My Mother's Dream

My mother Rena grew up dreaming of becoming a writer. She talked about it often when I was growing up. She was certainly a great reader, engrossed in one novel after another till the literal day she died at 103, listening to books on tape for the blind.

Rena age 20

A writer was a pretty daring ambition for a girl growing up poor in the 1920’s and poorer in the Depression years. She was the youngest child in an immigrant family with accents and old-world ways that were meaningless to her and embarrassed her. What she wanted was to shed that identity, be an American, and have a normal American family.

There were fewer life options available to her than there were in the 1950’s and early 60’s, when the sad menu offered to me growing up was limited to nurse, elementary school teacher, secretary, or mother. In Rena’s time, as in all times, there existed renegades from the acceptable choices — the fearless, the artists — but that was not her.

Rena was of the generation that believed getting a good husband was the highest success, and when you married, you gave up your singleton ambitions in service of your husband’s career.

She lived this out for more than twenty years. But when I left for college, my older brother was already out of the house, and my younger sister started high school, she decided she would go back to school and get a graduate degree. She picked social work. She put huge effort into the essays she wrote for her courses and graduated at the top of her class.

As a professional social worker she was proud of her reports about the struggling families she visited, their problems, their needs. They were emotional short stories capped with a recommendation. Her writing disappeared into the bureaucracy.

The job was not satisfying to her, paid little, and was getting in the way of her favorite activity, travel, which my now-retired father could at last do. So she quit, and for years they traveled the world. My father would have been happy with less traveling, but he would do anything for her.

It so happened that Rena’s daughter-in-law’s mother, who was the same age as Rena, was a successful writer. One day around 1990 she invited Rena and my father to a writing retreat in the mountains of North Carolina. No preparation was required. They would do all their writing at the retreat. Rena was excited!

She and my father both produced interesting stories about their youth and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. I hoped this would be a trigger for Rena -- that when she came home she would remember that she enjoyed writing and had come out with a piece to be proud of and which the whole family benefited from reading. But nothing changed.

One day I saw a photo of her on yet another trip, and there was an expression on her face that almost made me cry. That’s when I wrote the first two verses of this song. But I couldn’t finish it.

Rena and me about 2019

Rena lived another 34 years, but she never wrote anything beyond a few letters. Just recently I found the page with those two verses, dated 1991, in an old music notebook. At last I’ve been able to finish the song.

“My Mother’s Dream”

I can see the look in your eyes

The camera has captured it cold.

It’s saying,

“This is not the me I started out to be

The kids are grown up now and someday I mean

To let it out!

To reach for the stories inside

To draw the line

To pick up a pencil and write”

Love can’t change the look in your eyes

Though he may treat you like a queen

You’re thinking,

“This is not the me I started out to be

We’re busy today, but someday I mean

To let it out

To reach for the poet inside

To free myself

To pick up a pencil and write”

Everyone knows you love him

More and more each day

But your eyes say something

Is slipping away

Wealth can’t change the look in your eyes

Though lovely distractions unfold

You’re thinking

“This is not the me I started out to be

Is there still time before I’m too old

To let it out

To reach for the dream inside

To draw the line

To pick up a pencil and write”

You still talk of that teacher

Who opened you to art

Is that memory fading?

Or still tugging at your heart?

Time can’t change the look in your eyes

It is you. It will not die before

It’s saying,

“This is not the me I started out to be

I don’t believe in omens, but that’s what I’m waiting for

To let it out

To rescue the fire inside

It waits for me

To pick up a pencil and write”