The Book of Help by Megan Griswold

Author:Megan Griswold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2019-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

45

FAMILY RETREAT

PURPOSE: I told my mom I wanted to retreat. I really just wanted her.

DURATION: I wasn’t sure.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED: Sheets, a set of towels. A warm bed. My mother’s things around me. To watch a movie. To talk about houses or her chickens. And my marriage.

AGE: Almost 33.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Vulnerable. The kind I don’t want to show just anyone.

LOCATION: River Bank Farm, Whidbey Island, Washington.

For a stretch after Tim’s arrest, I tried bolting from Bellingham and living in Mom’s old barn that she someday hoped to convert to livable space. It was presently full of rusty twin beds and my childhood brass one, a dormered attic with old armoires, and bat droppings. I wanted to take refuge there. Take refuge with the bats.

It didn’t last long—like, part of a week.

“You’re not dealing, Megan. You’re hiding. I love you, but go work on what you need to with Tim,” Mom said. The irony was, my mother was the beyond welcoming parent that all my childhood adult friends still understandably sought out to talk to because she was such a good listener. More challenging to listen, I suppose, when it hits closer and harder to home.

“Is there something wrong with retreating for a spell, Mom? I don’t get it.”

“Megan, you are the stronger one. Tim doesn’t have the skills you have. Or the understanding you do. You’re so good with people.”

“But I’ve lost myself, Mom. I don’t know what I’m doing this for. Or for whom.”

“Megan, I need to support you the best way I can, and I don’t think that means helping you hide.”

I was too tired to push back. No matter how much we could connect through a book, a design, or a tiny object we’d found on a walk, I sensed that something in my mother’s wounding made it impossible for her to see mine. I went home. I wasn’t so much banished as embarrassed. I put the would-be retreat idea out of my mind. Closed it like one of those old armoires.

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