an ode to maternal love

In my favorite home video*, my grandma acts as life’s stenographer. Her hazel eyes watch baby me from behind Uncle Bubba’s brick-like camcorder, giving future me a tour of the perfect little house I have no memory of living in.

Granny coos my name sweetly as she rounds the upstairs bend to my room.

Every time Granny announces my name, she says it with a flourish of pride: “This is Mackenzie Irene Kees,” so that over thirty years later, when her Texas twang crackles through my fraying headphones, it sends a jolt straight through me from across the universe.

Granny turns into an idyllic nursery, its walls carefully unpainted — for a tiny Sam or Samantha, if Dad had gotten his way — with two armchairs in opposite corners, a pristine white crib between them, and a thin tasseled rug thrown out front. Hidden beneath a thick blanket, a lace-covered side table with a lamp, framed picture, and frilly photo album perched on top sits beside a wicker chair. Suspended overhead is a silky cloud and moon motif. On the wall above the crib, a bushel of brightly colored balloons takes flight. A mobile of spotted unicorns slowly spins to the tune of Brahms Lullaby. Aunt Shana has to crank it twice while dressing me.

I still have that heavy pink-and-purple baby blanket my great-grandmother Irene stitched for me, but the white wardrobe with hearts painted on its face is gone. The rest of Mom’s hand-picked antique furniture is in storage, along with a beautiful hope chest from Dad, homemade baby clothes from Aunt Shana, and a few treasured bunny rabbits from my grandfather, Papa.

Granny resumes her grand tour, sharing precious details with the camera about everything she sees. I collect her honeyed words like gems, snatching priceless stories from under Father Time’s hook nose.

One tale explains how two pieces of artwork came to be hanging on the far wall, neither of which I had seen before. Odd, given Mom’s penchant for keepsakes.

According to Granny’s storytelling, the Christmas before I was born, my mom gifted my dad two framed Jody Bergsma prints. She hung them in a neat stack on the wall of my perfect little nursery. In the first print, a wide-eyed couple embraces between the trees, a naked child with rosy butt-cheeks and an upturned head beside them, all three enfolded by innocent forest creatures. Under the happy family, there’s a quote, which Aunt Shana reads aloud: “The greatest gift parents can give their children is to love each other.”

Ah, I know why someone misplaced that piece, probably around the new millennium,** if I had to wager.

I imagine Mom at an art show someplace in San Diego. I’m squirming in her belly because, of course, I’m a kicker. Her ankles are swollen, but so is her heart, chock full of hope for her budding family. Her face brightens when she stumbles across Jody Bergsma’s booth, seeing all those sappy messages about love and family. (She’s carrying her first baby, after all, so her body is flooded with feel-good, lovey-dovey hormones.)

The second Bergsma print is bigger than the first. A father and his two children take a stroll in the countryside. The boy straddles a cow up front, and the girl holds flowers out with an impish grin. The father carries wide-eyed frogs in a pail and his daughter’s free hand in the other. Below them, the quote reads: “Dad…you know it will never really matter how much time goes by, or how far apart we are… What will matter… is how close we stay.”

By that December, the art is wrapped beneath the tree in a new home, in a new state. This also marks the beginning of Mom’s elaborate Christmas cards, though her first was rather tame.

Mom and Dad stand in front of their new cookie-cutter home, complete with a screened-in pool and tantalizing view of the golf course abutting their backyard. They wear matching thick-rimmed circular glasses, squinting at the camera with half-smiles as they lean into each other for support. I am clearly visible in Mom’s red sweater, which makes sense, as I will be born a short three months later. (When I arrive, I do so feet-first, as if to test the water, making sure the world is safe for entry.)

Watching my sassy mother, the same age then as I am now, cradle this little creature she made with the utmost care, fills me with awe. In one home video, her hands constantly flutter about my delicate head as she places me in a swing. She knows I was only born into this mad world a fortnight ago, and she takes no risks with her baby. Her concern for me is palpable as I swing back and forth. Dad watches from afar, laughing at the cute furrow in my brow. Mom hovers nearby, her hand always there to protect my soft baby’s skull should I fall forward or back.

This sort of diligence is a hallmark of motherhood. Mom said that herself, brushing off her rapt attention to me as trivial. It’s not. When Mom gives me the nourishment I need to thrive, she uses her own reserves. She holds me to her breast gently, one of her thumbs absently caressing my temple. There’s magic in this — an unseen thread weaving our hearts together. My small hands reach up for her, then settle by my face. My eyes remain fixed on her upturned lips, determined to stay open, but slowly sink to sated half-moons.

The video suddenly wavers, then cuts to loud static. Before disappearing completely, the picture fades in and out. The sound of Mom’s delighted laughter lingers in the darkness.

The unadulterated love radiating from that tiny room is so profound that it adds another tendril to the heartstrings binding us together with each subsequent rewatch. Our bond is bone-deep, and I can’t explain why I didn’t sense it within me so viscerally before. What I can explain are my feelings now. . .

And the more I watch our home videos, the more I realize how much my mom is me.

*they’re all my favorite!

**my parents were divorced in the year 2000, for those of you not in the know.

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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