Tag Archives: mom

Doing the Right Thing

“Dear Mom, 

Happy 60th Birthday. I hope your day is filled with Love. 

Love, 

Karen”

I said it. I meant it. Your flowers, with that message attached, will arrive on Saturday. Your 60th birthday. It didn’t take time to think up that message. It came as naturally to me as a knee jerk at the doctor’s office when they check your reflexes. I felt relieved by that fact- knowing it wasn’t forced or fake. I could have written a lot of things in that card. For example-

I wish we were closer. 

I hope to see you soon. 

I miss you. 

But none of those things would be true. I just celebrated my birthday and I was with the person I love more than anyone in the whole wide world-the one person in this world who gets me, who gives unconditionally, who just does the right thing. 

Doing the right thing comes in a lot of forms. For me, a big part of it is trusting that someone will what’s in your best interest; they’ll reciprocate without you having to ask; they give of themselves equally. They are like your star power-being around them makes you feel superhuman. They encourage you, they make you better, they are there for you when things get ugly. 

On Saturday, I do hope that my mother’s day is filled with love. I hope that someone takes her out for lunch, that the flowers I sent her are not the only ones she receives, that someone is there to sing her happy birthday. I hope, most of all, that she does not feel obligated to call me to say Thank You. She didn’t call me on my birthday, and that silence is so incredibly loud. It’s the kind of silence that echoes inside you if you let it. I don’t anymore. I have no expectations of her, but I do choose to do what feels right in my heart. I choose not to pursue contact with my mother anymore, because it does me more harm than good and I in a good place. I am finally ready to give and receive love and I don’t want that door to close. I am, however, still happy to push love in her direction. 

“..close some doors. not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.” — paulo coehlo

Happy Birthday. Love, The Universe.

I was out for a run and missed her call. She left a voicemail. The first one in twelve years. Happy Birthday, she said. I found the #courage to call her back on my way home. I was already physically lost, so why not? As I rounded the corner of an unknown block, I stumbled upon a tree with notes tied to it (from The Universe?).

My birthday was on the 5th. Hers was on the 13th. I called her to wish her a happy birthday and I was secretly relieved that she didn’t answer. I was in Palm Springs at the time and wrapping up a long work day. It made me sad to hear her voicemail message. “Tallulah, Malicent, Pork Chop, and I are off galavanting…” it started. Tallulah was my mother’s golden retriever and has been dead for almost four years. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

I don’t remember what my mother looks like anymore. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to remember, but I can’t see her face anywhere I try to place it. I don’t look anything like her, so when I look in the mirror, I am not nostalgic when I see her eyes staring back at me. I look so much like my father it’s like God forgot to sprinkles her DNA into my genes when he made me. I still think of her often, but I think of her the way you think of people when they go to heaven. Sometimes you forget what the smell like or how they sound. I’ve forgotten all cues about her, and I’m hungry for them.

I called her tonight. I said I would last week and I didn’t because I am a coward. Tonight, I mustered up the bits of courage I could find, the way a baby bird makes a meal out of crumbs of bread-it wasn’t enough or sustainable, but it had to do. I didn’t know what to expect. I never have with her; that’s something I crave. Something I have always craved. If you are in my life, I keep you around because you are stable and predictable and consistent in a way that makes me feel safe, makes me feel secure, makes me feel like I can count on you and that you will be there for me. It’s a big responsibility, I know, but I will give you whatever you need and whatever I can provide to make you happy in return. As I get older, I’ve learned not to give so much that I become exhausted and resentful, but it might happen, so be gentle with me when I mistakes and I will try to be gentle with you. For as much courage and strength you think I have, I am equally (if not more) fragile and scared.

We yelled. I cried. I got angry. I got scared. I got impatient. I did not get unkind. I did not lash out. I did not try to punish her. I have done all of those things in the past, so I am proud of myself for giving up part of my past and retiring the old weapons I thought served me so well that really only harmed me.

Sometimes I just feel like a moment is about to happen. I am almost impossible to surprise because I am constantly taking in my surroundings and reading between the lines. A sixth sense of sorts. I get out a pen and paper when I feel like something is going to happen that I’m going to want to write down; I take my camera out when I feel like I’m going to want to capture a moment on film. I’ve never had the urge to record audio until tonight.

