1A Family Constellation


It took me eleven months to notice the tear in the fabric, and seven words for it to rip straight down the middle. Eleven months and seven words.

In June of 2015, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. This was what first snagged the fabric of us—the nail that caught, and then pulled on, the veins and small threads that made up the garment.

At the time, I had very little understanding of how deeply my mother and I had been woven together, of how intricately her seams had been stitched into mine, or how the pulling on one would lead to the unraveling of another.

I told myself I could handle her falling apart at the seams and synapses. I told myself that my seams and synapses would not be affected. I did so with the kind of confidence that comes from not knowing much about anything.

It would take me eleven months to realize this was not true. To see that the flood of questions I had about my mother’s dying were directly linked to the questions I had about my own living. To see the layers of anger that lived, unnamed and unexpressed, between those two places.

It would take me until the moment my therapist, Sara, said the most obvious and painful thing to me: “You think you’re bigger than your mother.”

I heard the fabric as it ripped. I immediately looked away from Sara. I felt my eyes pin themselves to my shoes. It’s a rather difficult thing, you know, to make eye contact as you feel yourself come apart.

I don’t know how many seconds or minutes passed by, but at some point she said it again: “You think you’re bigger than your mother.”

There was no question for me to answer, but I knew she was waiting for confirmation, for some sign that I knew what she’d said was true.

My body began to move, to answer for itself, well before my brain had a chance to make sense of what Sara had said. Tears slid out of my downcast eyes. My insides shifted, as waves rolled from one side of my stomach to the other. The only thing that kept me standing was the tension in my shoulders, pulling upward, and upward again.

I bit the inside edge of my lower lip as my body brimmed with discomfort. Sara’s eyes caught mine, and as they did, I felt another tear slide down my face.

“Thought so,” she said.

I gently rocked on my feet. It was a subtle heel-to-toe movement. My palms rested on my thighs, and the fingers of my right hand were making small circles over top of the material of my pants. All of this—the rocking as well as the jean-based braille—was self-soothing, motions I’d seen my mother do often. My grandmother did it too. The hair on my arms stood on end when I realized it was me who was rocking.

My body gave Sara all the confirmation she needed. Bodies and brains are interesting that way, the first creating space for what the latter will eventually comprehend.

“Take a breath,” she said, after I’d finished wiping the tears from my face.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”

I wasn’t okay.

This wasn’t a topic I’d ever pondered. What, exactly, did “bigger” mean in this context? Did I think I was better than my mother, more important? Did I think I was wiser in some way?

I would have answered no to all of those questions—a straight, cognitive no. But there’s a limit to our cognition, a limit that our bodies, our somatic recognition, will stretch far beyond every time. Our minds don’t have to know what a question means for our bodies to know the answer. And apparently, I knew the answer to this one in my bones. They told me so as they rattled.

I’d never really seen my mother, not all of her, not her in her totality. This realization, combined with the idea that her disappearance was already in motion, was too much to bear.

All of a sudden, everything I felt—my sadness, my smallness, my shame—came rushing forward. It moved through my hands like a great current. I wept, and as I did, I felt a last thread tear away. And from there, everything fell. Only, I wasn’t sure what “everything” was. All I knew was the sensation—the feeling of a complete internal collapse.

“You need to remove the wall between you and your mother,” said my therapist. “Whatever was built to keep you separate, needs to be taken down.”

I wasn’t sure what had been built, when, or even how it had been constructed—but the ripping I felt, the tearing away of some internal fabric was a sign that, whether I liked it or not, something was already happening.

* * *

The idea for the trip hit me almost as soon as the water did.

Go back to Montana, said a voice in my head as I stepped into the shower.

But I was just there, I thought.

I travel a fair bit, but I rarely, if ever, go back to places I’ve already been. Never mind places I’ve just returned from. And let me be clear: by “just,” I mean that my luggage from a trip to Montana was still lying in the entryway of our house.

I grabbed the soap and brushed the idea aside. Not a minute later, it came back. Slightly altered this time.

Go back to Montana, I heard. Take your mom with you.

I paused before reaching for the shampoo.

Now that’s interesting, I thought.

My mother and I had never really done things together, just the two of us. But given her recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis, this seemed like a decent idea.

Maybe she needs something, I thought. Maybe I’m supposed to help her with something.

The idea that I might be in need of something never crossed my mind. Nor did the idea that she might be able to help me.

I rinsed myself off, got out of the shower, and forty minutes later I called my parents on a video chat.

I brought up the idea after a few minutes of small talk.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. “The reason I’m calling is because I’m wondering if you might like to go on a trip with me.”

She stared at me blankly and then looked at my dad.

I continued on.

“I was thinking we could take a road trip,” I said. “Rent a car, drive through some national parks, maybe camp along the way.”

“Do what?” she asked.

