Flight into Egypt—protecting the new life from threat, within and without.
Nurturing the Child—reordering everything in order to feed and tend the new life.
At the Cross/Pietà—descent, embracing necessary loss, surrender, and grief.
Mary’s Death—dying of an old self or way of being; the dark night.
Assumption into Heaven—ascent; rising of new self; crossing threshold into new realm.
Coronation—the realization of new life; its fruition and impact on others.
My speculations click with me. Each event possesses a core of generic feminine meaning along with the possibility of interpreting it personally.
In the Louvre gift store, I scour the racks for postcards portraying each of these pivotal dramas. I spread them along the counter in the right biographical sequence, compelled by the idea that each one could be a window into my own experience, allowing me to glimpse it through the lens of a grand maternal matrix. Even in the busy shop, I can see that it’s no longer the annunciation image that defines where I am right now with my creativity or with my spiritual life. Nor is it the picture of the pregnant Mary who waits, who incubates and bears the tensions. It’s the nativity image that grabs me—the necessity of labor, the lonely beauty of birthing.
“Don’t let me wear a pink dress to your wedding,” I say. Ann and I sit at a table in the café below the Louvre’s glass pyramid and talk not about all the sublime art we’ve just seen but about wedding outfits. “Not powder-blue either. And no jacket with shoulder pads.”
“I promise,” says Ann.
The wedding date is set—June 3. Seven months away, but we’ve already spent a lot of Sunday afternoons making wedding plans. As I tell my friends, I have rented the tree. I love that she picked out a five-hundred-year-old moss-laden oak to be her “church.” We have a guest list of a hundred and twenty, which is about all the people we can fit beside it. She will walk to the tree down a path that cuts through a rose garden. Floral arrangements would be redundant.
I am sincerely happy about the wedding and I adore Scott, but several times since Ann called me with the news, I’ve felt a small wrench at the back of my heart when I think about it. I know it isn’t about her, it’s about me, but I don’t know precisely what the feeling is—a longing? a sadness? the baton passing again?
I’m eating some sort of sandwich that I fear could be spread with goose liver. I push it aside and drink my demi pression. Last summer when I brought up her dress, she announced she wanted to wear my wedding gown. “No kidding?” I said, taken by surprise. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
I should have guessed this. When Ann was a girl, every time we visited her grandparents, she would beg my mother to take my wedding dress from its storage bag in the back of my old bedroom closet so she could put it on. It did not take a lot of begging; my mother was her willing accomplice in most everything. I have a memory of Ann at five with the skirt billowing out around her on the floor like a melting vanilla cone.
It was the first wedding dress I tried on. I fell in love with it at first sight, but when I noticed the price, my heart sank. Six hundred dollars, a fortune. I tried to be stoic about it, and Mother and I kept looking, trudging from shop to shop, until finally she proclaimed she didn’t care what the dress cost, we were going back to get it. “It’s only money,” she said, as if steeling herself.
When I walked down the aisle in it, it was August 1968 and I was barely twenty years old. My “church” was an actual church. It was packed with everybody from our small town. I had seven bridesmaids, who wore white dresses and wreaths of blue flowers in their hair. Wired to my bouquet was the small white Bible I carried to Sunday school as a child. In my shoe was the 1947 dime my mother wore in her shoe when she got married. There were years and years stretched ahead of me.
I close my eyes and try to picture myself as I was on that day, to be that girl again, to be at the beginning. Across the table, Ann is talking about the so-called “acid treatment” we will have to subject the wedding gown to in order to remove the yellow tint.
Before we leave the museum, I wander back to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. When I stood before it earlier, I found myself looking at it from Anne’s perspective, not Mary’s. I was unsure if and how it belonged with the other, more paradigmatic events in Mary’s life that I had recorded.
