McGinnis Counseling

I Can't Tell The Real Story

Inside myself I ponder: how did we

cry out, laugh, and try to avoid each other,

all the years of my childhood,

yet managed to survive with and without each other.

I can't tell how we loved and hated each other without

literally killing one another or numbing out on

lollipops or cigarettes; somehow we

tipped back and forth on that mother-daughter see-saw of

happiness on the brink of maniacal howling and did not forsake

each other though we wanted to.

Ravaged by pains we couldn't name, we

enumerated each others' shortcomings,

(though I did this more than she did) to

anybody who would

listen: about our fights. How this fragile,

small-boned woman could stretch and rise up in her anger,

tossing both our houses of cards with a derisive snort

or saying, which was far worse, "You'll never learn." But I know how we

rode through the desolate territory of cancer

diagnosed too late and that in a voice unrecognizable because of pain,

she said I love

you, and for once did not remind me of anything I needed to do,

and then just said goodbye, voice thick and fading

away from the phone.

Mary McGinnis