My mother and I share a birth month. November. Scorpios. It makes perfect sense to me... we don't get along real well.
Today, I had to go out to grab my mother a birthday gift for our joint celebration tomorrow. It's a dreaded expedition, which sounds horrendous, I know. While I'm lucky to have had a mom growing up, and with that, parents who have stayed together and loved my brother and me, I don't really have a relationship with her. We're more like acquaintances. I lived in the same house with her for 23 years and that's that - we're acquaintances.
Try finding a Happy Birthday Mom! card or a Happy Mother's Day! card that says, "I'm glad to have made your acquaintance" or "You sure are swell, I hope to get to know you better." Because that's what I feel they should say in my situation.
How About a Blank Card With a Puppy On It?
Instead, I have to choose between many (what I believe to be) emotionally, false statements:
"Mom, you've always been there for me. You taught me right from wrong and you taught me how to be strong."
"Mom, I couldn't have gotten through my most wonderful and terrible moments without you. You have been the strength and calmness I've needed all my life... and for the rest of it."
It really goes on and on, but you get the point. I feel like I'm the only daughter in the world on Mother's Day or my mother's birthday, shifting her weight foot to foot, going from card slot to card slot at the local Target, hoping to find something mundane, yet pretty and feminine, card that really only says, "Happy Birthday. Have a great day."
Buy It Like You Mean It
Instead, I do what my father has taught me well: Just buy a really nice gift that your mother would never buy for herself.
I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought mom a nice Baltimore Ravens purple Reebok velour sweat suit, a picture cube for her to put pics of my brother's kids (the twins) in, and a pair of pajama pants. Let me tell you, velour sweat suits are not cheap.
I never thought I'd be buying my mother an Italian mafia suit. But I believe that she deserves it, especially after all she's been through...
Why do I not feel very close with my mother? It all comes down to respect. My father is an alcoholic, and boy is he still at the height of his practice, even with diabetes. I used to love my dad for who he was before I knew - all little girls like dads who play with them and get silly and buy stuff on a whim. Until they grow up and find out that most of the behavior was caused by alcohol, specifically his best friend, Seagram's.
And as girls do, they get older, and they get feisty, and they realize that their father is not the strong man they think he is. He talks back, he suggests that you do things you don't do, he calls you names, he yells at you at 3 in the morning when you're trying to sleep, he pukes in the toilet that's against the bathroom wall up against your bed, he shows up at your work or volunteer job hammered with some inane story about how they treat you, he calls you a devil worshipper, a slut.
And the next day, he buys you a TV and wants to have you come with him to the plant store to buy azaleas for the garden.
But the worst of all, and believe me, there's too numerous to count above, is not what he does to you - it's what he does to your mother. And how your mother takes it.
Worse than Divorce
My mother, I think, used to be angry about my dad. She used to yell at him. "John, leave her alone!" "John, leave the kids alone."
And then, he would yell at 3 a.m. about how she was so fat, and snored all the time, and he couldn't sleep, and that she would stay up until 4 in the morning on the couch watching tv. And whenever she would try to give her opinion, he would cut her off. He wouldn't listen to her. And eventually, she even stopped defending us from him. She even once or twice, grabbed my arm in anger, like he used to do.
Things digressed this way, until slowly, as if she were snow melting in the last corner of the shaded backyard under a bush, she became just a body, on the right side of the couch, not saying anything. Like a non-being. She would do crosswords, pretend to sleep, eat one slice of pizza for dinner, smoke an inane amount of cigarettes, ask the same questions about me every time I saw her. And I gave her the same answers, frustrated that she didn't even listen to me. Didn't remember me.
But why would she, I finally realize? The man she once loved never does. And I sure wasn't giving her the time of day, for having stood back, and let my father do to us, emotionally and psychologically, what he did.
Renaissance Woman
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years back. Cancer runs in the family. She kept quiet about it. Maybe I kept my distance, mainly because I hate being around the house for any extended period of time. I never know when I walk through that door whether my father's been drinking or not. And who knows, with my brother married and me almost 30 and on my own for years, what goes on in that house with just the two of them? She's been cancer free, and has been doing fine.
And actually, better than fine. All of a sudden, my mother has transformed, as my father has become smaller, more wrecked by alcohol and diabetes. His nose drips and he doesn't even notice it. He has injuries he doesn't even deal with. I believe I finally know that my mother despises him, and understands his days are numbered now - even though we thought the same years ago.
She has quit smoking. Completely. (I haven't even done that.) She goes out with friends. My Aunt has been around for a few years, after moving back from Florida, and that's good consolation and company. She joined the swimming club down the street, and just the other day, told me she joined the gym. She's lost weight, and is looking better than I ever remember, without looking at family photos.
Rebuilding the Relationship
My mother is older than 60. I'm amazed, and inspired.
If I'm going to rebuild my life to where I want it, one of my starting points is my relationship with my mother. In support of that, I've concocted an outing that we haven't done in years, and invited my aunt to come along - a girl's shopping day next Sunday.
I think it's time for me to stop hating and despising the woman who I thought wasn't standing up to my father for his obvious inefficiencies, and begin praising the woman she's creating herself as - a Renaissance woman. It's time for my mother and I to be reintroduced.
And quite frankly, I can't think of a better celebration of her new lifestyle and her new endeavors than a bright purple velour track suit to wear home from the gym and the swim club.
I think that's gonna say it better than a card this time.
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