The Seasons of My Mother
Written and Narrated By: Marcia Gay Harden
Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
Lovely, lyrical, just wondered when the heck her Mom was gonna get her Meeee Time…?
I love Marcia Gay Harden, think she’s a stellar actress, roundly applauded when she won her Oscar, blah blah Love her blah. And now I know she writes really, really well also…
It’s just that, over here we’d been prepping wildly for Mother’s Day, and The Seasons of My Mother just totally seemed like an audiobook SURE to strike a grand chord for the day: A mother-daughter relationship? Check. A look at aging Moms and roles switching? Check. A look at who her Mom was before Alzheimer’s and an homage to her? Check, right?
Uhm… welllll, nooooot quiiiiite…
It’s cuz of this, see: This book, while it has lovely writing, is vaaaaastly and mooooostly about Marcia Gay Harden, her childhood where her mother was kinda sorta just an essence who did wonderful things; her beginning as an actress where her mother was steadfast in her belief that Marcia should at least TRY to audition (And Marcia tells us, at length, about her lack of singing abilities which she thought hindered her role choices/chances… no, seriously, at length and complete with anecdotes about various humiliations her warbling voice caused); her fraught love life before she met and married Thaddeus and how her mother applauded the man as thoughtful; and DEFinitely her marriage falling apart and divorce was imminent, how she fell apart during and afterward… and how her mother held her when she cried.
Niiiiiice… Mom As An Afterthought.
By the way, Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s too, and there’s scant little about that also. It’s mostly about how the disease has affected Marcia with feeling heartbroken and like Mom is disappearing, stories are disappearing, rituals and traditions are disappearing… or would be, yes, were it NOT for… wait for it… MARCIA carrying those things on for her own kids. Marcia saves the day (And about here, I feel I should invoke that DATED show “The Brady Bunch” where Jan whines, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Yup, dude I’m THAT old!).
There’s a precious lot about the art of Japanese flower arranging and how her Mom found herself, found her voice, found her self-esteem from it, holding a grand place in societies for Ikebana and how she delighted in teaching it to pretty much anyone who desired to learn. And we discover that, pre-diagnosis, Mom reeeeally wanted to have a show where she visited gardens, sometimes of the rich and famous, and then ending each episode with a lesson on flower arranging. As this was after her husband, Marcia’s dad, died, it was seen as a great boon and blessing that Mom was continuing, moving forward despite her grief. But then it’s all shelved when even more tragedy strikes the family. Harden takes great pride in her brother and in how brave and dedicated he’s been to move forward in his life after this tragedy.
But she can’t quiiiiiite seem to get there herself when she’s visited by the greatest tragedy that could EVER befall someone… >gasp< a divorce. She WILL tell all and sundry about it, strangers, acquaintances, people at the ER, tears streaming down her perpetually puffy face as she’s perpetually crying crying crying about it. Move forward? Not on your life. Wellll, maybe if she can hunker down for, like, EVER, and THEN she’ll take her kids on trips to kinda sorta get her mind off stuff.
How many of us have the financial wherewithal to jaunt off when life hits the fan?
Isn’t this supposed to be about your Mom?!?
There are some good stories about the family’s life (The family of Harden’s childhood) whenst they’d lived in Japan as Dad was in the Navy, and she DOES let us know that it was here, with Dad perpetually away, Mom raising five children on her own, that Mom finds herself through Ikebana.
But really? What we get is Harden becoming so At-One with the culture that she’s able to sing and dance with the best of any Japanese child, and she sings to us her song that she’d found so satisfying.
By the way, mesmerizing voice Harden has, and she was the perfect person to narrate her own work. And there’s a hiLARious bit where she and Mom are in the grocery store and a woman tells a very pregnant Marcia that oil should be worked about the vagina, Vagina, VAGINA, she screams as tho’ the pair are deaf. But really (again?), then we get the hard birth, the C-section… but Mom is credited for having snapped pictures and nuzzled her new granddaughter.
Ho-hum. There are a few here and theres about Mom’s illness where Mom seems to still be pretty engaged, so if you’ve a family member with any of the forms of dementia you will NOT find any useful information on how to traverse the disease with dignity, and you will NOT find anything that’ll make you feel better cuz chances are your own family member will be waaaaay more into a decline than Harden’s mother is. And by the way? Harden’s family has the means to keep Mom in her own home, providing caretakers, and as Alzheimer’s is a sloooooow illness, it’s okay to take the kids to Hawaii rather than peek in on Mom.
I know I know I know! UNFAIR! My husband and I did NOT spend all our time visiting his Mom in the care facility (EsPECially when Covid hit), and we did manage to keep to a new vastly altered routine. But the very way you think is altered when it strikes your family. Ms. Harden? Uhm, nah, she seems to be doing just fine, trekking off to Hawaii, mourning her failed marriage more than her Mom’s decline.
Jeez, I’m still looking for a good Mom’s Day book that’ll celebrate the Mom-Daughter bond, which was sweet when Harden wrote about it. It’s just that she didn’t much… Boooooo!
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