| My mother was a veiled woman hiding her feelings of guilt of shame and regret in her drinking I’d watch her in her haze, still able to function to put in dinner get the kids to bed get the kids up she had this smile on her face a small, subtle smile a self-contained smile  she’d walk on tiptoe across the rooma balancing act embodied she’d stretch me into the thinnest membrane following her to catch her when she fell. I was at the ready. Anais said my Mother’s drinking was an act of isolation. As if she were putting herself in quarantine away from her children, so close, so willing to be infected with her, to drink in her disease perhaps to crave it as she does. Mom loved Mr. Tambourine Man used to cry when she heard the Byrds sing it What in this song made her cry? Was this a call to her lost girl self? A plea from her veiled woman self? who among her selves did this awaken? the girl who hides behind the veil? the woman who took on the veil? or was she trying to escape the veil, to run from its confines to run into the labyrinth even though Ariadne’s thread was in tatters, shredded by the voice of her own mother: “None of my children have hurt me like you have, June. No one has caused the pain you have.”  |
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Christie Logan
Veiled Woman #3