I inspect it again—Mary sitting in her mother’s lap reaching for Jesus, who plays beside her skirt. Behind them are craggy hills and a lone tree. There is an easy intimacy between the two barefoot women. Mary gazes down at Jesus, but Anne stares at her daughter with an enigmatic smile reminiscent of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa—the same smile, only better. I try to read Anne’s expression. Wistful, bittersweet, knowing. She seems moved by the thought of her daughter as an adult and a mother herself.
I wonder if, perhaps like Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror, it captures the reunion. What I know is that, for me, it is the most personal of all the paintings in the Louvre. The aging mother reaching for her grown daughter. The way she tries to make a lap for her younger self.
Ann
Seine River, Notre Dame Cathedral-Paris
I’ve only been in Paris long enough to glimpse the cityscape and order onion soup. I’m sitting on the bus with the Fun Girls again, only this time they are my mother’s age and much more uninhibited. We’ve just had lunch at a brasserie and are headed into the heart of Paris when Trisha picks up the bus microphone and introduces us to St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris.
“Jon-vi-ev,” she says, with a French pronunciation. It sounds musical. I like the name. To me, it suggests a self-assured woman. If I had a name like Genevieve, I would know exactly who I am and what I’m supposed to do. A Genevieve, it seems to me, could paint a self-portrait, would know how to say: this is who I am.
The bus chugs along Rue de Rivoli. “Coming up, you’ll see an entirely gold statue of Joan of Arc,” Trisha tells the group. “It’s situated not far from where she was wounded during an attack she led against the English in 1429. She was only seventeen. Can you imagine?”
No, I can’t.
I turn toward the window and see the gilded statue come into view in the middle of a large intersection known as Place des Pyramides. Joan sits on her horse, clasping the reins in one hand and holding a flagpole with the other. Seeing her reminds me of when I was twelve and took horseback riding lessons, trotting and cantering on a horse named Harry. The fact that Joan and I both sat on saddles is about as far as the similarity goes. Before those lessons I’d never been on a horse, and I would discover there’s a reason truck engines are measured in horsepower. Riding back to the stables one day, Harry was spooked by a tractor and took off. At first I was terrified, but then it became thrilling. Something came over me—a small rush of bravery. I held on with my knees and got control of the reins, gradually slowing him to a trot. A picture of me on Harry that my mother snapped afterward was tacked to my bulletin board for a long time.
As we leave the Joan statue behind, I write a reminder in my journal to find this picture when I get home.
“Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen and became a saint in 1920,” Trisha is saying.
Somehow Joan’s sainthood had escaped me. Saint Joan. That we do not share.
Trisha goes on to tell us that Joan heard voices. St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and St. Michael all conversed with her about her mission to save the French from the invading English. Joan also thought God spoke directly to her about it and declared she wasn’t afraid of her mission because she was born for it.
That is what I want—to know what I was born to do. What I wouldn’t give to hear voices about now.
Just before we came to France, I read a poem by David Whyte with four lines that nearly stopped my heart:You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which y
ou belong.
Tonight, when I climb into bed in our hotel room, I will realize those lines are my “St. Michael” voice, spelling out my mission: find the world to which I belong.
After a quick stop at the hotel to unload luggage, our group is off again on a long walk to St.-Germain-des-Prés, followed by a boat ride on the Seine River.
At the Pont de l’Alma, we board the Bateau-Mouche, an open-air boat which literally translates as “fly-boat.” I find a place next to my mother among the bright orange seats. My point-and-click camera inexplicably broke back at the hotel, so I fiddle with my manual 35mm and practice taking some pictures: dozens of boats floating like cork lures; the BATEAUX-MOUCHES sign in tall, white letters; Mom and Terry gripping the scarves around their necks.
The Seine divides Paris into two banks, and the boat cruises right down the middle of the city, past some of the most famous monuments. We pass the Place de la Concorde, the Egyptian obelisk, the Tuileries, and move toward Pont Neuf and Notre Dame. The wind and sun make me forget my jet lag. The light creates soft strobes on the river, so different from the light on the Aegean, which had a way of blazing against everything it touched.
