Terese's Mother

Terese’s one-bedroom apartment in the City - the only one she had lived in since arriving there fresh out of college 5 years earlier, the one she loved as home - always left her mother gasping for breath. It was not the modest living room, the tiny and windowless galley kitchen, or the bedroom with the one big, casement window that looked out onto a moderately busy, but homey, neighborhood street – and, thankfully, a mature London planetree below - that left her mother stricken during her twice-yearly visits. In fact, the air flowed miraculously freshly into and through the little apartment. Rather, her mother needed color. She breathed it in through her eyes like oxygen. And Terese had audaciously painted all of the walls of her apartment a uniform, crisp white. She had also chosen only modern, clean furniture in shades of grey and white. Even the throw pillows were grey. The art, to add insult to her mother’s injury, consisted entirely of framed black and white photographs.

Terese’s mother was certain that these color-devoid, aesthetic selections by her daughter were cumulative, little acts of rebellion. On her twice-yearly visits to see Terese, she bought cut flowers from the florist each day in a desperate attempt to repel the drab so that, by the time she left for the airport, there were seven or eight bouquets in colorful vases scattered throughout the small apartment. Terese stored the colorful, glass vases into a high kitchen cabinet until the time of her mother’s next visit, which would invariably in six month's time, like clockwork.

Terese’s elegant and eternally sunny Swiss mother could not understood how Terese did not literally wilt in defeat just by looking up at the outer walls of the austere, colorless skyscrapers that seemed simultaneously to grasp both downwards and upwards with menace. Her mother simply detested the concrete world of the City. She could not comprehend, nor accept, that this destination had been Terese’s choice, let alone her desire. And she affably made her displeasure clear with emphatic, yet poetic, observations of what the City lacked:

The City had no public gardens to speak of in which to get a verdant oxygen hit to the heart, nor was there floral color therapy to feed the soul. There were no wrought iron gates through which to peek furtively into private gardens with lulling fountains and climbing vines. Nor were there welcoming lakeside cafes in which to soak up the late afternoon sun. In other words, the City was an American city and, most decidedly, not a European one. As a result, it was "vastly inferior." This was a “fact” because Terese’s mother declared it so, and she counted the time until Terese would inevitably come to her senses and move back home, or at least to somewhere "verdant." But, 5 years had passed, and still Terese lived in the City and still she dressed in muted monotones.

During these visits, Terese's mother silently scrutinized her for signs of depression, angst, anger. Incredulously, her mother found none. For, despite Terese’s dark, dyed-brown hair, her earnest hazel eyes, and stubbornly-dark and colorless wardrobe, Terese had, in fact, inherited her mother’s sunniness. Terese loved the City. Still, her mother remained certain that the City was beating Terese down. And, as always, she offered the same solution as she did for all problems - imagined or genuine: “More Color!”

A trained botanist, with an irrepressible spirit and an almost preternatural skillset in virtually every eccentric trade, Terese's mother's answer to almost any dull or demanding situation was: More Color! Growing up, whenever Terese had - on the rare occasion - done poorly on a school exam or had an argument with a friend, she would invariably be dragged off to the Geneva Botanical Gardens for her mother’s version of a therapy session. Her mother was certain that walking amongst plants and flowers was a tonic for virtually all of life’s ills. Terese had always been reluctant to ascribe any value to her mother’s wisdom, so strongly was it imparted that it invariably forced her adolescent self onto the defensive. But Terese had to admit, quietly and to herself only, that walking in the steamy oasis of the tropical greenhouse always did leave her feeling more buoyant and invincible. The lakeside gelato that followed every visit to the Botanical Gardens also soothed the soul. But, even here, with colorful flavors spread out like a bounty, Terese ordered plain chocolate, every time. Her mother selected whatever vibrant fruit flavor caught her eye that day as she exclaimed breathlessly into the curved, glass gelato case that everything looked "so colorful!”

Wintertime visits were the worst. With weather too cold to explore the outdoors, Terese’s mother opted instead for climbing the apartment walls and, occasionally, visiting museums. Her incredulous, but polite, questions over Terese’s “long-term plans after she is done living in the City” increased to a drumbeat. And she hatched permission-less projects in the apartment. On one visit, Terese came home from work to a new, terraced herb garden climbing her living room wall. On another visit, a rather large, elegant, glass terrarium appeared in her tiny kitchen. New, colorful scarves and necklaces mysteriously appeared in her closet. She never knew what might await her at the end of each workday, and so she always braced herself as she walked through her heavy apartment door. She knew these projects were manifestations of both her mother’s love and her irrepressible personality. And, Terese had always been more flexible than her mother, who clung to her aesthetic needs with such fervor that Terese usually decided just to give in. And so, one snowy, particularly monochromatic December day, while Terese sat in her windowless cubicle, at her modest-paying, non-profit education research job, her mother set to work.

