Relationship Gardening

Mother's Day can sure stir up a lot for many of us who have difficult mothers.  More peace is in my life around this day because of the distance I have with my mother.  The more contact I have with her, the more annoyed and mostly mad at myself I get for being led astray from what I know to be true: some mothers will remain true to their brokenness-not present as a healthy mother, not even able to mother themselves very well.  And mine certainly will be happy to tell me she is not here to make my life any better.

 In the brief time I do talk to my mother on the phone (as in for Mother's Day), the conversation has lately been shifting towards guilt and remorse on her part about NOT being able to mother me when I needed it. 

Forgiveness can be an amazing freeing thing.  I wish my mother would show loving forgiveness for her own life and how it all went down because now at 77 it makes her very sad to dwell in all that grief.  As for me-I have let her off the hook.

In my young adult years when I was very mad at her for being an obnoxious alcoholic with violent boyfriends, I one day realized that she was a baby that never got mothered-that her drinking really kept her infantile.  How on Earth can an infantile, blotto, unmothered woman mother anyone else?  It was prompted by the question you can ask yourself too, "What if your mother is doing or did the best she could?" 

All my anger about her melted away so I wrote her a letter 25 years ago saying how the anger was gone and I didn't expect her to mother me any longer.  I also drew a line that I could not have contact with her till she sobered up because the poison was just too much for me.   She didn't get enough for herself, how can I expect her to have any for me?  I spent some years in therapy and support groups to heal from my lack of mothering.  She refused to go for her own although I do remember driving her there myself when I was 16 after one of her many suicide attempts.  She flipped out and refused to go back.

After that letting go of anger letter, I didn't see her for 8 years.  I didn't write and I only sent her an invitation to my Counseling Master's graduation ceremony thinking that she would be ecstatic that I met a goal she had seeded in my mind as a young child.  "When I grow up I am going to college."   That is what she taught me-that one of us was going to "make it" and get an education.  Still under the influence, she got weird and refused to attend. 

The years went by and she didn't know where I was.  And I didn't know if she was dead from her annual suicide attempts, drunk driving, or at the hand of her violent husband.

This is where Other Mothers come in.  I called them Real Mothers.  Women of love and humor, of happy surprises, able to connect with each other and be there for each other. Women who took a stand against hurtful gossip, or tearing down other women, who showed concern without criticism through all life's growing up challenges-these were my new mothers.  We mothered each other.  We had fun with it and would reminisce about our fake family history.  One Real Mother, Katie walking down Rose Avenue where the Venice Boardwalk begins at Venice Beach, CA, a few blocks from my then Ocean Front Walk apartment  said to me, "This street was named after your Great Aunt Rose, remember her?"  We cracked up just imagining we'd adopted each other and the family stories would then be true, wouldn't they?    I still call this Real Mother, "Mom" and ask her how my other sisters are doing.

Most years I send cards for Mother's day to the women I admire who make kick ass mothers whether they birthed children or not.  I tell them they are the Real Mothers who bring exemplary love and caring into the world and how glad I am to have known them.  Happy Mother's Day Zona, Elizabeth, Maxine, Moira, Harlane, Katie B., Katie K., Sandie, Suza, Pat, Nikki, and Anne (RIP).

The gift my bio mother doesn't realize she gives me right now that many only dream of having from their parents-is the gift of getting sober which she did at age 59.  Yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks.  Actually some folks can get sober on a New Year's Eve bet and that is how sobriety snuck up on my mother.  The other guy gave up after 2 days and my mother thought that was not enough of a competition.  So she planned to just see how long she could go without drinking in Blythe, California, far from family and for the first time sober with no husband trying to kill her on a regular basis.  Once she sobered up she realized her friends were all really obnoxious self-absorbed drunks.   She quit her bartending job in a stormy fight, standing up to an abusive male boss, and got the first job in her life that wasn't about serving drinks in one way or another.  The woman has some guts. 

Yesterday she was sorry for decades earlier feeding me doughnuts on the way to school and chili dogs at Pup N Taco after.  Now as a woman with many food intolerances, and a young daughter too, I know why she is sorry about that.  But at the time it was fun to scrape together change and get our junk food fix.  It was one of the few happy memories with mom.  I also remember trying our first falafel together in Bellflower, California.

Mothering my own is my second chance.  It is hard and it is relentless and some days I know why my mother preferred to be blotto.  Thousands and thousands of hugs and kisses for my daughter,  being a witness to my daughter's growth and astounding creativity, and being there for my girl in all her fieryness-it is a gift to my mother as well.  It says the brokenness in our family stops here and we can end our misery and move forward looking toward the future with love.  To be a better mother or as I have coached my child to call me "Good Enough Mom," instead of perfect, or awesome-is to give my mother a chance to be proud of me as well.  To refuse to be swallowed up by one's hurtful early influences, finding a nurturing mother in me without being destroyed by my own mother's brokenness-that is something for her to be proud of.   And she is.   On the phone she said, "you really do such a fabulous job with your daughter."  Thanks Mom.  Lest you think we are all Hallmark cards around here, she has also said some pretty choice nasty attacks on my mothering, but I wouldn't want to leave a bad taste in your mouth for now.  Just know that my mother  told me yesterday to tell my story. "You have been through so much, why don't you write it down?  People could learn from it."  Ok people-here it is. 

Happy Mother's Day.

Here is a poem from a card that I have taped on my kitchen cupboard.  I can't make out the author.  If you know who it is-let me know.

She realized she was lucky-

because she could actually see it-

how the trees got more beautiful

each year...how they danced

with such graceful pride,

surviving each season's change...

and she knew their beauty

lied not in the perfection,

but the growth...

and she could see it-

in the trees,

the people around her,

and some days-

even in herself...

and so she would dance.

See you soon,

Shannon