You always loved babies. Not to have but to see in the lobby or the mall or a restaurant. You’d bend over the carriage and look close, smiling wide into the tiny face. And You always loved getting them to respond, laugh, giggle, clutch your finger. The mothers, of course, ran the gamut—from tolerating your fawning to feeling uncomfortable about your close breathing on their child to beaming at the adoration that reflected on them.

I always waited, a little apart. Couldn’t deny the cuteness, miracle of tiny replication (or were we giant replications?), and usually the pleasant fragrance, even from my distance, of baby powder or lotion. But I was always very aware of the mother, usually impatient to get home, change the diaper, get supper on, put the kid in the tub, and finally grab a few moments for herself.

But I smiled, somewhat pasted-on, and asked the right questions: How old? What’s his/her name (hoping I got the gender right because you often couldn’t tell with the unisex rompers). And I was relieved when you finally straightened up and complimented the mother again so we could be on our way.

As we settled into our home, I began to see a thread. We took a sculpture from our previous place (another story, another novel) and placed it in front of the living room mantle. Replica, to be sure, and something I never would have chosen. On a rectangular base, a “gold” statue of a mother holding out a baby in her hands and cradling it. Both had spiky hair, and the mother’s hands were wound around the child’s body. Her head was inclined, looking at the child. From the materials—some kind of alloy—you couldn’t tell much about her expression, but from her rounded shoulders and cupping hands you knew she loved the child. The child’s eyes were closed and it seemed at peace, sleeping, I thought.

We could see the statute from anywhere in the living room and even passing by. You dusted the statue regularly and one day got the idea to polish it. I don’t know what you used—maybe Brasso. When you rubbed the mother’s shoulder a little, some of the gold came off. Under it was a dull gray metal. But, after you sighed, it didn’t stop you from leaving the statue in front of the mantle and staring at it for long moments.

I never liked that sculpture. Too literal and not aesthetic or graceful, despite the mother’s rather elegant hands.

You had a huge photograph, one of the animal ones you’d use for your seminars, mounting them on a white board in the front of the room. The animals were symbols of character traits your students should develop: tiger = strength, owl = proverbial wisdom, elephant = loyalty, compassion, empathy. You kept most of the photographs in a large portfolio except this one, where you put it up on the wall next to your desk.

It was of a lioness and her cub. The lioness holds the cub in her mouth as she walks towards the camera.

You often called my attention to this photograph, marveling at it, appreciating it, tracing the juncture of the mother’s mouth and baby’s hanging skin with your finger. It had a special meaning to you: the mother, in the only way this species knew, caring for child with ultimate attention. Completely absorbed, you’d gaze at that photo of the mother lion and her cub.

We had two other pictures. They came from my mother’s things, and she had apparently prized them, because I remember seeing them as you first entered her apartment.

In by-now greyed white frames with matte finish and protected by scratched glass, they were each about 12X12 and looked like they’d been drawn on paper bags, maybe with charcoal pencils. Both are of a mother (I always assumed) and child. Their skin is brown, only a few shades darker than the paper-bag background. In both, the mother is kneeling on what could be autumn leaves, suggestive of a meadow, and facing the child. Both are barefoot.

The mother is portly, with short, almost kinky dark hair, and wears a peasant blouse and shapeless skirt. The blouse is a light pink and the skirt blue, now faded with time. The little girl, with blonde straight hair, has on a short white smock. Standing, she comes up to the mother’s face.

In the first picture, the mother is smiling (a delicate line) and her left arm curves around the child’s back. Her right hand on the ground, she holds a brownish flower in her fist. The child faces her, and we can’t see her face, with arm stretched out. Her hand is on the mother’s neck. Their faces are very close, and it looks like their noses are touching.

In the second picture; that brownish flower is in the little girl’s fist and she’s reaching up and tickling her mother’s mouth with it. The mother again is kneeling, arms and knees on the ground with her eyes closed. She doesn’t seem to be smiling but her face is completely absorbed in the feeling of the flower on her lips. The girl’s head is raised, as if to aim perfectly for the mother’s mouth, and she’s smiling slightly, as if doing something impish. But the mother is accepting, looking like she’s fully enjoying the moment.

The two drawings perfectly balance each other, like the trading card sets of different-colored flowers and fairy-tale characters we used to have as kids. I was always fascinated by the matches—identical costumes, say, of princesses, but with different colors and details that perfectly complemented each other.

