One Hundred Things
It’s a ubiquitous kindergarten tradition: Collect one hundred things for the hundredth day of school. But Gwyn’s disinterest creates yet another mother-daughter struggle. Counting elbow noodles is boring. Stringing beads is stupid. I look at our dining room table, messy with paper, pencils, and scissors, and suggest, somewhat deviously, “Gather up your paper dolls. I bet you have a hundred.”
Her eyes brighten. The table clears while paper dolls, ten in each row, get into marching order on the living room floor.
Gwyn began coloring paper dolls at age four. At first Emily or I outlined the body for her; then she learned to sketch her own, coloring in skin, face, hair. We were perpetually cutting out arms and legs and whole wardrobes, each tiny shirt and skirt bristling with flaps. When Gwyn started therapy for adoption-related struggles, the first thing she did was draw our liberal Christian family with matching skirts, shirts, and hijabs. When Gwyn read that Betsy and Tacy cut their paper dolls from magazines, advertisement models toting oversized cell phones and wine glasses began littering the living room. Family started giving her store-bought sets, paper mice holding dandelion bouquets and Frida Kahlo with her amazing wardrobe and, later, Hamilton, cocky with his hand on his hip. These delighted Gwyn for a bit, she dressed and sorted them, but her ardor for her own designs always won out. There’s the Christmas set with Mr. and Mrs. Santa and elves, a set for Disney’s Frozen movie with accurate replicas of Anna and Elsa’s dresses, the “Mama, Imma, and Gwyn go to Hawaii” set with hula skirts and volcano-proof suits, and even the God set. The divine family has strangely enormous heads and stick bodies. Sister God has cornrow braids, Baby God is still crawling, Grandpa God sports a gray beard. “The whole world’s a family,” Gwyn tells me, and she draws and draws, trying to find her place in it.
Once after I’d been away on a three-day silent retreat, Gwyn greeted me at the door with a large manilla envelope on which she’d scrawled, “Open Immediately.” Gwyn and I sat on the back hall steps, our sides pressing, my arm around her. Inside were Gwyn, Imma, Mama, each with a few outfits in our favorite colors, matching pajamas, and crowns. I couldn’t stop squeezing her into me. I imagined her all weekend bent over the dining room table, pouring ache into little flat people she could give hair-dos and tenderly clothe, all the while I’d been pouring my ache into the silence, and it seemed to me that prayer is never what we think it is.
We collect paper dolls from dresser tops, book shelves, and under beds, laying them in a battalion on the living room carpet: Ninety-seven, not counting clothes or vehicles. Gwyn tackles the final three with gusto. Once their classroom appearance is complete, we will store them in a large gift box in the basement. Sometimes while I’m working I will imagine those paper people resting in the dark like a secret population of Gwyn’s longings, while her love marches mightily, invisibly, into creation.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the chapbook Map to Mercy, and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice; and The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done. She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice and hosts an online writing community. You can connect with Elizabeth at www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com and www.spiritualmemoir.com.
Amethyst Review 