But first, I am Carolyn's daughter. She was a complicated person, a conflicted person, and carried a lot of baggage with her until she passed in 2007. And it's taken me until 2011 to want to talk about her. The more I allow myself to remember, I see how similar we are. Some good, some destructive. Self-destructive.
My mother and I had an awkward relationship from the time I was born. She wasn't ready for me; she, a young, newly married woman at age 20, was "gifted" a baby with colic and a husband who was so dedicated to being a family man he worked two jobs. She was stuck with me, alone, most of the time. I remember her telling me, "If you hadn't been so cute, we would have taken you back." Most of the time she was joking, but, I know there were times when she wished it could have been possible.
We began butting heads when I started talking at age 2. My dad used to say he'd come home from his teaching job, hear two voices yelling, and didn't know who was the kid and who was the mom. This didn't change much through the years.
But she had the most beautiful blue eyes, and when she smiled she revealed the shyness she was desperately trying to hide.
She loved to cook, and was very, very good at it. Her meals are legendary in my family, our friends, and beyond. She brought lavish food to celebrate my recitals at conservatory. These receptions were unprecedented. She cooked the entire week before my wedding for all the friends and family wandering in and out of the house. The post reception party. The wedding breakfast. Countless, gorgeously homemade food.
She loved to shop. She always had a present or two in the house--if we wanted to give our teacher one, or last minute gift exchange occurred. She always wanted to have something nice in the house "just in case." The most poignant memory I have of my mother shopping is actually an amalgam of many shopping days. We'd need school clothes or bathing suits or something, and she'd quietly add a pretty blouse for herself, or a dress, or a sweet tchotchke...We'd wander around the store, looking at pretty things, and then at some point, we'd wander again, tracing our steps as my mom put back all the things for herself. I cried about his for years. Until I found myself doing the same thing. Dreamshopping, I guess--picking anything I wanted, and wandered around with it until I decided if I needed it or not. My sister also has this affliction.
My mom loved her grandchildren. She was so proud to be the "Mimi" of these tiny toe-headed beauties. But even they could not prevent her drinking from escalating, leading to several hospitalizations, failed attempts at rehab, failed attempts at death, until one finally succeeded four years ago.
I had stopped talking to my mother about a year and a half before her death. She had, because of her alcoholism, become toxic--writing me cruel letters, asking for gifts back; calling me on the phone to tell me I'd ruined our family...It was killing me and I had to distance myself from her. It hurt my father that I did this. It hurt me, too. I never realized it had any impact on my mother until after she died. She had begun to write a letter of apology to me but never finished. We found a box in her bedroom, addressed to me. I had my husband open it, overwhelmed. It was pair of diamond earrings my father had given her. "You are your father's daughter," she'd written in the letter we found. I don't know what she meant by yet another potent statement in a long line of them.
I don't have memories of physical or even gentle affection from her. She was prickly, uncomfortable with intimacy. She was a private person, who could not, or chose not, to share herself with many people. I, too, struggle with this kind of thing. There is a wall around me that stays firmly in place until I feel my own natural shyness recede. Or I decide you are not worthy of who I am, and the wall remains up, intentionally. But I thank god there is no alcohol that makes the decision.
I wish my shy, beautiful mother had known how worthy she was to receive love and affection.
I love you, Mom, for your kind heart. The rest will inevitably come to me, now that I'm free from the fat, evil trolls that kept you from me. Happy Mother's Day.
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