Do you know what it’s like to have your mother tell you she loves you after not speaking for 12 years?

I do. And I grabbed the audio. I’m torn about sharing it, but it exists. And it’s hard to listen to, but it’s there. The moment captured, a snippet in time that’s now mine.

And so it goes

“My silence is my self-defense” -Billy Joel

And so it went. Another holiday. Another holiday filled with silence between me and my mother. Another year of the body of water between us expanding, making it impossible for me to row to her shore. Even if we spoke, I wouldn’t know what to say; we’re strangers, and we always have been. Since the day my mother’s water broke six weeks before my due date, I have been trying to get away from my mother. And at the same time, I have been trying to find a common ground with her, a cycle that has left me feeling like I’ve been fighting the undercurrent of the Mississippi my whole life.

The holidays are particularly difficult. When families are gathering, I am reminded by my lack thereof and left with a deafening silence or the feelings I’ve had since childhood: that I was adopted by a very strange family and my real family is well-educated and nice and loving and they’re out there looking for me; they just haven’t found me yet. And then I am startled back to reality by a photo on Instagram of my father smiling and I see a mirrored reflection of my smile, the same glimmer in his eyes, the same indentations in his skin. And I know that I was not adopted, but I feel that way. I feel like I’m just waiting for a good home.

B and I have been home several times in the past couple of months. I’ve spent more time on Long Island in the past quarter than I have in the past two and a half years combined. Every time we drive past my mother’s street, I cry. I can’t help it. “We can drive past the house whenever you want to,” he once said to me. On Saturday night, we were driving home from Christmas Eve with my father. At exit 58 on the Long Island Expressway, I asked “can we drive past my mother’s house?”

He didn’t try to talk me out of it, knowing that sometimes when I’m hurting, I just need to hurt a little more so that I can start to heal. One of those “it gets worse before it gets better” situations. Truth be told, I’ve been having nightmares about my mother for weeks. Horrible, violent, sad nightmares that I can’t even begin to describe aloud. Things so terrible that I’m ashamed that the depths of my mind could create such wretched thoughts while I’ve got my guard down. I needed to get worse so I could get better. I navigated to the house and we pulled over across the street. It was nighttime and I knew my mother would be upstairs in her room either watching tv or already asleep. I was right. The house looked exactly as I remembered it. The two white Volvos were parked in the driveway. The lights were off, except for some festive looking lights. Maybe she got some small decorations for the house for the holidays. We sat for a couple of minutes. I remained unaffected. B held my hand and watched my face.

“Okay, we can go now.” I said. It seemed creepy to be parked outside my mother’s house. I didn’t want to scare the neighbors. To get back to the highway, we made a loop on the side street and when the car drove past the house, I caught a glimpse of light coming from her bedroom. It was bright white from a lamp and blue from the tv and it knocked the wind out of me, knowing that there was life in the house. It seemed so lifeless in the dark- her house looked sterile and vacant, like it was just a headstone atop the ground under which her body was laid to rest. But the glimmer of light from her bedroom was like a quick pulse when you expected a flatline. I wanted to roll the window down and touch the light with my hands, hoping that if I could just feel it between my fingertips that I could grab it and put a ray of light and hope in my pocket. I could only see the light for a minute, but a rush of my mother flooded me–the way she smells like Obsession by Calvin Klein and stale cigarettes, the sound of her smoker’s cough, the frizzy ringlets atop her head, her vacant blue eyes, the sound of her voice.

B drove to the end of the block, my mother’s house out of view. He always knows when I’m about to cry. I don’t know if it’s sixth sense or the way it sounds when I swallow, like I’m choking down a piece of steak that’s too big when I’m about to cry. Before he could get the car fully in park, tears were silently steaming down my face. He unfastened his seat belt and wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t say a word. No sniffles. No sobs. No words. My silence is my self-defense.

