Muted Still Life (2023)
As I looked at my mom, the woman who has been my role model my entire life, I felt the feeling in my stomach disappear. Maybe I hadn’t accomplished what my mom had at my age, but that didn’t have to mean I failed.
BY FRANCISCA GARATE
IMAGE BY CHESLEY DAVIS
On the morning of my 26th birthday, I woke up to my mom and sister holding a cake in front of me while my stepdad sang "Happy Birthday" off-key in the back. Still groggy with sleep, I smiled back at them, sat up to blow out the candles and hugged them. But a bittersweet feeling took place in my stomach—the dread I had been attempting to keep down finally bubbled up to the surface that morning. I was twenty-six, the same age as my mom when she had my eldest sister.
With my twenties slipping away like water through my fingers, my biggest problem was that I was failing miserably at being an independent adult and nowhere near my mother’s position at my age. At twenty-six, she was already married, working as a dentist, and managing her house in a new city. On the other hand, I was single, still lived with my parents, worked part-time in retail, and could barely afford my own car earlier that year. Building a completely new network in another country during Covid-19 set back my plans to leave the nest and work in my dream field. I had no choice but to scale back and postpone my goals. Comparisons are harmful, but twenty-six had always been a finish line in my head. A self-imposed limit. The age at which I would settle down and live an adult life.
Growing up, my mother made me feel unique. Because of that, I have always wanted to make her proud. Even when we disagreed on what qualifies as a “well-done” bed, she was—and still is—my hero. The person who supported me through every up and down, who stayed up when I was feeling sick, or would drive me to university on rainy mornings. She was the one who wiped her tears and armed herself with resilience to raise three daughters after the divorce with my (pretty much missing-in-action) dad. She had always been independent and resourceful, learning to unclog drains and fix the washer herself. She took the pain and grief, using her feelings to push us forward.
She encouraged me to find my own way, to the chagrin of some paternal family members who only cared about big job titles and traditional universities. I remember sitting next to her one night, both of us looking at her laptop with tired eyes, browsing every career option until I decided to go for journalism. Her smile was big and determined, even though she had to get up early for work in a couple of hours. When I started university, I dreamed of my plans after graduation. I would get a full-time job, rent an apartment, save some money, and take my mom on a cruise ship around the Caribbean—a well-deserved trip for her and me. We could sunbathe on a paradisiac beach, as we like to do during the summer. But life happens, and that is still a faraway dream.
In short, I felt like I was falling behind, hence the awful and sad feelings that loomed over my head. Although I tried to be more optimistic and focus on other things—the text messages from my friends, the bar we were going to hit that night—that sour feeling was still bothering me when we sat down to have lunch at Boston Pizza, the place I chose for a birthday meal because we loved the pasta there.
Unable to shake the urge for answers and to distract myself from those depressing feelings of defeat, I looked across the booth at my mom and asked:
"Ma, did you always plan to have Maca at twenty-six?"
She lifted her gaze from the menu in front of her in confusion, taken aback by my sudden question. "Well, not specifically at twenty-six, but once we moved to our own house, your dad and I started thinking about kids, and then I got pregnant." She shrugged and started perusing her menu again, but I wasn’t done.
"Do you think you would do it again? Have kids at twenty-six, I mean?"
She frowned, thinking of an answer while still looking for something to eat. "Maybe I wouldn’t have rushed to get married... I’d have waited a few years, travelled a little bit. You know?" she said, her tone taking on a reflective note.
"Back then, everyone followed the same path: finish school, get married, and start a family. Now, there’s no pressure to get married and have kids right away. So, I would have waited. I was pretty young, now that I think about it." She closed the menu and folded her hands on top of the table, looking at me. "I think I’ll go with the pasta. What do you want, chanchita?"
I replied, “Pasta too,” and fell silent. I looked at the way her hands moved, always careful and sure, as they had been for as long as I can remember. Had they ever trembled, like my hands do sometimes? It was an awkward thing to picture, considering she needed steadiness not only to practice dentistry but to live and succeed in a broken society.
My mom grew up surrounded by contradictions. Her generation fought and protested Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, advocating for democracy and freedom of speech. She was one of hundreds who believed in changing the status quo by breaking the rules that had oppressed Chileans for over fourteen years.
But at home, as the first child of a middle-class dentist and a social worker, she was expected to study, get a serious career, settle down, and start growing a family. She could be rebellious if she wanted, but university came first. My grandparents, though professionals on their own, had enough money to put their kid through university just once, so my mom went for a thriving field and broke her back studying to finish as soon as possible. Things like taking a gap year or travelling the world were reserved for people without care for their future, not for sensible young women with potential. And so, she did. She was accepted into a prestigious university at seventeen and moved to another city at eighteen with a nice scholarship under her arm. At twenty-five, after finishing her degree, she married a marine. She packed her stuff and moved five hours away from her family to the city where my dad was stationed.
I pictured a twenty-six-year-old woman with a newborn in her arms—juggling chores, changing diapers, breastfeeding all by herself, and waiting for her husband to come home from work so she could focus on dinner and groceries. I saw her alone. She was without her mom or anyone else to help her when the water heater broke, or the dirty dishes were piling up in the sink. I tried to picture the fiercely independent woman she has been my whole life in that situation. Did she move as she does now, confident in her abilities? Or did she feel like she was still too young, too inexperienced to handle her life? Did she feel like a failure? Did she feel like the years she spent studying were in vain back then when she was home with a baby and not working? Were my insecurities an echo of those fears, those unwelcome thoughts of not being enough? Did she also feel like she had not accomplished anything at twenty-six?
"Panchi," I heard my mom calling me. I snapped back to the restaurant, to my 26th birthday lunch, and my now fifty-four-year-old mom. Her eyes—the same colour and shape as mine—have wrinkles surrounding them, lines that mark years of sacrifice and work to give her daughters a happy life. "Are you okay?"
I smiled at her. "Yes, ma. I’m good." At that moment, the waitress arrived at our table, our drinks on the tray she was carrying. With our glasses in hand, my mom raised hers in a toast.
"May this be an excellent year for you, love," she uttered. "I’m very proud of you and how far you’ve come. I know things have been hard, but you are on the way to fulfilling your dreams. I’ll always be your biggest fan.”
I felt my smile widening. As I looked at my mom, the woman who has been my role model my entire life, I felt the feeling in my stomach disappear. Maybe I hadn’t accomplished what my mom had at my age, but that didn’t have to mean I failed. Maybe twenty-six didn’t have to be the finish line in a race where it was just me competing. Not when I knew she was my biggest fan, and she was as proud of me as I was of her.
Francisca Garate is a journalist and aspiring writer based in Milton, Ontario. She is in her final semester of Humber's Professional Writing and Communications program and is currently pursuing a career in the publishing industry.
Image: Muted Still Life (Chesley Davis, 2023)
Edited for publication by Shahnoor Shahid as part of the Creative Book Publishing program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation and the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.