A Star In My Eyes

Mom was not a movie star, but she could have passed as Elizabeth Taylor in her younger years. Her glass green eyes and black curly hair framed an exquisite beauty-marked face along with an air of mystery.

Mavis laid out lavish dinner parties to serve my father’s corporate climbing. She painted made-to-order murals on our bedroom walls and I never once had a boring birthday cake!

She also took part in running Blue Bird groups, a kind of Girl Scouts for younger girls, and although I was never thrilled about that—as she always knew what she was getting for Mother’s Day—it was there, under her tuition, that I learned how to decoupage at the tender age of seven. You wouldn’t think that was a necessary life skill unless you lived in my house where she had decoupaged the entire kitchen with mouth-watering photos of food. None of my other friends had a kitchen as delicious as ours.

Besides dutifully fulfilling the domestic demands of the Perfect Suburban Housewife, Mavis was an accomplished commercial illustrator. She knew she was an artist right from the age of five, enjoying a four decade career. She moved from technical drawing of the plumbing system on the SS United States to being a sought after fashion illustrator, and finally finishing by drawing food and package design using a computer.

For most of my childhood, she mainly illustrated fashion designs for catalogues to earn the money that would fulfil her dreams and send us all to Europe one long summer. That escapade began my lifelong connection with England. I was six years old sitting on the Cinderella seat in a big black taxi watching London clip by in the rain and I just knew I would live there someday. Fast forward twenty years later, and I found myself married to a Brit and living in Yorkshire, of all possible places!

She inspired my paternal grandmother to learn to paint and they became great painting buddies. Granny Z, as we called her, traveled with us and together they would haul their easels and paints into fields to paint castles and graveyards, my grandmother decked out in all her garish costume jewellery and sparkly shoes. I definitely inherited her crow-like love for bling, and her collection of vintage hats from the 1920s.

I loved entering Mom’s studio, a small room off our living room crammed with filing cabinets, a big old polished wooden desk, her drawing board, and stacks and stacks of paper and rolls of canvas. I remember most vividly a life-size photograph of Twiggy on the ceiling. My eyes went to hers immediately as though she somehow governed who could and could not come into my mother’s creative space. Her sultry model eyes peered down at me from under her heavy black liner, while I'd perch on a stool to watch my mother paint. Mavis wore a white lab coat as her apron and often rubbed her brushes on it to remove the excess turpentine or remains of paint. That in itself was a piece of art, smelling of a mix of my mother’s perfume and creative passion.

Often, between illustration freelance jobs, Mom would have an oil painting on the go, the graph-lined photo of whatever she was painting clipped to the edge of the easel. This was where I felt the most connected to her. Mostly we would share space in silence and I would notice her holding her breath when painting delicate strokes. I would hold my breath too, in solidarity. Then, I would breathe deeply again, inhaling the wonderful collage of turpentine and oils, lost in the swirls of her colours. I loved watching her mix a collection of different paints to create an entirely new shade that didn’t come out of a tube. She was a true chemist when it came to mixing paint. I’ve always been her greatest fan. Her artwork graces my walls to this day.

During one of her visits to me in England, we were making cookies and she asked me where my mixer was. I handed her a wooden spoon. She told me I had become so unspoiled and promptly went out to buy me an electric one. On her next visit, once again in the kitchen, she asked me for the mixer that she now knew I had. I smiled and said, “Hold on!” I ran upstairs and returned with said mixer totally splattered in paint. “You know all those times I rang you to ask you how to mix the most perfect shade of purple”, I reminded her. She faked her exasperation. She understood.

And she was right, of course. I really did need an electric mixer, but not for making cookies. Even over the phone she could create the perfect recipe of colours to make exactly the right shade I wanted.

Years later her studio expanded into what used to be our playroom, in the basement. I would stand at her desk, again holding my breath with her, while she water-coloured between her carefully sketched India ink lines. It was always easiest to be with my mother when she was in her flow, revelling in her passion.

But she wasn't happy, and she felt far from being the perfect painter. She had a sign pinned to the wall next to her drawing board—a tall, giant antique slanted desk—that read BE POSITIVE! I wasn’t quite sure why she had that there, as I felt like that was the furthest thing from her volatile personality. But subliminally the message stuck and interestingly I teach mindset for a living! Thanks, Mom.

