a story: neck pillow
Neck Pillow
We had made it through security. Carry ons dangled from the crooks of our elbows and the stress of the last week hung in the dark skin around our eyes. My mother and I pushed our way through the families, groups of golfers, lovers honeymooning, to find two seats at the gate to Boston. Our bags, filled with books we hadn’t read and layers of clothing for the finicky Irish weather, hit the thinly carpeted floor with a thud of relief.
We weren’t there yet, but we were closer than either of us had dared to believe we would get. My mother, usually as sturdy and intense as a freight train, slowly sank into a seat that seemed to swallow her whole. She clutched an emerald green canister to her chest. It didn’t seem possible we were going home with one less person in our party.
Seven days earlier, my father had woken the two of us and my sister in our small vacation cottage on the western coast of Ireland. He had walked the town already – the one we arrived in after dark the night before – scoping out the best coffee spot for me, the farmers’ market for mom, the bar where we’d sling guinness over a game for Jennie. He was eager to show us everything he had found. We were eager for a couple more hours of sleep.
We pulled ourselves out of bed as he threw back the curtains like he was hungry for light, hurrying us like we were low on time. But we were on vacation, so we moved like we had all the time in the world. We stepped out onto the uneven sidewalk that meandered through window-boxed buildings, walking as a family of four through the quiet streets of Kenmare. The town was slowly starting their day, a certain tourist’s commentary from the streets probably serving as their alarm clock.
We walked past the ice cream parlor. The local pub. The bookstore. The coffee shop.
“Let’s just bottle up some of this tour guide energy and I’ll drink it instead,” I said to him as he ducked through the doorway. I was growing more jealous of his morning momentum every year.
After our tour around town, he and Jennie set off for a bike ride through the Ring of Beara valley while Mom and I settled into what would be our home for the next few days. The two of us unpacked farmers’ market provisions, read books on the balcony with our feet propped on iron railings, and then headed down the street to the laundromat for a much needed refresh after a week of travel.
Surrounded by the old machines shaking violently on their spin cycles, we stood across from each other folding soft t-shirts and matching socks, chatting with backpackers as they came through. We talked about what we would cook for dinner that night.
As we walked home with piles of clean clothes tucked under our arms, a safety – the kind only a mother’s energy can bring – accompanied us. Not long after we walked back into our house, her cell phone rang. That safety, once a bubble floating inconspicuously around us, popped instantly.
The phone call was short, but before we had even hung up the two of us were sprinting for the front door, Mom grabbing the car keys as I grabbed abandoned shoes by the door to cover our bare feet. In the car I repeated the directions we had just heard over the phone. Right at the circle. Left at the hill. And then keep driving. Right at the circle. Left at the hill. Keep Driving. We made it in time to hold his hand and say goodbye. His bike laid on its side a few feet away.
Sitting in the airport a week later, after days spent discussing cremations, international policy, and funeral arrangements, I couldn’t remember the way the air had felt folding laundry a week earlier. Everything now hung with a level of staleness, of logistics, of blandness. A protein bar, when only a week earlier life had felt like a deep bowl of beef stew.
Oh. Food. Sitting at our gate in the airport the thought dropped into my mind the way a lost acquiances’ name reappears in an instant. I looked over at my mother, staring off into the distance.
“I’m going to get us food,” I said.
“Ok.”
“And neck pillows.”
“I don’t want a neck pillow.”
“It’s a long flight. You’ll want to sleep.”
“I can sleep without it.”
“How are you planning to hold your head up?”
She looked at me like she was fighting the urge to stomp her foot. I’m confident if she had been standing she would have defiantly shifted her weight to dig her heels into the ground. My mother had always been a stubborn woman, but something had shifted in our dynamic in the last week. Over the last few days I had put her to bed. I had run her bath. And she had let me. But now, I saw an energy spring from her eyes that was familiar, and as I walked off frustrated, I knew I would bring back the thing she clearly didn’t want but she certainly needed. The woman was getting a neck pillow.
As I shopped among the almost insultingly brightly colored candy wrappers and glossy magazines touting three simple steps for a less complicated life, I searched for the perfect neck pillow. Sifting through my options, I thought of the prickly energy that would be waiting for me back at the gate, and I remembered a few times when our roles had been reversed – when I had dug my heels in but she bulldozed her way forward anyway.
“You should bring your jacket.”
“It doesn’t work with my outfit.”
“Tough shit.”
Or:
“I’ll be there to help you move out.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I’m on the next flight.”
The way she would push, sometimes forceful, sometimes as gentle as a light graze on the small of my back, would feel like torture at the first touch, but would always move me down the path I was convinced didn’t exist. I filled my arms with prepackaged food from the coolers, snagged two overpriced black neck pillows and swiped my credit card without looking at the total.
Back at our seats, after we unwrapped prepackaged sandwiches and exploded carbonated beverages, I pulled out my pillow, snapped off the price tag and felt her eyes land on me as I pulled it tight around my neck and sank low into my seat. I exhaled.
“Well,” she said, staring at my relaxed frame with a searing envy, “ I want one of those.”
I slowly rotated my supported neck to face her, and as our eyes met, the biggest boom of laughter erupted from our bodies, filling the Dublin airport. Our laughter, having been bottled for seven days, danced around other passengers, who themselves started to chuckle at the sight of us trying to catch our breath. Tears streamed our faces, mine catching in my dimples, hers pooling in her laugh lines. I tried to tell her there was another in the bag for her, but anytime I would utter a word, we would be right back where we started– doubled over, clutching our stomachs, waiting for this latest wave of laughter to move through us.
Eventually she opened the plastic bag to find her very own pillow. She wrapped it around her neck and settled in the way a tired child cozies in their carseat after a day at the zoo. She closed her eyes, and took deep inhales to steady her breathing. I saw a lightness cross her face I hadn’t seen since the morning my Dad led us on the tour of the town.
I couldn’t resist.
“See?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed herself up, announcing she should go find the restroom before we boarded. When I held out my hand to take the pillow from her, she tightened it around her neck, like a security blanket, causing her cheeks to resemble a chipmunk.
She smiled, and with full knowledge of what kind of crazy she looked like, started walking down the atrium. The late afternoon light shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows and cast a bobbleheaded shadow on the floor next to her. I giggled at the physical comedy of it all, but as she moved further away, my spine started to stiffen. My eyes ached with exhaustion, my body was so tired I wasn’t sure that I would even have the strength to stand up, but I wanted to follow her – worried she would get lost. Worried that she would need my help.
It would take years for us to settle into our new roles, the remaining three of us trading off who would serve as the parent, as we navigated the deepest depths of our grief. A family that was once a stable square, four corners comfortable with the angles they assumed, had collapsed into a triangle. But right then, sitting in my seat with a pillow hugging my neck, watching her silly shadow bob further away, I believed for the first time that we would find our footing eventually. We just had to keep our head up.