Forgiveness & Love 

Ella Kotsen 

I used to come down to the fountains with my daughter every weekend. If the sun was shining we’d stop at the local bodega and grab lime popsicles. On cold days, when we were both bundled up, peppermint teas suited us fine. She’d always get sugar to put in her drink but I preferred mine pure and burning hot. Her sparkling, wandering eyes, always curious how I could take a sip right away, why the tingly liquid didn’t burn my mouth. I told her that only when her joints start to creak and her breasts start to sag, only then would she get the magical power. I wonder when she realized that was a lie. 

On the days when we sipped peppermint tea we’d walk over to the empty jets in the ground that spray water up when the weather is good. The cement stained different colors from years of water and kids playing. Dark spots where feet of all different sizes have stood. In the summer with our lime popsicles we’d come down, she’d wear her favorite bathing suit and I made sure she had a hat on so her face didn’t burn. When she was really little she could play in the fountain for hours. Only when her fingers were more pruned than raisins would she look up to me and nod that it was time to go home. On those days we’d walk the six blocks back. Dollar flip flops, a reusable target bag a cashier threw in with a purchase, and sunglasses her father gave to me when we first met were the only things accompanying us. Sometimes the sun would be setting just as we got to our apartment building. If she had been good that day I’d make her a box of white cheddar Annie's mac n cheese. She’d put on PBS kids while I sat on the porch with an old cigarette and Terry Gross coming from the radio inside. 

I didn’t think she was going to have a kid before her twenty-first birthday, but I also didn’t think we’d grow apart to where I only got a Christmas card and a reminder to forward important documents to her every once in a while. When you’re raising a kid, at least for me, you’re so focused on just surviving that sometimes you forget raising a child goes past giving them food and a place to sleep. 

We stopped going to the fountains when she got older. I remember once, on one of my really bad days, she brought me a cup of peppermint tea, raw and scalding hot, how I like it. I remember how she looked at me, how now she was the one bringing the steaming cup over. I drank some of it, maybe it helped for a day or so, but soon I went back to my normal habits and all benefits were lost in bitterness and the scalding hot pressure of rent, finding a new job again, and cutting off my bad influences.

I know I’m a bad mom, or was a bad mom, I guess I’m a grandmother now. My therapist says I need to learn how to forgive myself but how can I do that when my daughter hasn’t yet? How can I forget and move past long nights in front of our medicine cabinet when she was the one who had to tuck me in? Eventually it was me watching the TV on the couch with white cheddar mac n cheese and my teenage daughter out on the balcony with a cigarette. How can I forgive myself when now she has to carry a diaper bag on one shoulder and all of the memories of my failed parenting on the other. 

I started going to the fountains again. My therapist said it would be smart to revisit some of my favorite memories I had with my daughter. It was really hot when I went this morning. Not the dry kind of heat that they always tell you is good for your lungs but the humid kind that makes you want to escape to an office building’s unregulated AC. I sat at the bench I’ve been sitting at 

since I started going recently. There's a nice view of our old bodega that is going out of business soon, and the fountain is just around this willow tree. 

I think the hardest thing about when she first moved out was the silence. Eventually you learn to crank up npr louder or to distract yourself by cooking in the kitchen at those times in the evening when the memories start to come back. You just have to learn to hold on I guess. After a while your ears start to get used to the new sounds and they start to crave the old ones less. 

This morning it was hotter than a good cup of peppermint tea and I had already sweated through my new tank top. I still have those sunglasses her father gave me, I wore them this morning instead of the purple pair I bought for myself in an effort to start fresh a couple months ago. I watched the fountain, and eventually I saw a young mom and her daughter. I see them and I think about those fights before, when she didn’t like the feeling of sunblock on her neck. She used to say the texture of the lime popsicle juices and the sticky sunblock on her hands was just too much. Somehow the solution didn’t involve not getting popsicles, it involved me applying her sunscreen until she was far too old. The one thing she seemed to never grow out of. 

I look over at the fountain on this sunny and brilliantly bright day, I see a mother and her young daughter. And then, I realize it is them. They’re both playing in the fountain together. I see a little girl who has grown mature and old and I see a little girl who hasn’t been corrupted by me yet. I want to go over to them, I want to cool off in the icy water and give my daughter a hug. I want to rub her neck with sticky sunscreen and I want to fix her hat so it falls over her eyes. I want to go over to my granddaughter and say something eloquent and smart. But I don’t. I pick up my purse and drop my sunglasses down so they’re covering my eyes. I turn around and I start to walk the six blocks back. I go home and turn on NPR, light a cigarette and prop the balcony door open. How can I forgive myself when she hasn’t yet? How can I love her when she doesn’t love me?

So instead I sit on my stool in the fresh air, the tobacco burning the right side of my mouth, and the sun setting behind the building projects around me. In the background I hear kids playing and I swear I can hear my daughter giggling with joy at the fountain. I live too far away for that though. 

I finish my cigarette by the time the sun has left the sky and head back inside. The radio turned off for some reason so I’m greeted by silence once again. Silent forgiveness, silent love, I wonder if she’ll ever know how sorry I am.