When I wasn’t watching her transform a blank piece of paper, I was witnessing her purposeful use of her lipstick brush painting on a preferred outline of her lips and then filling in those lines too. Wow, she was glamorous! She definitely knew how to put it all together for a dazzling finished look. She was passionate, sexy, charming and smart. She knew how to use her feminine wiles to get what she wanted, and I modelled that dance effortlessly.

Before meeting my father she was a professional water skier, topping human pyramids and dodging playful dolphins. One summer when I was in Montana with friends I finally learned to water ski at fifteen years old, and she coached me over the phone and even taught me how to drop a ski to go slalom. It was never a dull moment with my mother, she brought wisdom, hilarity or drama to every occasion.

Mavis taught me how to see from an artist's perspective. And what a gift that was. She consistently pointed out colour, shape and tone to me, showing me shadow and light, structure, perspective and movement. It means that all my precious memories, captured through the lens of a camera, are framed with her sense of composition. She was an awesome teacher. She taught me how to notice the tiniest of details and to appreciate visual beauty.

When out shopping for clothes she would make my sister and I feel the fabrics and scrunch them to see if they wrinkled. Was it natural or synthetic, was it itchy or soft? Did the colours clash, did the cut of the fabric work for the garment? At the time, of course, I thought she was being picky and difficult, but I played along because shopping always meant new stuff! I was a born girly girl, like my mother, and had I been allowed to do so, I would have happily climbed trees in my pink frilly dresses too. To this day I still scrunch fabric on clothes whenever I am shopping.

I followed her fashion sense and at thirteen wore the same size shoes as she did and got her permission to wear her groovy red high heeled sneakers to school. Unfortunately, the other kids didn’t welcome self expression or being unique and I was bullied for two years because of it. I was always ahead of my time at school where fashion was concerned. Mavis received the clothes from Europe six months before they’d come out in the magazines, I would model them for her and she would illustrate. I thought it was a great exchange, I got to keep all the clothes and I would wear them to school, despite the heckling. I took the stance of being unique and simply retorted with, “You’ll see, you’ll be wearing it too in six months time!” But by the time the fashions came out, I was already wearing the future stuff and was forgotten. So I was hardly a trend setter, but I learned to be my own person and not care what others thought. I also enjoyed a year of modelling in New York when I was seventeen, all thanks to her stunning drawings of me wearing Rally Klad Scottish wool kilts.

At some point in my thirties, I started calling my mother Mavis-Ann in my best Southern accent, not because her middle name was Ann, but because I thought Southern Belles should have double-barrelled names. I made it up. She laughed so hard that it became a running joke and, so it stuck. There’s nothing more satisfying than making your mother laugh. I can see it now with my own sons’ thorough enjoyment when they make me snort in hysterics.

She witnessed me birthing my first baby in the bathtub in admissions at Airedale Hospital. She photographed the experience through her tears. Things had changed a lot in 29 years since I came flying out of her on a trolley on the way to delivery. It was an honour to have my mother experience me becoming a mother for the first time. She too felt honoured for the invitation.

Mom was not an easy person to live with and she wouldn’t argue with that. She grew up in Virginia during the Depression with a mother who loved plants more than people and left Mavis to care for her nine years younger baby brother while her elder sister looked after the house. She adored her absentee, alcoholic father who was covered with his own artwork: blue ink tattoos of naked women and anchors, as if taken right out of a comic book. He favoured my mother and passed on his own free-spirit to her.

My parents divorced when I was eleven and Mom drowned out her pain in a bottle of Scotch. She changed from an elegant brunette to a painfully skinny, bleached blonde, smoking Mom. I loved her and hated her during those challenging years. I would have been rebellious if she had given me anything to rebel about but wisely she chose to befriend me as a teenager. We swung between screaming rows and the most hilarious mother-daughter bonding experiences. We would be waiting for the doors of Lord and Taylor to open and literally spend the entire day there shopping, sharing and having lunch. It was only when she drank too much that her depression surfaced, or worse, if people were around she would become embarrassingly loud and showy. She would make up stories about events that never happened and rope me into her lies. Because I knew the sober and authentic version of my mother, witnessing her pretence didn’t sit well with me.

