Sixteen Years I Didn’t Speak to My Mother. Then I Went Missing, and From Her Sickbed She Said “Go Find Her”

“Because a woman can stay angry at her daughter for sixteen years,” she said, “and still not be able to make herself throw away her daughter’s crib.” I leaned my head on her shoulder.

“I think I’m going to stay a while, Mom.” She pretended to shrug the shoulder I wasn’t leaning on.

“Do what you want.

You always have.” Then, quietly: “Stay.”

I have thought about that crib more than almost anything from that whole strange season of my life.

Every few years, for sixteen years, my mother had made room in her house for a thing she had every reason to get rid of — a bulky old crib, a daily reminder of a daughter who had told her she was dead to her, taking up space she could have used for anything.

She had told herself, I’m sure, a dozen practical reasons to keep it, and a dozen times she had gone to throw it out and not managed it.