My Mama

In the landscape of my memories I have these beautiful, gentle fragments where I’m safe and warm in my yard, just a carefree young girl running around barefoot, playing in our irrigation ditch with tadpoles, water skippers and lively little snakes as they and the water rush and swish across my ankles. My little sister and I giggle as we put our jars in the water to catch our treasures, and the sounds swirl through the air like honey, cinnamon, dusty sunshine and magic. The aromatic grass is sweet and fresh to my senses, plush and velvety between my toes, and the summer breeze catches my hair beckoning a dance across my freckled nose. With every breath I soak it all in. I could live right here, basking in this moment forever. I run to the backdoor and mama is in the kitchen, fixing a pitcher of Kool-Aid. Red was always my favorite flavor. I guzzle down a glass then ask her to please stop what she’s doing and scratch my back, one of the sweetest most comforting feelings in my little world. I let my body fall gently over her lap, she lifts my shirt and uses her beautiful long, elegant nails to gently, softly caress my skin. Patterns of infinity figure eights, round and round. I breathe in deeply. It is hearth, home and all the pure love a mother is supposed to have for you, wrapped in one beautiful, fleeting glimpse of time. These were the things I held close, these quiet places I escaped to, that kept me safe when my world would shatter and the rug was pulled out from under my very existence. 

As Mother’s Day approaches I cannot help but think of my own mother. She was sensual, beautiful and completely broken. I always saw her as this force to be reckoned with, full of raw, open, confident energy and able to turn heads of anyone in the room or the block we lived on. But throughout my life with her I also witnessed the tragedy of her inability to find her own worthiness and continually seek it through external sources. When I was young we were close to her parents and our aunts, uncles and cousins and I remember my mama always saying that her sister Lois got all the looks. I couldn’t have been more confused by that, because my mother was a sexual goddess, stunning, alluring, and my aunt was mildly attractive at best. It was only later in my life that I came to realize that as a symptom. The tragic reality was that her abusive childhood tore away anything she possessed that would have helped her be a thriving, healthy adult with any kind of internal awareness, who could look in the mirror and see more than a reflection of self-loathing.

Mickey (she hated her given name Mildred) was a product of the stereotypical 1950’s and fought hard as a woman to be the perfect June Cleaver wife and mother. She and my father married young, made plans and began to build a life, where she took pride in being the ultimate cook, seamstress and housekeeper. Bright-eyed and full of dreams I imagine she thought this path would be her ticket away from all the pain she endured in her childhood at the hands of a wrath-filled, angry father. Stay the course…marriage, children, make your man happy and your life will be complete. But plans change. They had a daughter and a son and then my dad ended up in the State Penitentiary for three years. From everything I’ve been told my mother was the quintessential loyal wife during that time and took her children to see their dad every Sunday, donned in their church best, smiling as though life was sane. She taught my brother and sister about domestic talent, manners, cooking, and the art of religion. When Loren, my dad, finally got out and came home they tried to work on reconnecting their marriage and decided to have me. I was born in December of 1960 and as most ‘save the marriage’ babies go, it wasn’t enough. My dad decided he didn’t want any of it, had an affair and left our mom for another woman. He never looked back. All of these recollections are from stories I’ve been told but never heard from my mother’s mouth. Apparently she had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide after my dad left her alone with us and ended up in a mental hospital where she was treated with the very popular and on trend ‘shock’ therapy. I’m sure they patted her on the head, told her she was fine and sent her home to figure out how the fuck she was going to raise three children by herself with no skills, and no help from my dad ever again. I don’t know who raised me during that time in between, after my mama was found half bloodied on the bathroom floor, but I’m assuming it was my grandparents. It was in their arms I felt the most love and acceptance I have ever experienced in my life, and it would be fleeting because eventually my beloved grandma died of cancer. 

My mama remarried quickly, had two more daughters and things just spiraled from there. Whatever hands-on parenting she had started with slowly diminished as her pain took over. A husband who wouldn’t work turned into relocating frequently, then divorce and a revolving door of random men, married and single, recklessness, neglect and broken dreams. She forged ahead, as society told her to, her pain quieted by expectations that didn’t serve her.

