When my mother was my age, I was 18. I hadn’t lived with her–or even in the same town–for nearly half my life. After my dad divorced her, she latched on to a series of bad husbands, each one a little worse than the one before.
First Husband: My dad. Married when they were nineteen. He dragged us around the country, twenty-five moves in five years, looking for that elusive job which would be worthy of him. He divorced her after thirteen years, a bout of cancer and chemo, four kids and a couple of silent years.
Second Husband: Unemployed, drove a yellow van, lots of previous marriages, stepchildren. My dad took custody of us when this man came into the picture. He was 9 years older than my mother and after five years of marriage, took all her belongings in the divorce.
Third Husband: Illiterate, a lot older than her. He didn’t seem to have a job, either, and worse, he had a bad habit of breaking coffee cups and other items on her head. She left after a year and a half.
Fourth Husband: She met and married him while I was away at college, so mostly, I only heard stories and didn’t have to sit in the same room with him while he sprawled on the couch in his undershirt, drinking beer. I heard that he threatened her with a shotgun, threatened to kill himself, and was a mean drunk. She sneaked away, one box in her car trunk at a time, and disappeared from his stinky life about the time I got married. I think her marriage lasted a few years, less than five, though.
While I was busy preparing for my (first and only) wedding–that sacred bonding time between mothers and daughters–my mother was scheming and planning her escape from her disgusting fourth husband. I sewed my own wedding dress, located my own florist, picked out my cake–I did it all alone because my mother was involved in the drama of her own life. As usual.
Two years later, during the time my dad was ill and dying, she started dating again through classified ads. She ended up living with some guy with a repaired harelip for six or seven years. I only wish I were kidding. He would wear sweatpants and undershirts to family holiday celebrations. He knew everything about everything–at least he thought he did–and he tried to recruit me for a multi-level marketing scam. My mother basically abandoned my teenage sister to live with this man, but she told us she was renting a room from him. (He took in two or three boarders in his split level house.)
Remarkably enough, my mother and I now have a fairly close relationship. She lives in the same town I do now–and she lives alone. We see each other and/or talk on the phone every week. She babysits my kids. She’s 62 now, a genuine senior citizen with a handicapped parking permit. I try not to ask her about things that are none of my business, so many of my questions go unanswered, questions like, “What were you thinking?” and “How could you give up custody of your four children so easily? Did you miss us? Or were you relieved to be rid of us?” Our relationship is easy and we laugh a lot, but there are huge hunks of time and giant categories we just don’t talk about. Ever.
When I was a child, I wanted her to pat my head and tell me how pretty and smart I was, but she was busy, really, really busy. She had four children, too, and she seems to have amnesia, because she says to me, “I don’t know how you do it.” She does know, though–you just do it a day at a time, Monday through Friday, one bowl of Cheerios at a time. She doesn’t seem to remember much–her dismal marriage to my father and my brother, sisters and I overwhelmed her. She was barely finished growing up when she gave birth to three of us, all in a row, sixteen months apart and then my “oops” sister, five years later. Her early marriage limped along from one crisis to another.
What I wanted most from her was her attention. What she did most was overlook me. I was easy to ignore. Who notices the easy child, the one who achieves, the good girl, the bookworm? And then she left me and my siblings, just as I was on the cusp of adolescence, on the brink of the most terrifying years of life–middle school.
She feels guilty, I know. And I’ve forgiven her, completely. She did the best she could with what she had at the time. She gave me as much as she could. I don’t hold any of it against her.
Mother’s Day card shopping is a challenge, though. They tend towards the sappy factor: “Mother: My Best Friend, The One Who Was Always There For Me.” It’s a chore to find a plain card that just says, “Happy Mother’s Day.”
I bet if I designed a card that said, “What the HELL were you thinking when you left me for your new boyfriend? Happy Mother’s Day!” I’d make at least five or ten bucks marketing it.
Actual Unretouched Photo 