You Have Exhausted the Mirror, Mariam!
Today we had to write about somebody we know really well and the phrases they are using most often. I chose my own mother. She’s someone who did not even had to utter a word, but simply raise her eyebrows or purse her lips and I knew I was in trouble. I even looked for the signs on her face when I was on my best of behaviors. Her glares were equally expressive, appellative and referential, too. I’m not that sure about poetic. Though she herself used to be a poet, as I’ve been told many times.
When I was little, if you told me my mother had ever written poems in her life, I’d say you were on drugs, or think it to myself at least. I never imagined her to be able to be goofy or vulnerable or foolish – things I considered all the poets had to be a little bit. I could not imagine her ever blushing for boys or giggling extra hard, if they were following her around. I could not see past the glare and the raised eyebrows and the pursed lips. But enough about silent treatments, let’s jump to the phrases she liked to use. I’ll pick the one she used to chant religiously when I was growing up and liking myself maybe a little bit more than was healthy. You have exhausted the mirror, Mariam, – she’d say and continue with cleaning, cooking and washing, whining in between that all she was wanted for in this house was a servant, then growing restless when she was resting and starting cleaning, cooking and washing all over again without anyone asking her to. She also put great care that I was reminded each time how our neighbor’s relative’s friend’s daughter was exactly my age and could not stop doing the chores, she enjoyed them so much! I used to say to her I was sorry I was not this golden-haired princess who enjoyed chirping and sweeping floors. Even now whenever she visits my apartment, she loves to remind, if I cleaned it more, maybe I would not have such allergies. Maybe there’s a grain of truth in there. I don’t know, I’d like to think myself to be Tbilisi’s own Holly Golightly (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s), even as there are no wealthy men taking me to clubs and restaurants as of now. Mother says when I get married, my husband will either kick me out straight away or hire me a bunch of servants, depending on the thickness of his pocket and patience. How is it any of my fault that my genetic make-up missed the obsession with tidiness, I do not know. Mother starts cleaning up the table when we are only half way through the meal and can detect a crumble from a mile away, but no, why would she bother to graciously pass it on to her daughter, like, her beautiful height and breasts, which, of course, I did not inherit either. I guess good stuff just aren’t for free and I’ll have to have my husband pay for breast implants, Louis Vuitton heels and maids!
Just kidding.
With love,
Aspiring spinster and writer,
Mariam G.
Mariam Gurgenishvili
My name is Mariam, like any other girl’s, born during the 90’s in Georgia. In my case, it was 1996 and late May – a month of clear, balmy days and enthusiastic, newly awakened mosquitos. Ever since then, each and every birthday I had to listen to the toasts of my father’s friends about Jesus and Mary, how I was a bearer of the greatest name and had to lead an equally great, worthy-of-the-name life. Often mid-toasts I felt like asking them to focus a little on me, too.
Despite all the birthday wishes, ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a witch and a writer. Perhaps it began at the gates of Villa Villekula where I met Pippi who could do anything or in the magical forest where the little witch lived with her talking raven, Abraxas. In any case, I started daydreaming and writing around eight years old and still have tons of finished and unfinished stories from my primary school years, partly inspired by Colombian soap operas I watched with my grandmothers and partly by the tales of Hans Christian Andersen I read every night. I wrote all those stories during my gym classes where some part of my body was always hurting and I needed to be invalided out and carried inside a school library. I used to sit there gleefully and write about John Smiths and Bridget Watsons who drank Gin and Tonic and ate pineapple cubes with sugar coating and called one another “darling” and “beloved”, instead of “dumbhead” and “scumbag”, like the women in my neighborhood called their husbands. I was seventeen years old when I took a part in an exchange program and went to the United States to study there for a year. I have met many John Smiths and Bridget Watsons I had been admiring from books and films before, I tried pineapple cubes too for the first time (too young for Gin & Tonic), got called “darling”, “sweetie” and “love” and had a beautiful experience overall, but my deepest feelings, impressions and memories still belonged to the people I had left behind. People who had never tried pineapple cubes or Gin & Tonic in their lives. Those were the people that raised me and the people I grew up with. My first novel “Pearls”, which debuted in 2021, is a collection of those childhood impressions and memories, not only mine, but also of my mother and my grandmothers. It is mainly inspired by the women in my family and is about sisterhood and survival during the 90’s Georgia. I want to keep telling stories of young girls and women who were silenced, who were made to believe they were unimportant, so that those stories can bring them back their voices and their strength to make big old mountains tremble like tiny baby leaves. For me to continue writing, especially about the topics that require both courage and delicacy, I will have to grow, learn and evolve myself and I am deeply grateful that I am given the chance to do so.
