Stop the clock and bang the drum
Another loved one’s race is run.
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Mothers and daughters have some of the most complicated relationships on the whole planet. I believe mothers want the world for their daughters, and yet they want their daughters, in their footsteps, or in another mold, they have cast for them. We mothers understand some of the trials and tribulations our daughters will face, and we also understand the cruelty of the world so it’s a delicate, balancing act, allowing your daughter to grow into everything they need to be and everything they can be, while ensuring you maintain your own sanity. I cannot claim to have been a saint with my mother, we came to loggerheads over the simplest of things. In those moments I occasionally found a champion in my father, he tried to be the voice of reason, and I think, sometimes to their relationships detriment he often stood up for me. I lost my father over 20 years ago, and it was only then that I realized I really was daddy‘s girl. I had spent so much time trying to make my mother happy that I had never realized how happy I had made my father. My mother ended her race last night. In the end It was hard fought,she wasn’t always comfortable. She constantly asked me why she was still here and I could only reply that God hadn’t decided it was her time yet, but that I loved her. Over the years I learned about her childhood and young adulthood. Neither was exactly a rosy picture of perfection. She was not the most wanted daughter she arrived during the depths of the great depression. She had epilepsy when no one knew what it was. She lost choices and chances throughout her childhood. I only know my grandmother, my mother’s mother from after she had her stroke. I don’t know if she was kinder to my mother before she survived that massive aneurysm. She outlived both her neurosurgeons. My grandmother was fairly nice to me, not terribly strict not terribly permissive. She was very tall and wore peep toe shoes. She had lost her sense of smell, so her meals could either be delicious or well strange but whenever I was with her and my grandfather, I always felt like I was treated kindly. The relationship she had with my mother was always frosty and picky. If she had to endure that throughout her entire life, it explains why she quite didn’t know what to do with me. For many years, she had told me what a disappointment I’d been. I hadn’t gone off to conquer the business world. I hadn’t a corner office in Paris; at one time she liked my husband — until he proposed, and for the life of me, I could never figure out that one. I often believe deep down that she loved me, but that she didn’t like me very much on most days. As a teenager I tried to be the good, helpful daughter, but at some point, after I was married, I realized I had to be my own person and stop letting her affect me so much. After my father died, there were many years where we hardly spoke when she finally gave up the family home on the southside, she seemed a little happier in her apartment in the northern suburbs. Still, there were many days when I couldn’t reach her by phone and would finally leave a message stating that the next call was to the police for a welfare check if she didn’t call me within 24 hours, she always called. A little over six years ago she reached out to my brother and me and admitted she could no longer live on her own. We stepped up and brought her to California, close to me in an assisted living facility. This time I felt a little better. I knew she didn’t like being in California but I tried to bring her the things she enjoyed and take her on little adventures as long as she was able. My daughter and I even took her to Disneyland. She wanted to go there for her honeymoon; just to kind of give you an idea of how these things go for her, she and my father married in December and they went to Niagara Falls. Nothing quite says, romantic, like riding The Maid of The Mist In freezing cold January. Those two were quite a pair. They had some adventures before I managed to come along eight years into the marriage. My mother taught me many things. Things I don’t think she meant to teach me, but I learned the lessons well. I stood up for myself, because she wasn’t always able to do that. I chased after my dreams, and managed to achieve a few, often by ingnoring her no. The same ones she had heard and hated. And mom, when you always said. “You know what you did wrong !” I had no clue what you were talking about. So I learned to always tell my children what was disappointing and the behavior that I was hoping to see. I never left them guessing, at least I tried not to.
The image I carry in my mind of my mother today is not one of her many frowns. I have a picture of her smiling at Warner Bros, we’re holding our wands at the end of the tour. Maybe we’re vanquishing all the bad communication from our past. Mama I will miss you for the rest of my days, but I hope you are at peace.
