Azaleas

Momma plants Azaleas. She likes the way they look around the wrap around porch. The way her southern belle friends fawn over them when they stop by for book club. She's a famous author, you see. When they're not veering off the path and reading a book by someone else, they're reading one of her books. She has about thirty of them, her books. She takes pride in them. She takes pride in being a small celebrity in our quaint southern town. 

They're downstairs now, her book club. Their muffled voices and laughter, drift up from the living room that's adorned with snack tables and chairs brought from the dining room. I've been sitting at the top of the stairs listening to them since they started. It passes the time until they leave, and the house can return to its rare silence again. I like to listen to their gossip. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's boring, but it always gets the job done for what I need. 

"Oh, honey, it's about time that little salon got shut down, there's no tellin' what was going on in those backrooms." 

"You know, I saw Pam flirting it up with that young man down at the grocery store." 

They have nothing better to do with their time. And neither do I apparently. I get up, leaving them to not talk about the book they're reading. I venture into my mom's room intending to snoop like I always do when I'm bored and she's preoccupied. It's the only window I have into who she really is. She doesn't really talk to me about herself. This room is all I have. 

I go through everything I already have a million times before; her dresser, her nightstand, her closet. It’s all things I've seen before with the exception of a few new receipts and library books. So, I move to somewhere I've never been before, under her bed. There's one small black box underneath. 

I slide it out and open the lid, revealing a thick white packet. It's a manuscript, only titled memoir. It's dated for ten years ago, when I was eight. From flipping through it, it seems like it's finished. Yet it's never been published. Why? 

I flip to a random page and read a paragraph. 

After my first book release, I was elated. I threw two parties. One for the town and one for my closest friends. Not that I had many of those. Truthfully the only person I really had was my daughter and she was only two. Too young to truly know the gravity of my world right now. But I hope she knows she's mine. She doesn't understand that while my book release and the ones following that were some of the greatest days of my life, her birth will always remain first place in that competition. No matter how many books I publish, none of them will ever compare to the love I have for the person I brought into this world. And I don't think I've let her know that enough.  

I stop there when a tear hits the page. The more fame my mother gained, the more I felt like she was withdrawing from me and our small family. For as long as I can remember, it's always just been me and her. But then people started buying her books and it was me, her, and the rest of the world. But here she is in her unpublished words talking about how none of that ever really mattered because she had me. A tiny little baby who came into the world needed nothing but love and guidance. 

The muffled voices have stopped, the door slamming shut. I hurriedly put the manuscript back in the box and slide it back under the bed. My mother is approaching her room just as I reach the doorway. 

"Hey, sweetie, what are you doing in my room?" she asks. 

I fold my hands behind my back. "Just...looking for a bobby-pin," I answer. 

"Okay, well, book club is over. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go to that new little Italian restaurant you keep telling me about?" 

I nod. "Yeah, that sounds good." 

She smiles and continues into her room after kissing my head. 

I don't know why I lied about reading the manuscript. But it's her secret, so now it can be mine too. At least now I know how much she really cares. 

The Italian restaurant is small like everything else in this town. The hostess greets my mother by name even though we’ve never been here before. She seats us in a corner booth, private but not enough that we’re completely cut off from the world.  

My mom places a cloth napkin in her lap and takes a sip of the water the waiter put out for us.  

“So,” she starts. “Do you want to tell me the real reason you were in my room?”  

“I told you-”  

“Honey, I know you like to snoop in my room when you think I don’t know.” She shrugs with a small smile. “You can just tell me.”  

I fiddle with my napkin. “I found a manuscript...for your memoir.” 

She nods, her face not giving away anything about she must feel about that. “I finished that manuscript years ago. But I decided I didn’t want to have people reading in on my life.”  

“Why?” Did she not want people to know that she cared about me more than her books, more than fame? 

“Because that was also the last book I’ve written. And I decided that it would remain just mine, instead of the worlds.”  

I tilt my head. “Wait, what are you saying?”  

She interlocks her fingers under her chin, grinning widely at me. “I’m done with publishing, writing.” She sighs. “As I was writing that manuscript, I realized how much time I was spending on being an author instead of being a mother.” She reaches over the table and clutches my hand. “I know I wrote it down, but you are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. None of the money or notoriety was ever worth anything if I didn’t have you. And I lost sight of that for a while, and I am so sorry. You are my entire world, and I am the reason we drifted apart for as long as we did.” A single tear makes a trail down her face.  

My mother has never really used her words that way with me before. All her beautiful words were saved for the world. But now that I have them, I vow to keep them sacred and safe.  

“I going to do better,” my mom says. “I promise you that.”  

I hang on to those words as well. They mean more to me than the ones written in that manuscript because these are coming out of her mouth. And it’s now that I’ve realized that I never really tell my mom how she means everything to me too. Because she’s all I have. She’s all I’ll ever have.