What Makes a Mother

Ruby eases into the upholstered window seat, and as she leans into her husband, Doug, her heart flutters. The flight attendant approaches on her first round of inspection, and her eyes catch Ruby's for a fleeting second. Ruby’s lips turn up in a tight smile, and she nods. Her hands, clasped together in her lap, twist and turn, sweating slightly. Meanwhile, Doug, calmly reaches for his book and pencil, underlining key points to remember as he reads.

The pilot's voice crackles with announcements for takeoff, and the safety demonstration begins. Ruby shifts to an upright posture and feigns attentiveness. The jet turns onto the runway, a great whale of steel, and engine, and fuel. Ruby fidgets, slides the window shutter closed to block the bright sun, then lifts it again as the earth shrinks beneath them. She kicks off her heels and rubs her stockinged feet on the red carpet, straightens her skirt, and tugs the hem around her slender knees.

As the jet engine crescendos, Doug places his large right hand over both of hers, and keeps reading. Ruby watches out the window. She has also brought a book; they both love to read, but her mind wanders, distracted. The jet reaches altitude, and the flight attendant, dressed in a blue mini skirt and jacket, heads down the aisle with the peanuts and orange juice.

This rare trip, Pam Am Flight 57, has every reason to be joyous. Doug and Ruby’s only daughter, 23-year-old, Martha, is celebrating her wedding. The parents have known about this event for a long while and approve of the marriage wholeheartedly. But Ruby has another mission as well, and a thread of anxiety weaves through every fiber of her being.

Ruby is used to keeping a tight rein on memories, rarely allowing them to surface-- even after plans for the trip were underway.

Now sitting in statue silence, her mental control wears thin. She mulls over her past, and the past of her daughter’s, and how the two of them became intertwined. She tarries over the knowledge of what she must do before she gives her only daughter away in marriage.

***

Ruby was born to Swedish immigrants in the Midwest. Her mother married poor and uneducated, a woman whose dreams slipped through her fingers only to nestle in the minds and hearts of her children. Ruby treasured her education and became an English major, thoughtful and idealistic. When she met tall, handsome Doug, it was love at first sight.

Doug was a principled pacifist, the son of missionaries, and raised overseas. When the draft for World War II was implemented, he chose Alternative Service and was placed in a camp in North Dakota, tree planting. Ruby, the young bride, followed behind and found a cheap bunkhouse apartment near the camp.  

She had few friends during this time; the men in the camp were not looked on kindly by the locals. After all, Pearl Harbor needed retribution. During those lonely months, Ruby’s first son, David, was born. The wind blew through the floor boards, ice formed on the diaper pail, and wooden cupboards returned her stare, vacant and dark. At least she had David.

***

Ruby pulls her cardigan around her shoulders, and a shiver scuttles down her spine as she remembers the North Dakota winter. She shifts position, shuffles through her purse, fluffs her hair in her tiny hand mirror, and glances up at Doug. He is unaware that Ruby’s mind, wound tight as a clock, is spinning toward the danger zone.

*** 

When the war was over, the young couple, craving a warmer clime, moved South to a rural cabin in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. They still had little money, but Doug found work at a local sawmill. Ruby stayed home for now, as their second child was on the way. 

***

The sun is setting through the plane window, and passengers dim their overhead lights for the six-hour flight. Doug, drifting in and out of sleep, imagines their arrival in London, Heathrow, where their daughter and husband-to-be, will meet them in the morning. The flight attendant weaves her way down the aisle with a bucket of hot towels. Ruby reaches for one and breathes the citrus scent as she caresses her face with the soothing warmth. She cannot hold the tension inside any longer, and the pressure bursts the dam of her innermost heart. Suppressed memories fly, liberated, like devils out of Pandora’s box.

***

Ruby gave birth to her daughter, Anne Elizabeth, in the local hospital. She stroked her perfect features, caressed the long fingers and toes, the black silky hair; she breathed her daughter’s newborn scent. Ruby’s face glowed with the bliss of motherhood as she nursed the child for the first time, then laid her lovingly in her lacy bassinet. It was 1949, and as she fell asleep, she truly believed in the miracle of life and love.

When she woke, a nurse told her there were a few things they needed to check about the baby, but there was no need to worry. Anne Elizabeth was to be kept an extra day, doctor’s orders. But Ruby was dismissed and with trepidation, returned home to prepare for Anne Elizabeth’s welcome, which surely the doctor would be calling about at any hour.

That evening Ruby received a phone call that shattered her world of bliss. Anne Elizabeth was no more. She had died and could be picked up from the town funeral home.

***

Ruby suddenly catches herself in her nightmare. Her hands jerk down to the seat’s red upholstery.

