Mothered by Absence

There was a room in the house where nothing happened.

You could walk into it any time you liked. The lights worked. Your mother was often in it, and she would look up when you came in, and say something ordinary, and you would say something ordinary back.

Nothing was wrong with that room. That was the difficult part.

Years later you tried to explain it to a friend. You got as far as "she was there," and then you stopped, because there was nowhere to go from there. So you said the two of you were just not close. The subject moved on. And you went home and lay in the dark with something on your chest that had no name and no evidence and would not go away.

Here is the name for it.

You learned to read the front door. Not the door: the particular way it closed. You learned to arrive with something in your hands, a story, a good grade, news about someone else. You learned to need slightly less than was available, and you called that being easy, and you have called it that ever since.

Then, somewhere around nine or ten, you built a small private version of the thing you should have been given. You built a mother out of cardboard and instinct, because you needed one and the position was vacant.

This book says what most books on the subject will not say. It worked. That construction kept you upright, and made you competent, and made you unusually good at reading a room.

But it was built by a child, to a child's specification, for a house that has since been sold.

Eighteen chapters and four appendices show you how to update the design.

Part of The Rutherford Repair Manuals.