"Goodnight, Christy."
"Goodnight, Ma. [Long pause as Bridget Brown turns and walks toward the car. She turns back to look at her son.] Go on, I'm all right. Will you get in the car now Ma, I'm fine." [Bridget gazes at her son, unsure of her place with him, unsure of his place with the world. She turns, and enters the car.]
And so ends, or nearly ends, My Left Foot--the movie starring Daniel Day Lewis as a man with cerebral palsy. It is a movie I must watch alone. I spend the majority of it crying. Crying not for Christy or his tortured body, not quite crying for his mother, but, instead, crying for my mother and what could have been or would have been between us had she not been the one to go first.
For me, the movie is about two things. First, it is about a tortured soul. Christy grew up misdiagnosed as mentally disabled, fought until he could communicate first with his left foot, then through garbled speech, then through painting, then through better speech, then, finally, through words on a page. While I am not crippled, I am tortured. When I watch the movie, I think of growing up gay and not knowing it, knowing only that I was different. That I am "different." But, truth be told, even my head can't fully justify placing myself on the same level as Christy Brown. I am only able to manage the parallel when my mind slips gracefully into the movie's second subject--the love of a mother for her child. The movie's portrayal of this subject really gets under my skin.
This woman, played by Brenda Fricker (the homeless woman in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), is astounding. There is not a second when she is not fretting over her son, shielding him from his alcoholic father, pushing him little by little into the world, saving money for a wheelchair, trying to find him help, and worrying about his mental well being. She is the spitting image of my mother in some physical characteristics, but mostly in her personality.
My sister told me the story once about my bike accident. I don't remember it--I was unconscious for a while. The last thing I remember was closing my eyes for a second too long. I woke up in a hospital room with imprints a bridge on my face. But my sister remembers sitting at the table with my mom and my dad while I was out on my bike. Somebody told someone where I lived and sent someone else running to tell my parents that I had been hurt. As my sister remembers it, my mom was up, keys in hand, and out the door before my sister or my dad could even process what was going on. My mom's baby was hurt. That's all she had to know.
That's sort of who she was. You didn't notice her much (odd because her physical stature was quite imposing) until you either made her mad or hurt her children. Then she was scary. Nobody messed with her babies. Sometimes I think that protecting her children, offering them the best she could, was what she lived for. She certainly didn't get the chance to live much for herself.
But the movie also portrays a son's love for his mother. There is a scene in the movie, early on, when young Bridget Brown is pregnant, near her due date, carrying young Christy Brown up the stairs to his bed. She is sweating, breathing heavily, her eyes betraying doubts about her physical ability. She gets Christy in bed and again, it's her eyes--they tell us there is a problem. "Christy, I have to go and make a phone. Stay there. We hear her stumble out the door, down the hallway, and fall down the stairs. Her cry as she falls is absolutely sickening. The look in Christy's eyes is panicked and charged with adrenaline. Using his one good foot, he drags himself off the bed, out the door, down the hall, and to the top of the stairs. Seeing his mother collapsed, he half falls, half crawls to the bottom of the stairs where he pounds on the front door until help arrives. Christy, poor, crippled Christy, saved his mother's life.
That scream Bridget Brown makes as she falls down the stairs--I have heard that cry before. When my mother was caught in public with the evidence of a failed surgery, she made that cry--a cry of defeat and worry, a cry of concern not for herself but for others. She was defeated, and she couldn't fight much longer. She couldn't fight much longer for herself but what I think really got her was that she couldn't fight any more for others. Standing with her in that store when she made that sickening, end of the rope cry, I was alarmed and charged with adrenaline. I couldn't do much, but I would like to think that, in some way, I saved her that day. I put her in the car, and drove her home. It seems presumptuous of me to assume that my very presence gave her comfort, but watching this movie helps me remember the things my mom did for me when she was strong. Helps me remember the relationship we had. Helps me think that she needed her children just as much as we needed her.
And then we are back to the end, or the near end, of the movie--the point when Christy tells his mother to get back into the car. The last conversation I remember with my mother was at least a week or two before she died. We were cleaning out boxes of her things from her sewing room. I uncovered my pillow and pillowcase from daycare--items she made for me with her own two hands. I was devastated. I had forgotten about those things and I was suddenly afraid that there would be no one to make me things when she was gone. "I really would like to stay, Marc. But I can't." It was said in a caring voice, and her eyes showed caring and strength. But looking back, I think I also remember something else behind the front. A look of uncertainty. She was unsure of my place in the world, unsure of her place with me, unsure of what was to come, and most jarringly, aware that she wouldn't be here to find out firsthand.
And so she's still around. Not in any definite presence but she haunts my days, my nights, my weeks, my months. I have good days and bad days and they fluctuate based on how much of your memory I am able to process. Well, mom, I am not fine but I am okay. So will you get in the car now, Ma? I'm fine. Or I will be someday.
