The Glue

In August 2009, I road-tripped across the Midwest to Chicago suburbia where I was about to start my freshman year of college. My parents both insisted on making the trip to help settle me in and see me off into the next chapter of life.

As I’m sure most incoming frosh are, I was swirling with emotions. Layered on top of standard excitement and nervousness, was this feeling that I had to reinvent myself. Not in the sense that I wasn’t popular and desperately needed to do something about it, but rather an earnestness that I needed to become a college kid. After all, I’d only ever been a high school kid before. In my mind’s eye, being a college kid meant doing things like using a messenger bag and wearing a jacket like Chris Martin from Coldplay.

But then I hesitated. If I was doing things I’d never done before in a new place with unfamiliar people, was I still… Me?

I was arranging my new dorm room and wrestling with this concept when I noticed the wood glue stains on my hands.

Each summer in high school, I worked with a local business owner who had both a construction company and a tree service. That last summer before college, we spent the majority of our time building a chicken shed from the ground up and there was a lot of wood glue involved. As it turns out, unless you really try to get it out, wood glue doesn’t wear off skin until about a week later.

Then a thought occurred to me.

“Hey, mom? Isn’t it interesting how, even though I’m here at college and about to do all this new stuff, this stupid glue is still all over me? Like, that’s what I was doing and who I was a week ago and it’s still… With me. If that makes sense.”

“Yes, I love that! You’re changing, but you’re still you. It’s a great concept, you should totally write about it.”

I never did.

I did, however, start a daily blog to chronicle my first year in college (okay, my first semester, it fizzled out). A few years later, I bookended the chapter of life by writing another blog during my final semester of college. Even after I graduated, I voluntarily wrote some more. For as much as I wrote, I couldn’t quite figure out how to write about the glue.

Ten years later, in August 2019, mom died of complications of MDS. And I scrambled to find the glue.

A lot of life had happened since freshman year of college, but even still, that concept would make sporadic resurgences. Much of it was wrapped up in moments of change and I’d think about that glue, always being my bridge.

In the days that followed, the only thing I wanted was a bridge. Something, anything, to connect me back to mom.

At my parents’ house, there was endless glue, both big and small. I caught myself even wistfully thinking about the hand soap in the bathroom, knowing it was a purchase she had made. I wondered if it was one of her favorite scents.

When we cleaned out her office at the university where she taught, I dumped out her shredder into the waste bin. I stared at it for a moment and realized, however long ago it was, she was the last person to touch that paper. I ran my hands through the clippings. It was literal trash, but it was glue.

After I got home, I rummaged through my things and found old birthday cards with her handwritten notes in them. That glue hit differently because it was almost like opening a line of communication. Even though she had written the cards years before, she could still re-say the words each time I read them.

Before long, I started to worry about the ephemerality of the glue I was seeking. It was all just inanimate stuff that I gave merit. And just like the glue on my hands, I knew it would disappear. I needed something that would last.

It probably took me longer than it should have to realize that it’s me. It’s Morgan and Stefan. It’s dad. It’s Rachel and Megan. It’s everyone she had a lasting impact on and it’s all of the things we can actively do to resurface the glue.

Sure, I thought about my and my brothers’ DNA: an indisputable, scientific glue that will always bind us to our mom. But as lovely as that sentiment is, it doesn’t present opportunities to connect with her. Thankfully the real glue isn’t microscopic.

I see the real glue in my family when they’re sarcastic and witty, self-deprecation included. Sure, the jokes may be original, but it’s usually mom’s sense of humor.

If we ever seem a little too laissez-faire, I promise it’s not indifference. She just showed us that life has its ups and downs and you can’t get too caught up in either.

Any time I treat myself to an Almond Joy or celebrate my birthday with German chocolate cake, they’ll taste like glue. Yes, it’s an atrocious analogy, but it’s really just the coconut.

I’ll be awash with glue every time I sit near the ocean with my toes in the sand or curl up with a good book — bonus points for doing both at the same time.

And she’ll be there every time I write, something she encouraged me to do often.

Okay, mom.

Sorry I procrastinated, but I think I’m ready to write about the glue now.