Excerpt from ‘Even & Especially’

“Take whatever you want,” Gilkison’s mom told her in the weeks before she died. Gilkison wanted a lot of things—her mom’s journals, some items of clothing, a few mementos and family heirlooms—but, though she could not explain why, she wanted her mom’s glass eye the most.

In Even & Especially, Gilkison reflects on her close-knit family—her relationships with her mom and her child in particular, and their extraordinary relationship with each other. As her loved ones struggle with serious health issues—a rare cancer, a benign but problematic brain tumor, chronic pain, and mental illness—Gilkison must learn to abide with them without losing herself.

With honesty and insight, Gilkison explores the origin of secrets in her family and how she, her mother, and her own kid have challenged the way we are conditioned to keep hidden the things that make us different. As Gilkison examines her past to consider how she was mothered and how she now mothers, the significance of keeping her mom’s glass eye comes into focus. Throughout, Even & Especially contemplates the questions: how do we see ourselves, and what does it mean to see and be seen by those we love?

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Prologue

April 22, 2007 / Madison, Wisconsin

My mom’s lime green Crocs blend in with the grass, fresh blades poking up through spring dirt. She can be forgiven her footwear because she’s a first grade teacher, and because she has cancer. The kids love her fun accessories and the treatments cause swelling and peripheral neuropathy, a fancy term for painful hands and feet; these are the only shoes that fit.

“Your throne,” I say as I gesture to the bench we’ve placed in our backyard for just this purpose.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she replies in a fake British accent, her humor intact. We giggle as she crosses the small section of our yard, her steps deliberate and steady. If she’s in pain, it doesn’t show.

I drape a bath towel around my mom’s shoulders like the cape at a salon and step aside. Bee comes forward to stand behind Amah, as they call their grandma. Their own shoulder-length blonde hair catches the sun. They are small but focused and appear older than six.

It’s time for this. My mom’s hair is starting to fall out in clumps, littering her pillowcase and depressing her mood. Each strand is a reminder: cancer, cancer, cancer. She’s done this before; this is the second of three times she will lose her hair in this decade-long journey that we don’t know is more than half-way over. Each time she holds on for a bit, letting nature—or, more accurately, pharmaceuticals—take its course. Then one day she knows it’s time. Time to let go of vanity. Time to embrace the inevitable change. Time to claim the little bit of control she will have through this process.

So here we are: unseasonably warm sun directly over our heads, fresh grass below, tree branches dressed in spring buds above. Mom on a bench. Bee in a tiered brown skirt, flip flops, and pink t-shirt. Pink matching their cheeks. Pink matching their energy. Also matching their grandmother’s face, which is pink for a different reason: side effects. Their shadows gather under the bench, morphing into one like their spirits.

My mom reaches for Bee’s free hand, turns her head to see them, and asks, “Ready, dear?” rubbing her thumb across their knuckles. Bee nods in silence, presses the button, and lifts the electric razor. We’ve given them basic instructions, but they move with an instinct their age and inexperience belie. They grab a section of Amah’s already-short hair and place the razor down on her scalp. They pull back slowly, so gentle.

Bee is hesitant at first, but Amah reassures them. “It doesn’t hurt, I promise.”

Bee moves the razor to the next section with more confidence, tenderly drawing it back again to reveal more scalp. My mom is still, back straight, shoulders relaxed. Somehow regal in her vulnerability. A warm swell of love fills my chest as I watch. My mom and I exchange quiet smiles and I take a picture to capture this moment.

And so it goes. My mom’s hair is released to the universe, like she will be in just four years. The hair falls in small clumps, some catching the wind and sailing off to feather birds’ nests, our silent hope. Bee makes their way across Amah’s head until she is mostly bald. Not cue ball bald—not yet—but peach fuzz bald. Some hair remains. It needs a bit of touching up before it’s done. This is where I come in.

I am both bridge and moat, connecting and surrounding these two. I am water and foundation. Clay and brick. I am cared for and caregiver. Witness and reporter. There was a sweet spot of eleven years and nineteen days when my mother and my child were both alive. Through them, I learned to see myself, to see the light and the shadows of mother and child, of bodies producing bodies, of new life, of death, of secrets and truth.

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Chapter One

2011 / Madison, Wisconsin

A couple weeks before my mom died, she spread her arms, waved weakly, and said, “Take whatever you want after I’m gone.”

I wanted her eye.

To look at my mom, you might not know she had a glass eye. In photos, it’s possible you’d notice a difference between the real one and the prosthetic, but in person you’d have to look really carefully. You were more likely to notice her warm smile, her apple cheeks, or her unusually small ears. Or you might notice the blue-grey color of her eyes, the sometimes color of the lake she grew up next to. But I doubt you’d know that only one of those eyes was real. I couldn’t tell when I was two and she left my biological dad after she found him in their bed with the hitchhiker they’d picked up together. I couldn’t tell when I was four and she moved us to the suburbs of Minneapolis for her first teaching job at a Montessori start-up. I couldn’t tell when I was six and we moved back to Wisconsin to be close to family again. I couldn’t tell later that summer when we met a tall man named Jim at the block party in my grandparents’ neighborhood. I couldn’t tell when she watched him give me a doll for Christmas that year (well done, new boyfriend), or when they bought a house together or when they got married. I couldn’t tell later when she found the first hole I kicked in the wall as an adolescent, or the second. I couldn’t tell when I went off to college in D.C. at eighteen, or when I brought home a fiancé at twenty-three. I couldn’t tell when I told her I’d finally gotten into law school or when she watched me graduate. I couldn’t tell when she waited in the hallway outside the operating room where her grandchild was born, or any of the times she held that grandchild. I couldn’t tell when she got diagnosed with a type of cancer we’d never heard of, or during any of the appointments and treatments and clinical trials that followed. I couldn’t tell when I read the blog she started where she shared her fiercely guarded secrets about having cancer as a child, about getting a prosthetic eye, and about being taught to hide the fact of that eye from everyone. I couldn’t tell the day she decided no more treatment, or a couple weeks later when I called hospice, or the day we hired a night nurse because we couldn’t keep her safe by ourselves anymore. And I for sure couldn’t tell the very next day when she died.

When I took my mom’s glass eye after her death it was pure instinct. I didn’t know why I wanted it, just that I did. Maybe some part of me knew I’d need reminders of her insight and wisdom. Maybe some part of me knew that surviving her death was not the hardest thing I would face, that my own mothering would soon be challenged. When I sat down to write this book I was in need of a sacred coping strategy. I needed a roadmap and guardrails. I needed answers. So, I looked to my mom: her writing, and in turn, her eye—a symbol for the secrets she was taught to keep and the freedom she found in letting them go. I wanted that for myself. Also, it was a tool for understanding her own story and sharing it with others. I wanted that, too.

As I write this, there is a glass eye in a small bowl on my desk.

I am trying to see my mom.

I am trying to see myself.

And, I am trying to be seen.

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