Here is a photo my cousin Tricia calls "Senorita Mina." It was taken in the 1940's; I would estimate Mom is in her mid- to late-20's here, during her operatic singing career as "Mina Brien." There was still prejudice against the Irish back then, so she couldn't use her actual maiden name of O'Brien.

It's too bad the photo's in black and white - I would like to see the bright red color of the rose nestled into her black mantilla...

This was long before I met her... lately I wish I'd known her during these early chapters, with all her bright potential, blooming before her...

On Saturday, I took Mom to the beauty parlor, where she saw herself in the mirror for the first time in months. She smiled shyly as the nice Philippino man styled her hair. He chatted both of us up as he liberated her natural waves from the weight of her too-long, draggy, senior-home hair. Small, jade roses hung from her earlobes on silver wires - I had just had them re-pierced last Thanksgiving.

Then on Sunday I kidnapped her again, this time for our tiny Easter brunch, just the two of us, at my place. Canadian cartoons kept her attention better than the pre-recorded Vatican service on TV. The cartoons had a certain irony to them - she being from Nova Scotia so long ago, from the small, busy fishing village of Dingwall, Cape Breton, now the annual site for Celtic music festivals. Had she stayed, we might have been considerably stronger hockey fans. As it is, at age 89, she is practically a living heirloom.

Owing to the idiosyncracies of her current eating style, I added a banana smoothie to her lamb-and-eggs plate. And we had a spot of tea in old china cups (not her own unfortunately, since those had been nipped and jettisoned years earlier by my stepmother, a long, sad story...) I liked seeing her smile at the sight of the cups.


As a lifelong ADD'er, maybe borderline Asperger's, Mina exasperated a lot of people in her life, who had little-to-no idea how to relate to or manage her. As a result, she was alternately ignored or badly disrespected most of her life, and lost almost everything, piece by piece. Unable to decipher many social cues, people's reactions and her isolation confused and frustrated her... and stunted her potential.

She found a refuge in music, and for a long while it suited her. She was even bound for Europe as part of a light-opera trio, an early, fairer-sexed version of the Three Tenors; then she met my father on a golf course. She wanted to be a mother badly, and cancelled her trip when she got engaged.

That is the woman I want to know and celebrate - the woman who sacrificed so much of her identity to experience motherhood. At 32, she used to pray that, if she were unable to have children of her own, that maybe she would marry someone who already had children, so she could at least experience motherhood that way.

She was a lovely, smart and talented woman who would eventually be terribly betrayed by both her husband and her son, and then abandoned, when she was most vulnerable.

Oh how I wish she could have wed the man she really wanted, someone I only know as Jack, a flier who was killed in the war. I remember when my brother first put her in the nursing home, and I would call her every day from California... she told me, "I'm not afraid to die; I'll see Jack again."

I sure hope so, Mom.

But we're not done here yet, so you'll need to stick around a bit longer.