“Embalming Mom” Annotation

Author: Janet Burroway

Important Vocabulary: Taut. Stretched or pulled tight; not slack. Eyelet. A small round hole in leather or cloth for threading a lace, string, or rope through. Naugahyde. An artificial material designed to resemble leather, made from fabric coated with rubber or vinyl resin. Oleander. A poisonous evergreen Old World shrub that is widely grown in warm countries for its clusters of white, pink, or red flowers. Corrugation. A ridge or groove of a surface that has been corrugated. Plaint. A complaint; a lamentation. Pushmi-pullyu. A fictional animal with two heads at opposing ends of its body, in Hugh Lofting’s “The Story of Doctor Dolittle”. A person who behaves in a conflicting or contradictory manner. Mottle. Mark with spots or smears of color.

Questions: How do the other essays in Burroway’s collection depict her mother?

Notable Quotes: “But I told him safety is not the point; the point is feeling safe.” “The pansies on the ironing board I remember wearing in the sandbox under the oleanders before I started school, which means that my mother is about thirty-five. I am forty-five and three months by the calendar on the window sill to the left of my typewriter.” “I can see this though her back is to me, and I can see the sharp shadow of the wingblades underneath the cotton, the bones she has never seen. I cannot see her face.” “Nobody knows better than I do how hard it is to make words say what you mean. But it’s taken me all these years to know it was just as hard for you.” “I don’t know how they do this, but everybody says it is an art. Everybody says they have done a splendid job. They have caught her exactly, everybody says.”

Initial Reactions: I have never so intensely related to a piece of literature. Even before the author described the scenario, I knew that her mother was carefully laid, carefully observed. Her description of disappeared pores and a perfectly and expertly ironed face is obvious for the situation, even before mention of a coffin. Have you ever looked at someone after they have had strange makeup that isn’t actually makeup caked onto them? It’s too thick for living skin. That’s why they don’t recommend that families do their loved ones makeup for an open-casket funeral, its much less like putting on makeup and much more like painting the face of a mannequin. And the final description the author gives of people saying they caught her exactly. What does that mean? Did you know her like I knew her? Did they also capture her faults? Or did they paint over those too?

How do you capture someone in writing? How do you show others who they were, or who they are? How do you consolidate an entire life into fourteen, fifty, one thousand or five thousand pages? Even if a book contained everything I did in my life, every thought I had, would you actually know me? Would you know her?