Three Generation Picture

I remember taking my first one at my grandmother's house
And my mother stood behind me smiling and my grandmother behind her: smiling
And the small Christmas tree in the background
That was the same year I carved my name on the underside of the coffee table in their living room
Where I used to sleep on the couch and be afraid of the cuckoo clock in the darkness
I carved my name because I was there
And I was there
And I was there

Years later my mother found the carving and wanted to scold me but the handwriting was so different she knew I'd done it so long before; what could she say?

But I remembered the feeling so fiercely and checked it every year when I slept on the couch to make sure it was still there: I was still there...

My daughter mostly spends time in her room writing or animating or watching videos and I feel the guilt of a guilty parent who understands her loneliness and simultaneously understands there is no way for me to solve it: growing up too fast with her monster vocabulary but her childish mind and maturing figure - why? Why can't things just happen the way they were meant to? The way they so often happen in your mind...

My mother drove away this morning and I'm left with smells of her in the guest bathroom: mixture of Light Days even though she is well into menopause (I guess I'll understand it ten years from now) and strawberry scented hair spray always the chemicals, the alcoholic subtext that she is from a generation that did not care that they destroyed the environment because none of that seemed real to them and last night she asked me "Why do you think your children both have anxiety? Why do so many kids today have anxiety? Is it the school shootings?"

And I don't know what to say to her, remembering my daughter crouching in her assigned hiding space before we decided we had to homeschool and saying "My hiding spot is not good enough; I know they will find me."

I don't want to take her Lovey away from her. Or the way she still sucks her thumb. Grey-pink rabbit clutched in her hands with still-baby-like knuckles even though I'm stashing pads for Tweens under the sink in her bathroom

I'm in the middle mourning both of them and they're very much alive.

My mother who will never know herself and my daughter who knows it all too well and me who can't repair either one of them.