My mother was confused. It was hard for me to tell how much of this was because of the Alzheimer’s or how much was because my mother found me to be a confusing person in general. We may not have had a track record of doing things together, but we did have a dossier of evidence regarding the frequency with which my decision-making confounded her.

“It’s a road trip,” I said. “In a car … with some camping. Just you and me.”

“You and me?” she asked. “Where would we sleep?”

“We’d sleep in a tent,” I said.

She looked back to my dad. In that moment, I wondered if she was seeking clarity, or permission, or perhaps just a safe place to hunker down.

I too looked at my dad. He was facing my mom, but I could see that his eyes were lit up. He knew this was a rare ask, and that if Alzheimer’s wasn’t part of our family’s equation, perhaps this idea wouldn’t be either.

“You’d sleep outside,” he said to my mom before turning back to the camera. “She’d love to,” he said.

“I would?” she asked, before quickly shrugging her shoulders and adding, “Well, okay. It sounds weird, but okay.”

This was a sign of my mother’s trust: her ability to surrender, to hand over the reins. As someone who regularly grasped for control, I found this trait difficult to understand.

My dad took the lead from there.

“When were you thinking of going?” he asked.

“As early as May,” I said. “But … don’t you have a golf trip to Scotland in June? What if we timed it around that?”

I watched as my dad’s eyes lit up even more. It was perfect timing—he could go on his golf trip and not spend the whole time worrying about my mom, and she could come on a trip with me that I knew she would love.

My dad’s response was instantaneous.

“Book it,” he said with a smile.

And that’s just what I did. I booked the trip, and then, because supplies would be needed, I promptly drove myself to REI.

Inside the store, I stopped in front of a locked display case full of things like Buck Knives and bear spray. I felt myself starting to sweat—first my armpits and then the palms of my hands.

Do I need these things? I wondered. Should I be buying these things?

I didn’t know the answer to these questions because—wait for it—I’d never really been camping. I could count the number of nights I’d slept in a tent on two hands, and at least three of those occasions were sleepover parties spent in the Kerrisdale Wilderness (otherwise known as the manicured lawn in my parents’ backyard). Most of the other occasions were at concert venues in my early twenties, where it was very likely that I was intoxicated. And while the final few times could be counted as actual camping, they occurred with friends who took care of the actual camping part. I honestly could not recount a time in my life, not ever, not once, where I’d built a fire, or lit a Jetboil stove, or pitched a tent by myself.

“I can do this,” I whispered to myself, wiping my hands along the sides of my jeans. “We can do this.”

All the while, I wasn’t entirely sure what “this” was. Regardless, I felt called. Like whatever this was had been written in the stars, mapped out in advance by large constellations.

Three weeks later, my mother and I left for Montana—a place known for the vastness of its sky.


2The Myth of an Ebb Tide


Nothing influences children more than the silent facts in the background.

—CARL JUNG

I read a book once about mothers and daughters. It centered on the myth of Demeter and Persephone—about the dance between mothers and daughters, the natural cycle of daughters leaving and returning, going away and coming back home.

I loved the book, and at the same time I found it difficult to relate to the dance they described. My mother and I, I felt, had done no such dance. If there was a pattern to the way we moved through the world, it would be a simple tale about a tide that moved in one direction and a young woman who split off from herself to go with it—part of her moving out with the ocean, the other part remaining, sitting empty on the shore. This myth wouldn’t include a return. It would be about that woman, that daughter, slipping out of herself and then ebbing for thirty-five years, moving ever outward, drawing lines in the sand as she went.

I drew my first when I was four years old. And the oddest thing about it was that my mother taught me how.

It happened in the stairwell of Marineview Preschool in Vancouver, British Columbia. The details are a patchwork in my brain, a first collection of images that weave together to form my earliest memory. My mother and I were standing together just inside the doorway of the preschool. There was a staircase that led up and another that led down. We were to take the latter.

“Down we go,” my mom whispered, reaching out, suggesting I take her hand, which I did.

I used my other hand, my right hand, to grab the railing beside me, and together we moved slowly down the stairs, one big-girl step after another.

About halfway down I heard my mother’s voice prompting.

“Say hello,” she said softly.

I paused, looked up from my feet, and saw that there were two women standing at the bottom of the staircase, both of whom were smiling. I looked up at my mom. She nodded and smiled. I let go of the railing and offered a very timid wave.

One of the women waved back before moving up the staircase to greet us.

“Hi there,” she said, as she crouched down in front of me. Her voice was singsongy and kind. She smelled like Play-Doh mixed with sugar and spice and everything nice.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

I felt my mother’s hand move. She rested it gently on my back.

“This is Stephanie,” she said. “She’s a little bit shy.”

“Hi, Stephanie,” said the lady in front of me. “I get shy too.”


Copyright © 2022 by Stephanie Jagger