July 2, 2015 - Amy McIntyre

My mother and I shared July—the fireworks, the blistering heat, the ruby birthstone. But I’d learn to celebrate my birthday without her. I would learn to celebrate her birthday without her too. She’d have turned eighty-five.

I was still unpacking boxes. My mother saw our new house only once, and that, from the outside looking in, before we’d even settled. Both of us on tiptoes, cupped hands leaning against smudged windows, her careful not to disturb the wig she hoped was hiding her cancer. She’d already seen photos of the inside, though I left out the one of the first-floor toilet tilted sideways, warped wood and rusty nails at its base. 

I remember the furrow of her brow beneath that funny wig when she turned from the windows back to the street. She was not one to be speechless, but that day she was. I knew she didn’t understand why we were moving, especially to a tiny frame shop around the corner from the home we loved. I’d explained the move was necessary considering my husband Tom’s recent layoffs. That my attempt at doubling my photography income alongside caring for the kids had helped somewhat, but not to the extent we needed. I see now that if the cancer meds hadn’t stolen her reasoning, she’d likely have responded the way she had my whole life: “I’m not buying it!”

Tom and I both grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, where we also got married. Ten months later, he was transferred to Washington state. The small company he worked for had never moved anyone anywhere, so I was shocked, but his monthly travel to the Pacific Northwest was taking its toll. He was thrilled about the move. I was nervous to leave family and friends but stayed positive.

Two years into our marriage, Tom was diagnosed with depression. It was I who’d finally convinced him to go. After a few sessions I was asked to join him, where he looked on as the psychologist told me I wanted too much and pushed too hard.

I loved him hard, I know that. I loved his quiet nature, his passion for music, how smart he was. I loved the attention he paid to my body, how special he made me feel. I saw the good in him. He just had a lower threshold, that’s all. Forever stressed at work, he said the cure was the 60-mile bike rides he took on Sundays. “Cycling is my religion,” he told me. I believed him.

Sandwiched in the almost middle of seven kids I found ways to get what I needed, no matter if it meant working my fingers to pulp. My father saw my big smile and sunny personality and told me I’d be a good secretary. I watched the siblings surrounding me attend university, and when I felt ready to get my own bachelor’s degree—at age twenty-seven—learned I was on my own. I was living in an apartment in Philadelphia. I got school loans, worked full time as a legal secretary, went to school at night.

I graduated four months after we married, just in time for the move to Washington. There, I found my dream job in apparel development, quickly transitioning from the children’s line to the women’s line. I secretly regretted my career choice though, because it involved international travel. I was six weeks pregnant when I was sent to Thailand with samples of the holiday line. When my maternity leave ended, I went back to work, but soon after, we decided I would stay home.

Our second arrived two years later. Then our third—a two-month preemie with Down syndrome. At three she was not yet walking, and that’s when I told Tom I needed more support. Against his wishes, we moved back home. The following year, he succumbed to alcoholism. Another six, and the layoffs came.

We were no strangers to marriage counseling. In fifteen years, we'd gone three times. He’d always agreed to go. But my willing partner was hiding a secret life, so in therapy, we’d go round and round. We’d make progress but invariably end up back where we’d been. I tried to focus on what needed fixing but could never find it. He focused on what was wrong with me. I was unorganized, unable to relax, ungrateful. Funny, since I kept gratitude journals for years on end, grateful for the way our four-year-old slurped his soup at Sunrise Bagel, the health insurance that kept our daughter in the NICU five weeks and later paid for her open-heart surgery. And my van! I wrote about its awesome sliding doors, capacity for seven, and taking it to 188,674 miles before it finally conked out at the grocery store.

On July 2, 2015, three months after my mother died, I sat surrounded by boxes in our new house, pulling crumpled newspaper from dozens of picture frames, then spent an hour looking at them. They represented our lives, and forced me to consider where we were headed.

My mother wasn’t interested in our zodiac sign, but I was, and she’d laughed when I told her we crabs are nurturing homebodies—kind, suspicious, insightful, vindictive, and loyal, but most of all—a Cancer’s intuition rules.

Ten years on, I see her face again at the windows, eyes peering in, and I am trying to get a read. If I’d been able to get her inside, would she have seen the writing on the walls I was unable to see? Maybe warn me that what we’d been through so far was nothing compared to what was coming. That in this house I would work so hard to make into a home, we’d finally fall apart.

If only. I could have skirted so much pain. Though it’s pain that helps us write our way to the truth. We write our way out of marriages. And I write knowing that today, another ten begins again.

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Amy McIntyre holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Before her time at VCFA, her human-interest stories were published by Seven Mile Satellite. She runs a BIPOC library on Instagram @KsQreadsBIPOC and is currently at work on a memoir about her experiences with childbirth and early motherhood.

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA/GAL). It's an organization that matches children in the foster care system with trained community volunteers, who keep the child's best interest and safety at the forefront while working with the courts to secure permanent placement. There are CASA chapters in 49 states, and their DOJ funding has recently been terminated, so now more than ever, they need support.