I have a dollhouse. My father built it for my sister and me when we were just little girls, but we added on to it through adolescence. New paint in the kitchen, modeled after that old house in Akron where I engraved my initials in the bathroom wall after I painted it. Bookshelves wrought from hand, as they’re meant to be. (We wrote the books, too. I’ll show you someday.) Blue panels, of course.
I flew back to Texas. Slept in my old childhood bedroom. Well, not childhood really. Moved too many times to have one of those. But it had all my childhood things. The Barbie-doll-blanket. Glass-eyed dragon bookends. And the dollhouse, of course. Sitting right next to a bookshelf overflowing with my mother’s old medical equipment; sanitizers and vials and hospital gloves that she placed right there beside my dollhouse because she thank G-d doesn’t need them anymore.
What do you do with that, I wonder.
Sleep restlessly.
I used to dream things before they came true. See the futures of people I love. (I still do it, sometimes.) Dream this woman’s children and wake up to her calling me far too early in the morning. Take part in conversations held the night before they happen. And yet. I can’t figure out why I still haven’t taken those yellow clearance stickers off my new ceramic coasters from Target. Or why the mothers of rabbis are always the ones removing stains from my clothing.
And, my darling girl, where did all your fire go?
--
I flew back to Texas. A reporter from ABC13 sets up a camera in my parents’ courtyard to interview me about my mother’s diagnosis. Look to the side of the camera, he tells me, but I keep forgetting. I keep looking at his face.
Your mother is a runner?
Yes. When she runs, she’s taking back her power. Nothing in the world can stop her. You see, it doesn’t matter what the doctors say. When they told her she can’t run on chemo. When they told her she only had six months to live. My mother never listens to rules anyway. So, she runs every day.
What do you talk about when you run together?
I stop. The things we talk about when we run together are not things to say to the side of a camera. We talk about how chemo spills are supposed to be a hazmat emergency, yet my mother brushed hers off the tiled bathroom floor with some paper towels and a bottle of bleach. We talk about neuropathy, and how her surgical scars look like a shark bite. We talk about my shuls, her students and Melissa Etheridge.
We make fun of our neighbors. We make plans for her trip to Philly.
I turn my face sideways. Running shoes, mostly.
--
Did I tell you?
Did I tell you that we ran that race together? She did it on chemo and I did it on ambition and free coffee from Dunkin'. You’re the first woman, someone calls out. Did I tell you that when I won, I did it for her.
Did I tell you I’m not scared to fly anymore? It was finally my sister who taught me. So I’m hanging out at an airport bar in Nashville, listening to live country.
--
And remembering a dollhouse.
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