The things I hated about her, though, provided some of my best lessons in life. That she never apologised, not once, for anything, made me acutely aware of how important it is to own your own stuff and make amends. She was a master manipulator and caused a massive rift between my sister and me until we realised how important it was to check in with each other before believing one of her stories. As a result, it cemented my adult relationship with my sister, who is absolutely my closest friend, as vastly different as we both are.

Because she was always living in the shadow of my father—a larger than life personality—she never got to radiate her own brilliance. Everyone else could see her light except her. I tried to openly smoke cigarettes to get her to stop, but she knew what I was doing. Luckily, I hated it with a passion.

She eventually joined AA, which literally saved her life and our relationship. She shared as much of it with me as she could and I witnessed her spiritual awakening. This fascinated me. Now here was a mother I could seriously relate to! We discussed everything from ghosts to God and became each other’s most intimate confidantes.

In my late thirties, when I was having my own spiritual awakening, she was ever-present on the other end of the phone to answer all of my questions as I put together the puzzle pieces of my childhood “knowings”. She was unconditionally supportive of both my sister and me. I made sure that when I became a mother, I would not make her same mistakes, but would follow her lead and support my children unconditionally.

She loved hearing about all of my experiences and travels and would start every conversation with, “Where are you this time?” She allowed me to work with her when I was learning to work with energy healing and told me things she had never before shared with anyone.

I would always ask questions about her life when she was my age. I was truly interested in who she was and that was mirrored back to me. She never imposed her choices on me, instead, letting me find out things for myself.

Having kicked the alcohol habit, she also managed to stop smoking. In AA she told me that some of the members said they were “grateful alcoholics” because of becoming sober and finally facing all of their demons and truly healing. I channelled that knowledge into my own gratitude for her addiction because during some low years in my early twenties, I noticed a gallon bottle of wine diminishing quickly and it wasn’t my roommate who was drinking it! I scared myself and re-corked it. Would I have been aware enough to do that if I hadn’t experienced my mother unravelling? I’m grateful I never had to find out.

It’s not always the good and beautiful things about someone that teaches you the most important lessons about yourself. She was bitter about my father leaving her and year after year I just kept chipping away to help her heal all of that. I learned the fine art of tough love. Because my parents weren’t great at communicating clearly with each other, or with us, I made it my mission to drag information out of my mother and get her to open up. As a result, clear communication is one of my biggest strengths. Being determined to understand my parents, and heal my irrational childhood perceptions, I dove into therapy, studying to become a psychotherapist. That led me on a journey of self-discovery, eventually resulting in my own practice as a spiritual coach, healer and therapist.

The nicest thing she ever said to me was, “Thanks for doing all the work for both of us. We wouldn’t have this amazing relationship if it wasn’t for you never giving up on me.” I could only do that because she never gave up on me. I could share the darkest parts of my soul with her, and she would listen, holding space as though it was her entire higher purpose in life.

When she was dying I asked her if there was any unfinished business between us, so we wouldn’t have to come back and do this all over again. I knew she believed in reincarnation as we had discussed it many times. She adamantly said, “We are SO CLEAR!” Then I told her to “stay out of my body” when she died, as sometimes people’s spirits can zip into another human to keep an eye on them. She didn’t find this a strange concept any longer as she was accustomed to my diverse shamanic energy healing experiences. Mom said, “Honey, it’s too exhausting to even think about being in your body!” I also insisted she stay out of everyone else’s too, and just allow herself to peacefully cross over. Breathe out, Mom.

She had a living will and it stated that I could work shamanically on her in the hospital, burning Palo Santo wood and using my rattles to help her cross over. She respected my path of shamanism. She honoured me and together we healed a lifelong tumultuous relationship.

I think of her and miss her every single day. I know she is with me though because I can feel her long red nails lightly caressing the outside of my ear like she used to do when I was a young child. I can hear her Southern drawl say, “Well, Shannon…” her go-to exclamation whenever I surprised her. I am acutely aware that whenever I do something incredibly silly and laugh at myself, like forgetting to put nuts in the nut loaf, or mixing up my words, that she is right there with me. It’s comforting to know that in spirit I’m still making her laugh. She bossed it.