Nina Lichtenstein

Word Count 798

The blood stains didn’t go away in the wash the way I’d hoped, and traces of my mom are stubbornly embedded in the weaved cotton fabric lying in my kitchen sink, reminding me she will always be connected to me, even when she is not there. Perhaps especially then. I’m feeling guilty as I stuff the red rag into the trash like I’m deleting her presence here in my old Maine house, where she spent the summer with me. The week before her planned return to Norway, where I grew up and she still lives, I heard a sound I’m still trying hard to un-hear. Bam-bam-bam-bam (sixteen BAMS it must have been since there are sixteen steps) and then the worst sound: THUMP. Her landing at the bottom of the steep stairs from 1865. 

The kitchen rag was dyed red from before her accident; that’s probably why I grabbed it that day, once I noticed the pool of blood on the floor by her head. She was conscious when I got to her maybe four seconds after she fell; could move her arms and legs without pain, which is nothing short of miraculous considering her eight-five years. I turned robotic in my crisis response: calm, mechanical, as if I had control of the situation which felt completely out of body, then. Now, three weeks later, it’s all in my body, and won’t go away. My body has taken ownership of the experience through its muscle and emotional memory, and each time I turn the corner to climb those stairs, my chest tightens, and I feel a flash of nausea. 

“Nina, I’m so sorry,” my mom said to me, her eyes sad and resigned on the verge of tears, not from pain but from regret or maybe it was shame. 

 “Hold this tight on here, mamma, while I call 911” I said, guiding her hand to the rag I pressed against the gash in her head. “You will be ok, it’s going to be ok,” I kept repeating as I dialed, as if trying to convince myself.

“Angels watched over her,” said the EMT’s as they hoisted her onto the gurney, neck brace in place. This is her lifelong commitment to physical fitness and healthy eating is paying off, I thought. I didn’t want to diss the angels out loud. “Super angels for a super mamma,” I said and smiled maybe a little maniacally, while squeezing her hand that was spotted with blood.  

**

My mom is back in Norway now, and the twelve-inch-long head wound from her traumatic tumble has healed nicely, the fourteen stitches are gone, and her shaved hair is growing back. She went to the hairdresser for the first time the other day before a lunch date with her girlfriends. “It felt divine,” she reported. When we Facetime, I can see that her black and blue bruises are fading, and each day she seems quicker in her mannerisms. I knew she was making a decent come-back once she got dressed out of her pajamas.

 ** 

At home in Maine with my mom gone, old objects have new meaning. Although she survived and I will most likely get to see her again this winter when I go to Norway, there is something vulnerable and more tender than usual about her absence in my daily life. Perhaps because it was a close call. A stark reminder of how fragile we and life are, despite our resilience. 

In the kitchen sink I notice the tablespoon she used to eat her breakfast granola with while here, ornately crafted in sterling silver it has her name —Mona—engraved on the thin handle, from the time of her confirmation when she was fourteen. The delicate heirloom seems more precious, and seeing it makes my heart swell. I didn’t use it often before her last visit and the incident, but now I like to touch it every day, to eat my oatmeal with it, my fingers tracing hers. 

On my porch, leaning up against the side of the door are the hiking poles she used while she was visiting, and before I tuck them away in the shed, I hesitate. In the umbrella stand by the front door the cane I had unearthed from the bowels of a closet after her fall and insisted she use, sits lonely, dejected. I liked supporting your mom, to be useful, it seems to say. In my car, I go to brush away some dust in the passenger seat and then I realize it’s her dry skin, as she has struggled with eczema in her later years, and I struggle with not feeling that I’m engaging in some sacrilegious, thoughtless behavior. Revisionist history. They are traces of her, after all..  

Nina holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program, and is working on a memoir in parts titled "My Body Remembers." She and her partner divide their time between midcoast Maine, Israel and Norway.