As Terry leans toward Mom to discuss the afternoon schedule, a woman in our group, whom I met just hours ago, asks a question—the question, really: “So, Ann, what do you do?”
I search my memory for her name among the many introductions from earlier but can’t place it.
“I work for a magazine back in Charleston.”
“Oh, a magazine—what kind?”
“A women’s magazine. I work on both sides—advertising and editorial.”
“So, do you write like your mom?”
A few months ago, I finally decided to take my editor up on her offer and wrote a couple of articles. As a member of the staff, I felt like I ought to contribute something. But write like my mom?
“No, hardly,” I tell her. “I mean, yeah, I do some writing for them. A few articles and profiles. But I wouldn’t say I’m a writer. You know, I should probably stick to answering the phones.”
The woman, whose name I still cannot remember, squints at me. “What were your articles about?”
Really? We’re going to talk about this some more?
“They were just personal experience pieces. I wrote one about my dad and one about Earth Day.”
“Well, I bet you’ve got your mom’s talent.”
She obviously suffers from delusions. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I say. And laugh.
If I went into writing, I would inevitably be compared to my mother. Even this woman is thinking I have talent like her. I realize there are a million subjects to write about and writing can take so many forms—fiction, playwriting, journalism, essays, poetry, TV commercials—but still I fear comparisons are inevitable. I imagine the silent indictments if I failed. “Wow,” people would say, “the apple fell way, way, way far from the tree.”
Mom has been writing since I was a year old. Throughout my youth her presence as a writer grew in my mind—from those first book signings she did in the greeting card section at Belk department store while I sat beside her reading my Judy Blume books, all the way to the crowds that lined up more recently with their copies of Dissident Daughter. When she spoke at my college, I overheard the amazing things my professors said to her about her book. Her career makes me proud.
When I search myself honestly, I know my mom’s success as a writer isn’t really the deterrent to my own attempts at writing. No, my hesitation comes down to this: writing is what my mother does; I need to find what is mine. I’ve just assumed that what is mine would be different from hers.
As the boat circles the Île Saint-Louis and heads toward the Eiffel Tower, I recall that I liked writing those articles. Sitting at my desk after dinner, typing out a tangled mess of thoughts around an idea, an image, or a line of poetry, then shaping and tinkering until I had a draft—there had been a particular satisfaction in it, like I was in some sort of “flow,” content and challenged at the same time. I would lose all track of time. It would grow late as I worked. Scott would fall asleep. The soft-watt bulb in the lamp on my desk would be the only light on in the apartment. Just me alone with the words. I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing, but I felt more connected to myself when I finished.
It reminded me of the feeling I had writing my prize-winning story in seventh grade, back when I was sure I would end up a writer. My story was about a girl and a horse. It was very National Velvet-y in theme, though I’d never read the book. I even worked on my story through recesses. When my English teacher called me into the hall, I thought I was in trouble, but she informed me I’d won the writing competition. I didn’t belong in the Science Club, Pep Squad, chorus, or modern dance class, but writing stories . . . that had felt like mine.
The problem, I discovered, is that it isn’t enough just to like writing. I stare at the water of the Seine and run through all the reasons a writing career is a bad idea for me. For one thing, it’s not practical. I’m not thirteen anymore. What twenty-three-year-old says: I’m going for job security and a steady income—I’ll become a writer? The truth is I need to pay the bills. There’s a point at which you have to be realistic.
Not to mention the matter of talent. If I was cut out to be a writer, wouldn’t I be better at it? Wouldn’t it come easier? Wouldn’t I have majored in English instead of history and applied for a graduate program in creative writing? I’ve heard Mom say that a person can learn the craft, but that’s only half of it; a writer needs some innate capacity that can’t be taught. Did I have it?
