The Mom

 

My mom.

She was 16 when she had me on the day after Christmas. Eating Christmas cookies in her hospital bed after I was born, she had no idea what was ahead of her. A lot of heartache and betrayal, but a lot of love and goodness as well.

 
When I was little, she would make me a little Pepperidge Farms apple tart when I came home from school and would pick the raisins out for me because they looked like bugs. She would collect rainwater on the porch in a bucket and rinse my hair with it, leaving my hair feeling like silk. She wrapped up my long straight mousey brown hair in rags one time and made crazy wild curls that my dad hated. When I would come home from school, the house would smell of PineSol and freshly washed floors. They didn’t have much money, but she made for us a beautiful home. A wonderful cook, she learned well from her own mother who was amazing in so many ways. She taught me embroidery. We loved to read together. I would curl up in her lap and we would read the dictionary together, jumping from one word to another down the rabbit hole of language. She made me bubbles with Palmolive dish soap – I can still see that pink kitchen on Pearson Street, sitting on the counter and looking out to the backyard, and the smell of the bubbles. We would go for long walks to the hot dog place, pushing me in my stroller with tiny little turquoise circles on the vinyl, and then to the park to eat our lunch. 

When I was little, she was a wonderful mother. She was young and pretty and just wanted to have a nice home and family. When everything fell apart ten years later, she became something I didn’t recognize. Like a wild thing she went out in the world and, I guess, found herself. But she left me behind in the process. Perhaps not physically or entirely, but certainly as a mother and as a role model. Morally, philosophically, politically. I have nothing in common with her and it’s sad. I’m not going to go on about the negative things because that is not the part of her I care to remember here. I just wish that I could love her more. We never did have that close mother/daughter relationship that so many women have. I can’t relate to that. I recently realized that for the past 50 years, aside from the short time I lived with her during and after high school, that we never really lived together or even in the same state. Long distance parenting is not ideal. I prefer to remember her as the young teenage mother who really was so wonderful and continue to try to love her more as she is. It’s not easy, but I keep trying.