“You ok, honey?” Doug asks sleepily. His head had been leaning on her shoulder, but he had lifted it when Ruby startled. “Why don’t you take a nap? It’s going to be a busy week once we arrive in London.” Doug drifts back into slumber, his head resting on the high back of the seat. But for Ruby, sleep is an escaped bandit, thousands of miles from grasp. Her reverie returns in a rush with excess adrenaline and a quickened heart rate.

***

The news from the hospital exploded like a cold bomb leaving an empty crater of despair, so lacking in empathy-- icy. Doug drove alone to pick up the beautiful body and was met with stony glares when he said he would not be paying for a casket.

Tragedy crushed and ground the young couple’s once-bursting optimism to a place so lonely and dark, they wondered if they would ever see joy again. They buried Anne Elizabeth under a towering, majestic pine tree on their property. There was no money for this unexpected death, no money for a gravestone or even a coffin. Being new in the area, friends were blatantly absent. The church abandoned them, with the knowledge that Doug had spurned the glories of war and had signed up as one of those cowardly C.O.’s, “conscientious objectors”.

The doctor informed them that Ruby and Doug had Rh incompatibility. They would not be able to have any more living children.

Sadness settled over Ruby’s whole being like a smothering blanket. Her firstborn, David, was their only solace. Little had Ruby known, he would be their only child.

Some years later, Ruby found inspiration in opening their home and wooded property as a summer camp for local mountain kids.

***

The plane hums, dark and shuttered. Ruby lifts the shutter soundlessly, admiring the waxing gibbous, silver white, close enough to touch, she thinks. Their destination races to meet them, and Ruby feelings are ragged and torn with the unknowing. Her mind is turning like a fly wheel with no brake, riffling through the dusty shelves of memories.

***

Out of the blue, an Appalachian mother approached Ruby, pulling her to the side of the dirt road. After glancing around for eavesdroppers, she asked softly if Ruby wanted something—a baby. Ruby’s heart leaped. Of course.

Doug and Ruby adopted Martha Anne Elizabeth, a perfect two-day-old. Ruby took this baby so completely into her broken heart. There wasn’t a day she didn’t bathe her and dress her in pink ruffles or elaborate lace. Martha Ann Elizabeth was truly her own, her pride and joy. The bond between Ruby and her daughter Martha was so complete, who could ever guess the child was adopted?

Martha grew up in the lavishing love of father, mother, and older brother, David. She even had Doug’s dark brown eyes and dark hair. She chortled and joked, splashed, and swam rambunctiously with the other mountain children participating in the summer camp run by her parents. She camped and played night games with flashlights, roasted marshmallows, and sang the camp songs. The Smoky Mountain air, free-range chickens, and animals galore brought bundles of health and happiness. Ruby’s pain, although never far from the surface, healed, and molded Ruby to be a mother of sensitive and fine feeling.

Doug and Ruby, wounded from Anne Elizabeth’s sudden and traumatic departure, never talked about the adoption. Why should they? Martha Ann Elizabeth had been sent to them so specifically, a precious gem, a divine gift.

***

Why, oh why, did I never tell Martha she was adopted? Was I selfish? Ruby berates herself, clicking her white knuckles, then wipes her sweaty palms on her knees. I was not a good mother to do this to Martha. How can I tell her now? But I must—before the wedding. Will she ever forgive me? What if she turns her back on me?

“Ma’am, are you ok? Do you need anything?” The kind flight attendant has noticed Ruby’s furrowed brow and lack of sleep.

“Um, um, could I have a drink of water?”

“Sure, honey, I’ll be right back.” Her jet-blue jacket trimmed with galaxy gold disappears down the dark aisle, perfectly balanced in the rocking plane. Ruby’s self-esteem is plummeting like a stone dropped down a bottomless well. How will Martha view me when I disembark, disheveled from a night with no sleep?

“Here’s your water and a blanket, ma’am.” The kind attendant has called it.

“She sees my anxiety, knows it,” thinks Ruby. Then she feels Doug’s arm around her shoulder; her chest heaves with deep breaths. She snuggles down into his warm embrace and spreads the blanket to reach around them both. Their marriage has survived every high and low, what more could ever shake it?

“Honey,” says Doug, “You and Martha have always been one heart. I have a strong feeling everything will work out, and it will be a wonderful trip.” 

“Prepare for landing this is your captain speaking.”

Ruby and Doug met with Martha and her fiancé right away and discussed Martha’s unusual past. Martha was not upset, and they celebrated the marriage with gusto. Martha and her husband had three beautiful children and as the years passed by, Martha, who stayed close to Ruby’s heart always, took both her parents into her home and cared for them with utmost care until they died at the age of almost ninety.