Way Back When

by Beverly Tjerngren

Pam let out a wistful sigh as she turned the page in the photo album she was leafing through. Looking at old family photos had become an almost-masochistic activity for her lately. She had spent countless hours poring over pictures of herself when she was young and hopeful and didn't owe her lustrous chestnut hair to a bottle, of Chris when he was energetic and athletic, before he worked fifteen-hour days and came home so exhausted that he had only enough energy left to eat and go to bed. And most of all, of Amanda. The gap-toothed, bright-eyed pre-schooler in ten-year-old pictures bore little resemblance to the sullen, smart-mouthed teenager who was currently sulking (did she do anything else these days?) behind the bedroom door she'd just slammed so hard it had shaken the windows.

Pam sighed again and moved to the kitchen counter to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee. She absent-mindedly stirred milk and sugar into her cup, letting her thoughts wander back to the days when she and Amanda hadn't constantly been at odds. She had been a charming little girl, with a clever mind and a ready laugh. Pam could still hear those delightful, breathless giggles that had been so much a part of her early years of motherhood. Now, she couldn't remember the last time she had heard Mandy laugh, or had laughed herself, for that matter.

Years ago, Pam's friends had often said how lucky she was that Amanda was so good-natured and easy-going, and illustrated that point with stories about their own kids that made Pam cringe. She had accepted the praise of her daughter graciously, and returned compliments about her friends' children, but always felt inwardly smug about her model child. In her kitchen now, Pam gave a rueful laugh and wondered, not for the first time, if her current maternal angst weren't some sort of cosmic payback for that early smugness.

When Amanda had entered junior high and seemed to transform almost overnight into a self-centered and sarcastic teenager, Pam had been no less than stunned. She took no consolation from her mother's reminders that Pam herself had been a trying adolescent and yet had managed to turn out okay. There was no comfort in her friends' commiseration and assurances that this new mother-daughter tension was perfectly normal. She just wanted her little girl back.

Returning to the dining room table with her coffee, Pam turned a page in the album she'd left lying open. She smiled at the image of an eight-year-old Mandy, grinning widely, wearing a too-big apron and covered in flour.

Once upon a time, Mandy had fancied herself quite a whiz in the kitchen and had aspired to be a world-class baker when she grew up. She and Pam had spent untold afternoons together in the kitchen, trying out cookbooks and concocting their own recipes. They had such fun then, talking and laughing while baking then sharing in the clean-up. The messes were legendary and those were the days before "helping out" was a foreign concept to Amanda. Finally, they'd sit together enjoying the treats they'd made (or, occasionally, collapsing in helpless giggles at the miserable, inedible failure of one of their "inventions").

Opposite the baking picture was a picture from Halloween of that same year. Amanda's head had always been turned by the frilly, "girlie" costumes--fairies, princesses, ballerinas--so it came as a surprise to Pam (not an entirely unwelcome surprise, as she had sometimes worried that her daughter might be a bit on the prissy side, but a surprise nonetheless) when she had announced that she would be a pirate that year. Pam had loved that costume, she remembered. The picture showed Mandy trying to look menacing with one eye covered by a black patch, a blue handkerchief tied over her hair, and a huge gold hoop poked through the blue cloth on one side (Pam had sworn that it looked exactly like a real earring). As if that beautiful face with the sparkly blue eyes (well, eye, in this case) could ever be menacing.

Pam browsed through several more pages of her daughter's childhood, recalling first days of school, birthday parties, Christmas mornings. One picture in particular caught her eye and she paused take a closer look at it. It had been taken two or three summers ago, when Amanda was eleven or twelve. She was sitting on the grass under the shade tree in the backyard, deep in conversation with Sally, the family's black Labrador. Neither girl nor dog appeared aware that they were being observed--their heads were bent close together and they looked to be exchanging intimate confidences. Sally was the only member of the family whose relationship with Amanda had remained unchanged, and Pam knew that if she opened her daughter's bedroom door now, she would find the two of them lying together on the bed, Sally listening patiently and sympathetically to Mandy's tales of woe.

Still gazing at the picture, Pam was struck anew by a longing for peace. Why did all the happy moments have to be filed neatly away in photo albums?

On impulse, she stood and walked toward her daughter's bedroom. She called out cheerfully, loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the closed door, "Hey, Mands, feel like baking some cookies with me?"