Everything was fine until you showed up. I tell my memoir students that's how you begin a story. I experience it myself every time my estranged mother enters my head. Then I wonder whether everything was fine for my mother until she was pregnant with me.
I know she and my father wanted to have a baby for a long time, and that I was two weeks late after a tough pregnancy. Her C-section produced a scar, flaring like a tall, proud cactus on her abdomen. I picture her today as a furry, squat cactus, pale green with long yellow needles, much like the cacti she loves to plant.
Children were supposed to be sweet and loving, and I was neither. I cried because I was in perpetual teething mode; I refused to sleep at night or take naps; and I ran away whenever possible. I did what I could to annoy or scare her. After my bath, at 8 years old, I would pad down the stairs and hide in our coat closet, hair dripping wet, in my white nightgown. I'd get such a thrill when she'd scream because she thought I was a ghost. I called her ugly in her native French and got slapped for it.
I'm capable of cruelty: At 12, I pulled out a rolling office chair as she was sitting down. She bruised her tailbone yet never punished me. To this day, I grip the back of a chair in case one of my kids does the same thing to me.
As I got older, sometimes I fought back, and sometimes I was silent against her barbs. Or I would lie to avoid dealing with her. Eight years ago, my mother rescinded her parental ties to me when I told her I was pregnant with Daniel and that I would soon be married to Keith. Instead of feeling joy, she felt hurt and betrayed. In the ensuing years I realized that she resented her loss of control over me. She channeled this loss by going radio silent, which she had done temporarily a few times before.
When I was a teenager, she stuck her needles into my weak spots: relationships and my body. She told me - at 15, when I'd never been on a date - that I didn't deserve to wear white at my wedding; she said the more people got to know me, the more they would dislike me, and at 20 she said my legs didn't deserve to wear shorts above the knee. To counteract her needling, I exercised sometimes two hours a day, six days a week, to prove I could wear shorts and will my legs thinner. As for my relationships, I didn't know what to do. I blamed myself and couldn't see that she was planting her insecurities on me.
Of course there's good in her; dig deep and find the sweet pulp in a cactus. She's very smart, a voracious reader, and possesses a Benny Hill sense of humor. She's an excellent cook, homemaker, gardener, pet owner; she'd rather nourish things, not people. It's too hard, and they might leave her. This is what she fears the most, yet she pushes everyone away except my father.
When I hear her needle-talk, I fight hard not to take it out on myself and my son, because he's the child most like me. Sometimes I fail, but I'm making good progress at forgiving and letting go of these negative thoughts. To my mom: Everything is fine when you don't show up, but I know how to manage you when you do.