Eventually that pain would play out in our lives, the five children that she was willing to raise but never really knew how to love. Five marriages, alcoholism masqueraded as migraines because that was socially acceptable, cheating the welfare system and completely resigning herself to having no identity of her own became her coping skills. I do give her credit for staying because I’m not sure how she got out of bed every day. 

As we got older my brother did everything attention seeking and illegal he could to get out of that house, and I was devastated since he had been my only male role model. There was a moment in time before the ugly stench of heroin, when he was an intrinsically good and decent man. There will always be a part of me that sees him as my hero. My older sister, who felt like my only friend, married early and left as well, anything to escape the pain of the depravity we lived in. I was alone in the world. And I knew it. 

My mother recognized in me at a very early age an undeniable resilience. I was different from my sisters and brother because I had fight, and consequently there was a point when she subconsciously passed on her role to me. I was constantly being told to put my own feelings aside, to get out of my ‘mood’ that I had every right to feel since I was being molested, neglected and beaten. I was marginalized, expected to lead, to show up. No matter what. I would be the responsible one for my two younger sisters, whom I adored and was desperate to protect. I took the brunt for every unresolved childhood trauma my mother ever suffered and could not acknowledge. I was her Gatekeeper. A task I would have happily taken if I thought it could heal her, but I was really given no choice.

In my search for understanding and healing I’ve learned to see the fractures that created my mother as a whole, from all her beauty and grace to the ugliness she unleashed on us. I don’t like to blame it on her and I certainly recognize where the responsibility lies for what we went through. It taught me the biggest lesson of my life. When we are unwilling or unable to heal our own brokenness, when we are content with our comfortable pain of unfinished trauma it becomes more important than the welfare of those we love. It is then that we consent to a life of abusing and minimizing others. Our own unresolved issues will always inform all our other relationships and bleed onto innocent people if we do not do the work to mend. There is no escaping that. 

I walk a tightrope of looking back and living in the moment, but one I have learned to navigate without fear or pain. My mind floats through the past, lingering above the memories, realizing that those experiences were all there to teach me and shape me into the person I am to this day. 

My mother wasn’t a bad person, she was simply lost in a sea of self doubt, taught to perceive her own identity as invalid and undeserving, imprinted on her soul like a tattoo. She was always looking for meaning and purpose outside of herself. Maybe that’s where I came to realize its hollow truth and sought for something deeper. 

Mama was gracious in many ways. She instilled a love for music in me. I will forever remember how calming it was to her, and how, without realizing the depth of its meaning, I could almost see it filling in the cracks of her broken existence. My sisters and I would stand around singing, harmonizing every kind of old country song ever written, mama’s favorite gospel songs and some of the classics from the 50s and 60s. She would record us on a reel-to-reel tape player and we felt like movie stars. Her favorite songs would come on the radio and she would dance in the kitchen, lovely and graceful, lost in a carefree world that I wished she could carry over into her real life. She loved Christmas and always made it special. She taught me respect for my elders and to leave things better than I found them. Those times were a serene and safe place, one that violence, cruelty and dysfunction couldn’t touch. 

Mama died when she was 47. I was nineteen. An infection from an ulcer surgery. But I know better. She died of apathy and the shattered soul that would never mend. Her light had long since flickered out. I never miss her. Perhaps because in so many ways I grew up without her, or in place of her. There is nothing left to grieve and I have long since resolved any feelings or questions I had about why she would need a young girl like me to suffer, so she could feel stronger. I already know why. I understand it and I forgave that long ago because I wanted the peace, and also because that’s all there was left. 

Every year when I celebrate Mother’s Day it is in honor of my daughters, the insidious chain of abuse that I crushed to give them something better, the unconditional love that I was able to offer them when I had no idea how. They gave me strength to do that. I am all that I am because of everything that my mother could not and would not offer me. I wish only peace for her. She deserves that and more.