a better son/daughter
Oscar Wilde once said that it is the curse of all women that we grow up to be our mothers. I don't think that's true. We are not our mothers. We're what comes next. We're the after. We are, for better or worse, our own women.
Birthdays had never been a particular important occasion in the Grey household. There hadn't been many friends to invite over for parties and her mother had generally been busy, and anyway Ellis had never particularly liked celebrating her own. A birthday, in her view, was one more day, nothing more than a marker of yet another year completed. It certainly didn't merit a day set aside or any fuss. On this particular birthday, Meredith had chosen her mother's route - no fanfare, no party, just a day like any other.
And we live in their shadows. That's the curse. Maybe we're striving to be like our mothers were. Maybe we want to be better. Either way, they came before us and they stay here with us and should we fail, they or their memories will be right there at our shoulders. Watching. Knowing. Having told you so.
Instead she went to the bookshelf. At least its tortures generally produced something vaguely worthwhile, whereas the jukebox liked to play her songs she either didn't know or didn't like. Today seemed, at first, to be an exception. Oh, the music was still something she didn't pay attention to, but the books were awful. There were magazines full of cheap gossip about celebrities she didn't care about or recognize, suspense novels, romances disguised as histories, row after row of dross. The only thing that looked vaguely interesting was a book with no title, a thin black volume jammed up against yet another magazine.
But here's the thing. We keep trying. And because the women before us did great things, we know that great things are possible. Because they achieved what was mighty, we keep thinking that our chance to do the impossible is around the next corner.
It took some effort to get it to slide free, and when she did, there was no title to be seen on the front either. She flipped it open to glance inside and found herself faced with handwriting - not another novel, but someone's diary, page after page of familiar print. It didn't seem possible, and she started to turn to the front in search of a name, a confirmation of what she already knew, but before she got there, the magazine which had been next to the journal caught her eye.
"Oh, no," she said aloud, shutting the book and picking up the magazine instead. Smirking out from the cover of the Annals of American Neurosurgery was a face she'd never expected or wished to see again. "Oh, no, you - the Shepherd method?" She turned the pages quickly until she found the article, skimming quickly in search of her name. While she was pleased that it looked as if their clinical trial had at last succeeded, he might at least have given her a little mention. "Seriously? Seriously? The Shepherd method. That greasy-haired, slimy, good-for-nothing, credit-stealing bastard."
She turned from the bookshelf, ready to flounce off in a fit of self-righteous indignance and read the article in private elsewhere. Instead she tumbled forward over a cardboard box which had not been there before. Flopping forward, she caught her stomach on the edge of the box and winced. She lowered herself to sit beside the box, leaning her weight on arms folded against it. Eyes widening as she looked over the side, she reached in to gingerly pick up one of the dozens of notebooks the box contained, every single one a twin of that journal she'd first pulled from the shelf. Ellis Grey, it seemed, had been painfully prolific.
Or the next. Or maybe the next. And we keep trying. It's really all we can do. All any of us can do. We are not our mothers. But maybe we can hope to be something extraordinary anyway.
Birthdays had never been a particular important occasion in the Grey household. There hadn't been many friends to invite over for parties and her mother had generally been busy, and anyway Ellis had never particularly liked celebrating her own. A birthday, in her view, was one more day, nothing more than a marker of yet another year completed. It certainly didn't merit a day set aside or any fuss. On this particular birthday, Meredith had chosen her mother's route - no fanfare, no party, just a day like any other.
And we live in their shadows. That's the curse. Maybe we're striving to be like our mothers were. Maybe we want to be better. Either way, they came before us and they stay here with us and should we fail, they or their memories will be right there at our shoulders. Watching. Knowing. Having told you so.
Instead she went to the bookshelf. At least its tortures generally produced something vaguely worthwhile, whereas the jukebox liked to play her songs she either didn't know or didn't like. Today seemed, at first, to be an exception. Oh, the music was still something she didn't pay attention to, but the books were awful. There were magazines full of cheap gossip about celebrities she didn't care about or recognize, suspense novels, romances disguised as histories, row after row of dross. The only thing that looked vaguely interesting was a book with no title, a thin black volume jammed up against yet another magazine.
But here's the thing. We keep trying. And because the women before us did great things, we know that great things are possible. Because they achieved what was mighty, we keep thinking that our chance to do the impossible is around the next corner.
It took some effort to get it to slide free, and when she did, there was no title to be seen on the front either. She flipped it open to glance inside and found herself faced with handwriting - not another novel, but someone's diary, page after page of familiar print. It didn't seem possible, and she started to turn to the front in search of a name, a confirmation of what she already knew, but before she got there, the magazine which had been next to the journal caught her eye.
"Oh, no," she said aloud, shutting the book and picking up the magazine instead. Smirking out from the cover of the Annals of American Neurosurgery was a face she'd never expected or wished to see again. "Oh, no, you - the Shepherd method?" She turned the pages quickly until she found the article, skimming quickly in search of her name. While she was pleased that it looked as if their clinical trial had at last succeeded, he might at least have given her a little mention. "Seriously? Seriously? The Shepherd method. That greasy-haired, slimy, good-for-nothing, credit-stealing bastard."
She turned from the bookshelf, ready to flounce off in a fit of self-righteous indignance and read the article in private elsewhere. Instead she tumbled forward over a cardboard box which had not been there before. Flopping forward, she caught her stomach on the edge of the box and winced. She lowered herself to sit beside the box, leaning her weight on arms folded against it. Eyes widening as she looked over the side, she reached in to gingerly pick up one of the dozens of notebooks the box contained, every single one a twin of that journal she'd first pulled from the shelf. Ellis Grey, it seemed, had been painfully prolific.
Or the next. Or maybe the next. And we keep trying. It's really all we can do. All any of us can do. We are not our mothers. But maybe we can hope to be something extraordinary anyway.