In these mother-and-child pictures, the similar coloring and setting tie them together, and yet the mood of each is different. The first shows mutual consuming affection and cherishing. The second shows a playfulness, a turn from the more serious mood: the child teases the mother, tickling her nose with that flower.

Where did they come from? I was consumed and turned them both over. On the backs of both is the same label: The name of a man with what appeared to be a shop or store in New York City, a phone number, and an address labeled “studio.” Tantalizing. I did an internet search and came up with nothing. The family name of the man was listed, Eastern European or Russian, but I could find nothing else that matched any of the details on the labels. Even the address on East 60th Street wasn’t listed—a condominium had supplanted the whole block.

How old were these pictures? I found them in my mother’s house in the mid-1980s. How long had she had them? Maybe thirty years. So they must be at least sixty years old.

I often wondered why my mother had them, how she got them, and, herself a lifelong artist, whether she’d drawn them and had this Russian man frame them. Were they of models from an art class, people she saw in the park, her mental pictures of her and me? Whatever their genesis, they’d spoken to her of mother love and mother-child delight.

And You loved them too. Like your fascination with the statue and lioness photo, you’d stand in front of them for long moments, arms behind your back, slightly rocking, and stare and stare. What did You see?

I knew what I saw. A mother’s absolute delight in her child, its existence, its new-found mobility and semi-independence, the child’s equally obvious delight in running into the mother’s arms. Nothing else existing at that moment. Only the mother and child and their love.

Isn’t this what everyone wants? A mother’s total, uncompromising, undivided attention? For as long as possible, even though, for most of our lives, it’s either never or never enough. Not diluted with siblings, household chores, husband, friends, outside activities. But constant and only.

Isn’t this what You wanted, craved? And never really had it, from what I could glean. Your mother at age 18 whisked from her cozy little Greek island village by a strange and cigar-smelling man 20 years her senior from Athens, a portly man already balding who laughed too loudly. He paid her parents a handsome sum, choosing her among her sisters because she was shy and had, he could see, good hips. He was going to “Amer-i-kee”—rolling the r—to make his fortune and had, he told her parents immediately, an impressive bankroll to open a diner near his cousin’s in Astoria—another dramatic r roll.Her parents were duly impressed and knew her prospects were dim in the limited island, of which more young men every day were leaving for the lucrative islands and countries.

She was the youngest, after all, and by custom her three sisters were to be married first.

So they jumped at the offer, thanking the Father, Son, and St. Philomena.

They were married in the village, with everyone attending, and they honeymooned in Paris, many cuts above what your mother’s family expected. Your father, the relative cosmopolitan, wanted to see “lights.” Then they came to America, her dowry carefully packed in a large trunk arriving a day after they settled in Astoria, New York, where his cousin had rented a house for him.

She was pregnant immediately. And struggling to acclimate. Not knowing the language, not used to the paved streets, having to shop in the strange impersonal markets where she knew none of the merchants, like in her village market, and where the overabundance and endless tunnel-like aisles made her dizzy.

She had a little solace—he took her to the local Greek Orthodox church, where the women welcomed her. And his cousin’s wife, with her brood of five children, took her under her wing and showed her how to navigate the market aisles.

But she was pregnant and scared. And missed her home, her parents, her sisters, the people in her village and her lifelong familiarity. Years later, one of your aunts, who came to the U.S. several years later with her new husband, told me that your mother had a very difficult birth with you and was depressed most of her pregnancy and into your second year.

She was absent when you needed her most. And all the representations couldn’t quite make up for it.

Watching you stare at the photos and the pictures, and hearing about your mother’s struggles from your aunt, I tried to fill the need. Buying cozy bedspreads and the living room throw. Making warm attractive meals. Ironing your shirts. Listening to you and nodding. Reaching for your hand at random. Even, sometimes in bed, cradling you in my arms.

Eventually, you told me how much you appreciated me and everything I did. But something was still missing. No one, no object or meal or embrace, could fill the hole. It was too big.

So, I lived with it, as You did. Often, we pretended it didn’t exist, caught up as we were in our work and gym and going out with friends and business acquaintances. But after tv, when we went to bed I felt it, your yearning, your emptiness, the hole.

Toward the end, you didn’t even want me to cook for you. And just sat in your chair, dozing and starting awake. I sometimes asked you what you were thinking, and you said, “Nothing.” But I knew.

You were thinking about your mother, and how you’d see her soon and bask and drink in, finally, her embrace, now endless and unimpeded.

And now? Are You with her, now fulfilled in the mother-love? I hope so.

I sit on the living room couch and pull up the throw around me. 

– Noelle Sterne