Drowning

When you’re drowning, you don’t say, ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come help me,’ you just scream.
-John Lennon

Growing up with my mother was like almost drowning every day of my life, a chronic repetition of being swept away by the current, a vicious fight against the rip tide, followed by a slow, languid dance underwater, and a decision ultimately made my biological reflexes. Drowning is a terrible way to die. First, you’re conscious. You realize what’s happening and you try to fight it, sending yourself into a panic, which causes you to hyperventilate, consuming more and more oxygen. Once submerged underwater, the body begins to accumulate carbon dioxide, the gas that stimulates the need to breathe. Eventually, your brain takes over and says “I need air,” not knowing that the air cocktail outside has been replaced by water and involuntarily draws in a breathe, but when the water reaches the airway, the body sends another reflex to cough, which begins a vicious cycle of water in, water out, followed by more water in. Your throat contracts, trying to seal off the organs, but your stomach fills with water and your body gives in to sleep. You fall unconscious while the remaining process happens on autopilot while you leave your body.

But every day I fought it, this urge to submerge. Every day I fight this feeling in some way, shape or form. It is a learned behavior after so many years as a victim to my mother’s wrath. She is my riptide, the thing that sucks me under when I least expect it; the feelings of rejection, guilt, sadness, emptiness. The feelings that both ignite and extinguish the fire inside me.

I often find  myself on resting spots, tired, damaged, but safe and ready to be rescued. I have flirted with the fine line between the two sides that I can’t remember a time when the choice for life was a conscious one.For most people, living is a simple reflexive function without thought or question. But for me, every day is not so much a choice, but a battle. While most float in an inner tube down a lazy river, I am white water rafting uphill in the middle of a thunderstorm to get somewhere as simple as the grocery store. Not to minimize anyone else’s battles, because we are all fighting noble ones every day.

I am exhausted and I just want to get out of the water, but despite the fact that my father once taught me never to turn my back on the ocean, I still do it, and I find myself overtaken by the waves.

It’s Your Birthday

It’s your birthday and I’m not coming home.

This day, every year, I feel as though I’ve been cleft down the middle, like a chicken breast. But I’m alive. My heart is beating. And it stings when the salt gets poured on me. Although I’m seasoned in dealing with this day, it always burns inside my heart.

Time’s been standing still between us for a long time. Everything’s different, but nothing’s changed: The vacant stare in your eyes that’s been there since long before I was born still pays rent to your face. The hair that grows out wiry and untamed from your head, evicting the coloring you put on it. Your health, your failing health that’s been borrowing against time, borrowing against death for years while you puffed away at cigarettes and ate refined carbohydrates.

mom

She always looks so sad in pictures

Me.
Alone.
Without you.
Even when I’ve been with you, I’ve been without you.
My character and personality is really just scar tissue, uneven, unpredictable, discolored, flawed, imperfect.

One day I had a mother. One day I had an enemy. And like a revolving door, we’ve been going on like this for years. Me, trying to love you, trying to accept you. Me, trying to escape you, trying to set up boundaries that you’d ultimately trample on like a wild elephant. You desiring my attention, but denying my affections. Me, begging for the truth. You, lying to my face. Me, giving you my heart and you stabbing me in the back.

If only I had an enemy smaller than your anger, I could have won. You, the most mercurial mother to have ever lived. One minute cheering me on in beauty pageants. The next, telling me how fat I was and forcing me to sleep outside in the backyard like a farm animal. One minute laughing with your friends. The next, slapping me across the face as I cried out for help, desperate to escape your anger, trembling. The anger you’ve never admitted to having. The things you deny ever happening. The images burned in my mind. They are things that are not just in my head.

When the tables turned and it was my turn to leave you, you looked at me wide-eyed, like a cat stuffed in a plastic carrier on their way to the vet. You pawed at me, clawed for my attention. You got wild, unruly, feral and I wished someone would put us out of our misery and euthanize our volatile relationship. But here we are on another April 13th walking on a tightrope of silence trying to keep our balance. One slip of a toe and we’re screaming at each other. One slip of the toe and I’m in tears. So we pull the tightrope tighter, solidifying our balance, solidifying our silence, solidifying the tension that can’t slacken without everything falling apart.

And, despite all of this, I hope you have a happy birthday in your own unhappy way.