Arms behind her, Maya holds one
book in her right hand and one in her left. “Pick a hand,” she says.
I peak and see a Barbie book in
her right.
“Left,” I say and she pulls out
two books.
“Which one?”
I pick the one on top, When Mommy is Sick by Ferne
Sherkin-Langer, about how a ten-year old girl copes with her mother being in
the hospital again. It was one of the books recommended by Maya’s hospice
therapist after Verna died in 2010.
I start reading about how the
girl is sad because her babysitter slathers the jam on too thick and cuts the
bread in triangles, not squares like her mother; how she refuses to draw
or participate in class but, at her teacher’s suggestion, draws a picture of
herself and her mother; how she loves having her friend’s mom push her on the
swings, but still misses her own mother; how she makes a calendar and counts
off the days until Saturday when she and her father will get to visit her mother.
The story ends as the mother
comes home and pushes her daughter on the swings, makes her a sandwich with
just the right amount of jam and cuts the bread in squares, and later reads her a
bedtime story.
I am happy for the girl but sad
for Maya. I start thinking of Verna and all the special times she and Maya
spent together in four-and-a-half years: blowing bubbles in a park in Arizona,
the smile on Maya’s face stretched a million miles; snuggling in bed to read;
cuddling on Verna’s hospital bed to do sticker books together.
A tear rolls down my cheek as I
realize yet again that Maya’s Mommy won’t be coming home. I finish the book and
Maya looks over at me.
“There’s water on your face,” she
says.
“I was crying because I miss
Mommy.”
“Me, too,” she says.
“Mommy loves you so much,” I say.
“I think she loves you and Miguel more than anything. She was so excited to be
a mommy.”
“I am so glad she found you,” she
says. Then she pauses. “How did she find you?”
“We worked together and I asked
her to go see Wynton Marsalis with me (something Maya and I are going to do in
March),” I explain.
“And then you asked her to marry
you?”
I giggle. “I couldn’t ask her to
marry me after our first date.”
“When was your first date?”
“July 21,” I answer, and I
remember, of course, that it was in 1990, not quite 24 years ago. “I asked her
to marry me two months later.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘Sounds like a good
idea’,” I say.
“And then you kissed?”
“Yes,” I say, “and then we
kissed.”
I picture the moment, lying together
on my bed in a four-bedroom flat on 19th
Avenue in San Francisco, after an evening with my mother, who was not happy
that Verna was Catholic, and thinking about asking her to live with me but
knowing she never wanted to do that again. So I blurted out, “I was thinking of
asking you to marry me.”
I shut off the
light. I get my book light and clasp it to the back of Thank You For Your Service, about
physically and emotionally wounded veterans from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Before I start reading I say, “Mommy loves you and Miguel so much.”
Ten minutes later as I get up to
leave, I hug Maya tightly and say, “I love you so much, Maya.”
