Marine Life
By Linda Svendsen, first published in Prairie Schooner
A daughter, on the verge of becoming a mother, learns a great deal in spending time with her own mother.
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In July, the daughter visits her mother, and they go to a car wash together. The mother says that she likes car washes. Later, they sit on the patio of their house and reminisce about how the daughter used to run through sparklers as a kid. The daughter, now a woman, is pregnant—she has come to visit her mother to learn more about mothering.
Later, the daughter goes to a ceramics class with her mother. She thinks about her childhood: how her mother used to play piano professionally, how she went with her stepfather to drive-in movies. Back then, her mother retires after not having her contracts renewed. Now, they’re in Vancouver, spending time in the city, along the ocean, at a planetarium. They look at everything from a hill.
One evening, the daughter’s parents are knitting something for her soon-to-be child. In bed, she hears them talking downstairs. She then wakes up in the middle of the night; her mother says that she’s been screaming. Downstairs, they reminisce more about the daughter’s sleepwalking—more so sleepfighting.
The next morning, the day before she leaves for home, the daughter goes to a swimming class with her mother. They change together with the other ladies in the changing room and begin their lesson at the pool: on breaststrokes. In the water, the daughter contemplates motherhood: that of her own mother’s, and soon to be her own.
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