Rain Sets Records and Stops Traffic

Taken from the March 30, 2010 issue of The New York Times.




Rain sets records and stops traffic as I wait on the Belt Parkway to pick up my mother, who I haven't seen since my sister's college graduation seven years ago, the year I chopped my long red hair into a pixie cut, rented a U-Haul van and moved to New York City. I whisper the words slowly, “Seven years,” tailing off at the end in disbelief and embarrassment. The words make my mouth taste sour. In front of me, taillights pulse on and off, drivers impatient in the standstill traffic, pavement slick and shiny as though it’s been raining baby oil. I’m probably the only one here hoping we don’t move.

I try to imagine my mother sitting next to me in the passenger seat, as she will in the next hour. All I can produce is a mottled collage of flesh tones under thick square glasses, glasses she had when I was a toddler in the 80s, glasses that have stuck with me for 25 years, but not my mother. It was a phenomenon that began to frighten me a few years ago—the inability to imagine the woman who birthed and raised me. To fight it I’ve kept the same family picture up through all of my moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Queens and back to Brooklyn again. It’s a photo from a family trip to Niagara Falls when I was sixteen, when my 13-year-old sister was all legs, my brother had buckteeth and my mom and dad were together. After a while, I realized it wasn’t that I couldn’t remember what she looked like, I just couldn’t imagine her here. With me. Anywhere else was no problem, down to the detail. Even now, I can picture her waiting at the terminal with floral, garage-sale luggage at her feet, alone, craning her neck to see my car pull up, crimson lipstick bleeding slightly into the lines around her pursed mouth. She’s watching everyone else get picked up in shiny cars, imagining them rolling in sudden sunshine down the highway, giggling with loved ones, the passage of time between visits a circumstance and not a statement. She’s thinking, “What will we talk about?” and “How do we mend?” and “Why can’t we be like that?”, just like me. “Just like me,” I say out loud.

Without warning, I feel my heart soften—just enough—and for the first time in years, I don’t resist it. I look into the rear view mirror and clip the hair out of my eyes with a bobby pin. I turn on the radio to Tom Petty singing about two old gunslingers, and I laugh.

I see the airport exit ahead as traffic begins to move. Raindrops slide down my windshield, glowing red and orange with the taillights ahead, and the click of my blinker matches the beat of my heart.

the article.
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