Selma

The gift was a good choice, her eyes lit up with pleasure when she opened the soft cream colored wrapping. She thought this while she was laying on the sidewalk. It was such a pleasant lunch. Up to the question. Then it was unpleasant but she didn’t want to dwell on that part of the afternoon. So what if the storm outside raged in violence – the pop of lightening underscoring their conversation she had been happy – all her daughters surrounding her again, all in one place. She wanted to freeze the moment imprint it on her brain an instamatic was too crude a device…she felt for the first time what it meant to be a matriarch. Not as heavy as she thought – she was no battleaxe bearing down on her children. She loved them simply and unconditionally. That was what she thought, of course until this afternoon. Her youngest Lisa girl, that’s what they called her, she was a headstrong kid and she took advantage of her youngest child status. She deviated from all the paths that were laid out for her – ones that her older siblings were quite happy (and even a bit grateful) to follow. Her Lisa-girl was pregnant and she wasn’t married. She drops the bomb at the lunch, just like that. Ma, I’m making you a grandma. What do you think? Her sisters were aghast. They had deferred childbirth like student loans or military service. Now one of older ones was undergoing fertility therapy. Easy to draw a straight line from one cause to one effect, but there was no evidence really. She believed in a world for her daughters in which they do not have to be punished for making selfish choices. She wanted her daughters to move in the world as easily and guilt-free as men. Lisa-girl really embodied her mother’s fully realized wish. She lived completely for herself – this latest idea no real compromise of that life’s goal. She will have the child in blatant disregard of her family’s feelings, their status in the community, their respectability. But that wasn’t event he worst of it – and she is sorry for her reaction when she first heard it. She is sorry that when her daughter announced she was pregnant by Artificial Insemination and she was Going to Live With Her Lesbian Lover in a loft in Williamsburg, Selma almost keeled over. She couldn’t keep the words from escaping her lips, the instant when emotions over come reason and she found herself shouting “Over My Dead Body!” This, punctuated by a clash of thunder. It made them all pause for a few seconds. The exclamation hung in the air. Cause and effect, Selma thought. It was her fault – she raised her daughters too independent. Now this, her Lisa-girl is crossing over into a social milieu that Selma hadn’t even heard of, let alone knew. She knew if she let her little girl go she would never see her again - r at least for a long time. Lisa-girl was going to a country Selma could never visit even with a passport.