Hafner - Mother, daughter, me

Mother Daughter Me is a work of nonfiction.
Some names and identifying details, along with some chronology, have been changed. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Copyright 2013 by Katie Hafner
Reading group guide copyright 2014 by Random House LLC

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Portions of , Culling A Life, originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine as On Grief: A Widow Finally Confronts the Boxes Her Husband Left Behind in slightly different form.

Permissions credits appear on .

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Hafner, Katie.
Mother daughter me / Katie Hafner.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-8129-8459-0
1. Hafner, KatieFamily. 2. JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. 3. Authors, American21st centuryFamily relationships. 4. Mothers and daughtersUnited States. I. Title.
PN4874.H213A3 2013
070.92dc23
[B]
2012033758

www.atrandom.com

Cover design: Anna Bauer
Cover image: plainpicture/Thordis Rggeberg

v3.1_r1

M Y LONGING FOR HER WAS ALWAYS THERE. WHAT I WANTED MORE than anything was my mothers attention. I plotted and I campaigned. I hatched plans. I pleaded. Then, just when I thought I had her, she would slip from my grasp. As the disappointments piled up, I learned to focus on pinpoints of hope: The less demanding the request, I figured, the greater my chances of success.

By fifth grade, I had pared my expectations back to a single meal. I invited my mother to have lunch with me, a tradition at the elementary school in our little beach town. Once or twice a week a parent could be seen in the lunchroom, seated at one of the short tables, knees high to the chest, gamely eating a Sloppy Joe or a hamburger or a grilled cheese sandwich, washing it down with the standard-issue carton of milk.

I wanted my mother to be one of those lunchtime parents. I would make it easy for her. I would get Mr. Cooks permission to leave class early and wait for her out front. She would drive up in the Buick station wagon, and as she walked toward me shed beam one of her megawatt smiles that told me no one and nothing else in her life mattered. I would beam back. Though barely clearing five foot three (and only with the help of a profusion of thick, wavy hair), she was huge in my minds eye and would grow still taller as she approached me. I would take the hand of this giant among mothers and guide her to the lunchroom.

We would sit down at the spot I had picked out for us. She would gush about the delicious food and the fresh milk (Divine, she would say). In deference to my sweet tooth and her own caloric vigilance, she would offer me her dessert. By the time she left, all the other kids doubts about my mysterious home life would be put to rest once and for all, as this motherdaughter breaking of bread would signal to them an epoxy-like bond. For thirty precious minutes my schoolmates would see that I, too, had a motherand not just any mother but one to beat the band, beautiful and glamorous and shiny with life.

For months, I begged her to do this one thing. Her excuses were many and resolute, if not always convincing. (Even a nine-year-old can sift the linguistic chaff from the grain.) But I persisted with my entreaties until, finally, one day she came.

It was Taco Day, my favorite. The visit lasted one lunch period, but my memory stretches it to become an epic. Our beige Buick, a mighty vessel of a car, glided into the parking lot with regal ease. As my mother opened the car door and touched her high heels onto the ground, the pavement glistened in the Southern California sunlight. I was waiting for her, of course, and, true to my fantasy, when she caught sight of me her look was one of unalloyed delight. In the lunchroom, we sat with a few of my classmates, whom she greeted with one of those radiant smiles. I could tell that they were bewitched. She placed her small paper napkin in her lap and lingered over the two beef tacos on her plate as if they were foie gras, pronouncing themyesdivine. I ate my own small square of white cake with chocolate icing and my mothers too.

After lunch, I took her to my classroom. Mr. Cook was seated at his desk, grading papers. As we entered the room, he looked over his reading glasses and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Tipsy with pride, I introduced him to my heavenly mother. No doubt he had been expecting a dowdy bluestocking, for his gaze was fixed on her. This is the mother who sends Katie to school with math puzzlers to share with the class? he must have asked himself. Then I showed her my desk, which was in the middle of the room, equidistant to the walls, I pointed out, casually tossing off my new vocabulary word. There at the front of the desk stood my golden spelling-bee trophy.

When it was time for her to go, I accompanied her back to the car, past my regular four-square group out on the playground, past the courtyard where a papier-mch version of Quetzalcoatl was under construction, past the girls room and the principals office and into the parking lot.

She put her hand inside her purse and I heard the jangle of keys. Instead of stiff with fear at the sound, I was calm and happy. I hugged her and held on. Im so proud of you, sweetie pie, she said. When she reached the car, she turned to look at me, rounded her lips, and sent a loud smooch into the air. And then she was gone.

We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wandering moon.

Oberon in William Shakespeare,
A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

W HENEVER I ARRIVE IN SAN DIEGO, THE FIRST THING I WANT TO do is leave. Its the sun, which shines without mercy. At the airport, Im surrounded by happy travelers streaming in from sun-deprived cities, their compasses set for the beach and SeaWorld. I want to stop them and ask if theyll take me home with themto Minneapolis or Des Moines, Seattle or Detroit. San Diego is stingy with its shade, and the ever-present sun makes me feel not lifted but low, unsure of my footing.

The summer sun, of course, is the worst, and today, in late August, its already relentlessly bright at 9:30 A.M. To my relief, Ive arrived with plans to stay no more than a few hours. Im on a mission. Ive flown to San Diego to help my mother carry out her plan to leave after nearly forty-five years.

A seasoned mover (some would say a compulsive one), Ive spent weeks helping my mother with the logistics, even recruited my favorite moving mana burly and jocular Irishman named Kieran, who specializes in transporting pianos but hauls around entire households, tooto drive his truck down from Northern California and collect my mothers possessions. And now its time for us to get on the road and start the drive to San Francisco.

I take a taxi from the airport to my mothers house, and when I arrive, Kieran and his crew are already there, loading the truck with the possessions my mother has chosen to bring with her. Among them are two pianosone Steinway grand and one Yamaha upright. I pull up just as Kieran and two of his guys are rolling out the stunning Steinway, my idea of perfection embodied in a single musical instrument.