After the solitary writing process at my desk was over, I would feel reasonably satisfied with my articles, at least until the realization dawned that people would actually read them. Then, feeling exposed and self-conscious, I would regret they ever saw print. I could not read my newly published articles without hearing trumpets go off in my head announcing how bad they were.
Which brings me to what may be the most serious of all reasons a writing career for me would be plain ludicrous: it requires far too much confidence. Why would I choose a career that’s notorious for its rejection letters? I don’t want to lose faith in the words I wrote on the scroll of paper that I left in the cave at Eleusis (“I will return”), but another big rejection and I don’t know if I would get back.
As we approach the Eiffel Tower, I read the digital numbers on the countdown clock, which tracks the days until the year 2000. Seventy-nine. The sight of it calls up the forecasted chaos of Y2K. Computers crashing, warnings of failing airline traffic control, Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000” skits.
Propping my elbows on the boat rail, I focus and click on the countdown clock.
On our second day in Paris, after half a day in the Louvre, Mom and I walk to Notre Dame. Along the riverbank, we pass vendors selling books, art prints, and vintage postcards. We linger at patisserie windows displaying raspberry tarts, pain au chocolat, petits fours, and madeleines. When we cross the Pont Neuf, I can still see the desserts in my head.
At the cathedral square, I pull my Fodor’s guidebook from my backpack and scan the pages devoted to the cathedral: Construction began in 1163 . . . completed in 1345 . . . walls are lined with chapels . . . don’t miss the three rose windows.
“This says there are three portals that lead into the church,” I say to Mom. “One represents the Virgin Mary, one, the Last Judgment, and one, St. Anne.”
“A St. Anne portal?” Mom asks.
“Yeah.”
She walks through that one while I go through the Virgin Mary entrance. Looking up, I see a depiction of the Coronation of the Virgin and remember the fresco on the wall in the monastery in Greece, where I first discovered Mary, Queen of Heaven. Up until yesterday, I would’ve guessed Mom would choose the Mary portal, too, but then she spent all that time in St. Anne’s chapel at St.-Germain-des-Prés, and today she seemed transfixed by Leonardo’s painting of St. Anne in the Louvre. I know
that she sees herself in Anne all of a sudden and that it has to do with “the Old Woman,” as Mom fondly calls her. I’ve always thought of my mother as ageless. It’s hard to think of her growing older, to watch her thinking about it. I won’t have her forever, I think, and the sight of her walking off toward the Anne portal nearly levels me.
This morning, I woke to the buzzing of Mom’s blood pressure machine as the cuff tightened around her arm. Even before we left home, she was having a problem with her blood pressure. “What’s the reading today?” I asked, and she said, “Oh, it’s up a little, but I’m okay.” But I wonder silently—how okay can it be if she’s traveling with the machine?
I meet up with her at the ambulatory, and we walk past the first of thirty-seven chapels that line the interior of the cathedral, looking up at the vaulted ceiling and lit chandeliers. I smell candle wax and stone. Some chapels glow with more votive candles than others. You can easily tell the popular saints from the unpopular ones. All the visitors to Notre Dame seem to be on the same path, circling the church like bobbing toys caught in a swirl of bathwater. Now and then I see strips of pastel-colored light from the stained glass float above their heads.
I stop at the chapel of Joan of Arc. She’s one of the popular saints. Her chapel is ablaze. I hadn’t expected her to be here, though I don’t know why not. Of course she would be here. Her statue stands on a tall stone pedestal. She wears a long skirt, armor across her shoulders, and a helmet opened to reveal the face of a nineteen-year-old girl. My eyes are drawn to her hands, folded around a spear, the tip of which is sculpted into a fleur-de-lis. The helmet and spear remind me of the Mourning Athena relief at the Acropolis Museum that I had not gotten to see. I try to imagine this warrior-girl charging through Paris on horseback, commanding an army. I love her youth, her boldness, her clear vision, her whole wild story. She is like Athena, but a real girl.