The Weight of Family Relationships

Stitches

Healing from mother-daughter wounds

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Eight years old, kneeling next to my yellow veneer dresser, I hear the faint sounds of “Free Man in Paris” by Joni Mitchell coming from the living room. Without notice, thin, hardback children’s books flutter over me, hitting the back of my neck and back, landing on the carpet in a cluster like oversized dominoes. I spy the purple cover of my favorite “Sweet Pickles” book, a series my mother bought from a door-to-door salesman in 1980. I scurry to stack the falling books when a heavy thud lands on the back of my head.

I wake to a voice saying, “She needed seven stitches.” I squint my eyes and see the ER doctor speaking to my mother. “We used purple thread, just like she requested.”

A bronze bookend in the shape of a horseman had fallen when my mom bumped it while tidying my dresser top. We had company over for dinner and she’d popped into my room to check on me. Someone must have turned off the record player and locked up while Mom piled me into our yellow Plymouth hatchback and drove me to the hospital.

This happened three years after my parents’ divorce. As an eight-year-old, I still told people I planned to marry my dad when I grew up, while, illogically, willing my parents to get back together. The yellow…