Untitled Watercolor


of absence from being a mother? Well, they don't 
give LOA's from motherhood, my dear." 

"I just wanted to make something beautiful and 
all my own." 

"You already made beautiful kids. Doesn't 
that satisfy you?" 

"No, it doesn't. It doesn't!!" I yelled. I ran 
downstairs and slumped on the floor of the dark 
room. I cried for hours, wetting the photographs 
spread on my lap. I wondered what would happen 
if I ate the potassium tablets. It would take away 
the guilt and confusion at least. But, no, one trip to 
the emergency room is enough for one night, I 
thought. Crazy, huh? Well, I put away my photo-
graphs, those stillborn hopes, and packed away my 
camera. I turned to close the dark room door and 
it seemed to me then that I could develop pictures 
and develop children, but never develop just myself. 
I closed the door, and I haven't been down here 
for any time since. 

"Mom, why didn't you run away?" Kate asks me. 
"How Kate? Where to? And what if it turned 

out that I had no real gift, that it was just a house-
wife fantasy? I would have had no husband, no 
children, and no true talent to sustain me. I wasn't 
brave enough to take that chance." 

"But Mom, these pictures are great." 
"Keep them if you like, Kate." 
"Mom, why didn't you wait twenty years to 

divorce Daddy? He was an asshole to you then." 
"I thought so too, Kate, and I made him suffer 

for what I thought he made me give up. But Kate, 
he wasn't the bad guy or the jailer. He was as 
frightened and as confused by a changing wife as I 
was frightened by the changing. Kate, try to under-
stand. I was my own jailer." 

"Mom, I met Daddy's girlfriend yesterday." 
''Yes? Did you like her?'' 
"I liked her, but Mom? Mom, did you know she 

is a photographer?'' 
I start laughing, laughing hard, and tears are 

coming down, and I'm hiccoughing and holding my 
stomach and this sick, silly laughter echoes through 
the basement. 

Kate's staring at me. "Mom? Are you all right?" 

"Oh, Kate, that sounds like, hie, a bad ending 
in a bad story.'' 

Finally I stop laughing and Kate leaves to meet 
her fiance. I sit in the dark room and hold the 
camera to my eye. Click. The damn thing still 
works after twenty years. 

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