If a measure of good art is its ability to evoke emotion from its viewer, then my mother is undoubtedly one of the greatest painters of all time. She painted an emotion I feel deep in my bones. One that took me years of self-reflection to articulate. One with which I still struggle to co-exist: the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, New York City tenements had stacked bedrooms. It was typical to hear an upstairs neighbor drop one shoe and then the other. Over time, the phrase became a metaphor for expecting an inevitable event. That’s hardly ominous. And yet we’ve all experienced this very specific and usually unsettling brand of anticipation.
It’s an unease I come by honestly, fine-tuned by my childhood traumas as the daughter of an alcoholic and drug addict, younger sister of a perennially suicidal bipolar brother, and now, as the mother to a son who was first diagnosed with a mood disorder at age 5.
This painting haunts me. I’m in awe of it and I don’t like how it makes me feel. Or what it makes me think. People purchase prints of it to display and I’d love to know what it evokes for them and how they can confront the visualization daily. Have they made peace with peace being out of reach?
During the years of my childhood when my mom urged us to honor shared custody agreements, the other shoe most often took the form of canceled plans, disappointing visitations, and jokes from my father that bordered on bullying.
Then, starting when I was around 11 until his eventual death by suicide four years ago, the other shoe was my brother’s manic or depressive episodes and the impact they had on my family. As a girl, I was often waiting for moments of unprovoked hostility, deceit, and manipulation. Even after we became estranged as adults, the shoe continued in the form of phone calls or texts from my mom detailing his latest mania-induced impulsivities or the consequences of his commitment to self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Eventually, the shoe came to represent only one thing — the inevitable-seeming phone call where I might learn that after years of attempting to end his own life, he did.
On November 26, 2019, that shoe dropped.
After decades of anticipating trauma, the feeling didn’t go away but it did become more dormant over time.
Until I became the mother of a son who, at only 10 years old, already struggles with his own mental health and self-worth, and who frequently expresses feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
Most days now it feels like I’m waiting for an entire DSW to drop from the sky. I see my mother’s painting through new layers of shared experiences and emotional complexities — not just through our mother-daughter dynamics, but as mothers of sons with mood disorders.
I think I might despise this painting. Still, I share it with friends and colleagues all the time, showing them pictures and gushing at how brilliantly my mom captured this sensation. It’s authentic to her lived experiences, cleverly conceived, executed with expert technical skill, and an absolute punch to the gut every time I see it.
