Stay put, I told myself. Focus on your breath.
Be the flame.
* * *
I never wanted to be famous, not really. It was more that fame was the necessary precondition for, and inevitable by-product of, the thing I really did want, which was to be the first woman President of the United States.
I know, there’s nothing more pathetic than a person talking about a dream that never happened, one that never even came close. It just makes you look like a fool. But being President wasn’t some girlish fantasy of mine, some cute little idea that dissolved at the first contact with reality.
Being President was my ambition, not my dream.
There’s a difference.
And it wasn’t a crazy ambition. Whatever it is that a person needs to reach a goal like that, I had it in me, I knew I did. Even back in high school. Especially then. I was smart, I was tough, I had an incredible capacity for hard work, and I believed in myself. No imposter syndrome for me. And beyond that was my actual superpower, which was that I wanted it more than anyone else. Trust me, you didn’t want to get in my way.
I could see the path laid out in front of me. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Georgetown, and worked as a congressional intern for one glorious summer. I remember how amazing that felt, flashing my ID, nodding to the security guard as I entered the Capitol Building in my navy-blue pantsuit, like I’d willed it to happen, like I’d granted my own deepest wish.
I went straight from undergrad to law school, also at Georgetown, because I knew what I wanted and where I needed to be.
I saw myself as a budding prosecutor. Those were years when being tough on crime was considered a virtue, and that suited me just fine. I liked rules and laws—I still do—and I believed that people who broke them should be punished to the fullest extent possible. Eventually a high-profile case would come my way, and I would go on TV and talk about order and justice and the righteous vengeance of the state, and people would remember my name. When the time was right, I would run for office. Congresswoman Flick. Senator Flick. Attorney General Flick. And who knows, maybe even…
Then I got the phone call.
* * *
My mother was everything to me. My fiercest advocate, my best friend, my entire family. The source of my dreams and my determination. She couldn’t use them, so she passed them onto me. They were my inheritance.
It was hard for both of us when I left for college. Long distance was expensive back then, so we only talked on the phone once or twice a week. Mainly we communicated through the mail. She wrote me every single day. Long handwritten letters full of advice. Newspaper clippings about successful women. Old photos of the two of us. Brief affirmations scrawled on blank postcards.
You’re the best!!!
Congrats on the Dean’s List!!!
I’m the luckiest mother in the world!!!
The phone call that changed everything didn’t come from her. It was from our downstairs neighbor and longtime landlord, Shirley Del Vecchio.
Tracy, honey. I’m sorry to bother you. I know how busy you are.
No worries, I said, though I was already worried, because Shirley had never called me at school before. Is everything okay?
No, honey. Things are not okay. They haven’t been okay for a while now.
* * *
My mom was sick. It turned out she’d been diagnosed with MS during my sophomore year in college, but I didn’t know that, because she hadn’t told me. She’d meant to, she later explained, but it was always the wrong time to break the news—I had midterms, I had finals, I had that long research paper on Adam Smith. I had that obnoxious neighbor who kept me awake at night. I didn’t need any more stress in my life.
What’s harder to understand is my own blindness. Didn’t I see that she was weak and feverish, having trouble reading and getting around? I did and I didn’t. Sometimes when I was home, she seemed fine, her old self. And if she was having an attack, all she ever said was that she wasn’t feeling well.
It’s no fun getting old, honey.
The truth is, I didn’t get home that much or stay very long when I did. You could blame me for being self-absorbed—I certainly blamed myself—but that was the deal my mother and I had struck a long time ago, probably on the day I was born. I was the one with the mission; she was just support staff. That was the way she wanted it, and that was the way we lived.
The deception only worked as long as it did because her symptoms were mild at first, and her remissions lasted for months. The Del Vecchios helped a lot too. Shirley drove my mom to the doctor’s when she couldn’t get there on her own, and she nursed my mother on days when she couldn’t get out of bed. And she never said a word to me.
That spring, though, their conspiracy collapsed. Shirley’s daughter, who lived in Virginia, gave birth to twins. Shirley and her husband, Joe, wanted to go there for a couple of weeks, meet the new babies, and pitch in with child care, but they were worried about leaving my mother alone in the house.
She’s not in great shape, Shirley told me. The stairs are hard for her. Everything’s hard. She needs a lot of help.
I remember standing there, my mind going quiet, the way it does sometimes when you get bad news you don’t want—can’t bring yourself—to believe.
Honey, she said. Are you there?
* * *
I put a few things in my backpack and got on the train. I didn’t know that I was leaving law school forever. I thought I was going home for a few days, a few weeks at the most. But she was so much sicker than I’d imagined. I ended up taking my final exams from home—I aced them, for what it’s worth—and canceled my summer internship, which was a huge disappointment. Then I took a leave of absence for the fall semester, and another for the spring.
At the time, these seemed like temporary setbacks—until she got back on her feet—because neither of us could have accepted the possibility that our new arrangement might be permanent. Two years went by before I was able to admit to myself that I was no longer on leave from Georgetown. I was just living at home, taking care of my mom.
Those years are a blur in my memory, but not a bad one, not completely. We watched a lot of old movies and played way too much Scrabble. We sat in waiting rooms, nodding politely to the other sick people, many of whom told us we looked like sisters, which always made my mom very happy. I learned to cook and clean, which I hadn’t been allowed to do in the past because she hadn’t wanted me wasting my valuable time. I took up long-distance running, leaving the house at the crack of dawn, regardless of the weather, pushing myself past the pain into a state that on good days was something close to bliss, or at least as close as I ever got. I became very familiar with my mother’s body. For a while, this embarrassed both of us, and then we got over it. It was a comfort to me, being a comfort to her.
The Del Vecchios were so generous. They actually paid out of their own pocket to install a stairlift, and they let us build a ramp for her wheelchair. They’re gone now—they moved to Florida—but that ramp is still there, and I still think of their kindness every time I drive past our old house.
* * *
My mom retired on full disability, but the benefits only covered a portion of her salary, so I worked when I could to help keep us afloat. I spent my first summer at home as a market research associate, which is a nice way of saying that I harassed people at the mall for minimum wage, stepping into their path and saying, Hi there, can I ask you a few questions about athlete’s foot? It was horrible work, full of frosty brush-offs and rude comments, made even worse by the fact that I sometimes accidentally accosted former classmates, who couldn’t understand why the person they’d voted Most Likely to Succeed was standing in front of them with a clipboard and a frozen smile, demanding to know their opinion about sugarless gum.