate chip cookie dough and smudges like handwriting on care packages, the sort that is not really so straightforward as the difference between loneliness and being alone.