Because the day had been especially dull, even for a December in the City, Terese came home that evening weary and somber, and fully expecting some new spectacle of color to greet her when she walked across her apartment threshold. She braced herself as she stepped inside, and she was… speechless. Her formerly crisp, white 12x10 foot bedroom had been entirely wallpapered. Her daybed was encircled by some of the most jubilant, colorful, botanical flowers that Terese had ever seen outside of a garden center in April. Elegant red Tulips danced with flirty, yellow daffodils; demure, pink crocuses and purple hyacinths - her mother had always been partial to early Spring bulb flowers – vied with one another for space and attention, stretching out from the parqueted wood floor to the peeling, painted tin tile ceiling. The riot of colors was both dizzying and dazzling.

In the window perched an elegant, chalk white, writer’s desk with a little rolltop storage section. It had outlines of tulips stenciled onto the front section. Terese recognized her mother’s graceful handwork. The second-hand, scuffed, black Parson’s desk was nowhere to be seen. Her mother had no doubt single-handedly hauled it down the freight elevator and out to the curb, in a snowstorm. Had she brought the wallpaper rolls over from Europe in her suitcase? Terese suspected she had. And where did the antique desk come from? She thought back to that morning, to the way her mother clucked with satisfaction as she pushed Terese gently out the door with a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and a tussle of Terese’s perpetually messy, mousy, waves of brown hair. How long had she been planning this ambush makeover?

Her mother had even purchased new pens in buoyant colors, and a set of colorful, little notebooks that effortlessly matched each of the colors of each of the flowers on the wallpaper. These were carefully laid out, like a selection of fine candy, across her new desk. Terese had always admired these notebooks in the window of the little bookstore down the street. But they had always seemed to her too sophisticated for her month-to-month-paycheck living and her youthfully-sloppy handwriting. Terese held her breath and rushed to her closet. Her mother had reorganized her chaotic mess…by color and clothing type. A new blue and yellow swirled silk scarf hung from a wooden hanger.

Terese had to admit that her tasteful, elegant mother’s insatiable joie d’vivre was endearing. With her blonde and silver hair piled into a chignon, pearl stud earrings, and her new, blue overalls (Terese did not know her mother even knew about overalls), her mother seemed to have been conjured as a “beautiful, eccentric, do-it-yourselfer from Central Casting.” She even had a swipe of what appeared to be dried wallpaper glue on the side of her high cheekbones. Her mother could not have been invented. She just was. Not for the first time, Terese wondered if she really was related to this half-scientist, half-goddess before her. She loved her boundless mother so dearly. But, she could also suck the air from any room - even one that supposedly “self-oxygenated”, the way Terese’s floral wallpapered bedroom now did (or, so her mother - the Scientist - triumphantly, and dubiously, claimed over dinner that night).

The next morning, as Terese’s mother climbed into the cab to the airport, a wave of melancholia – the kind that her mother had always erroneously suspected her of having – finally hit. She would miss her mother! She would miss the color of her mother! Her mother was always Spring after a long Winter. She was early crocus bulbs climbing determinedly through the snow. Terese hugged her mother goodbye and, this time, thanked her for her color. She felt sad, alone, and monochromatic, as the taxi pulled away. Back in her newly-unrestrained room, Terese spotted a floral notecard tucked into her new, hydrangea blue notebook. As she opened it, a folded piece of light-blue paper fluttered out onto her desk. Teresa unfolded the paper and gasped to find a check, made out to her, for $20,000, in her mother’s perfect, scrolling handwriting. It read:

“My Darling Teresa. From the bookstore where I bought your colorful pens and notebooks (isn’t Color simply wonderful?), I also purchased a little, black notebook – a sister to your little notebooks! It is in my handbag, to be with me always. Why? Because it is, while elegant and lovely, devoid of color. You, My Darling, are MY color. You are my life and my heart and my joy. And, so, my little black notebook will remind me each day that my life, however wonderful, is colored most of all by you. You away from me means me with less color. I hope you know how impossibly proud I am of you, of your determination to carve your own path. It isn’t easy. And you have been so strong in refusing each time to take my help. So, please do not think of this as “help” - for you do not need help! Think of this as a “wow, aren’t you amazing?” gift, instead. Save it or have fun, or both! But, for goodness sake, Darling, please buy some colorful throw pillows! I love you much - Mother.

Terese smiled as she lay down on her daybed, in her own little greenhouse, in the deep and unrelenting gray of a long, City winter. She felt, unmistakably, her mother’s loving embrace and insatiable joy reaching down from every buoyant flower that encircled her with their rapturous, unbridled colors.