California Closet Make-Over

A mother’s love should be boundless. But it’s not. A mother’s love might be selfless, but it shouldn’t be. But a mother’s love should ensure safety and healing. Sometimes it doesn’t, because it can’t. Sometimes it’s conflicted, painful and manipulative. Sometimes it breaks you in two.

My mother was an addict. Alcohol, control and secrets were her vices. Cigarettes too, I suppose – only those tended to hurt her more than anyone else. But the alcohol and the need to control everyone and everything around her, drove a steel wedge between us. We never were a great mother-daughter pair. Back to school shopping or trips to the beauty salon for a haircut were excruciating. I pushed her buttons and she excavated mine. She was inflexible, intolerant and hard to love. She had many moods and you never knew which mom you were going to get. She played favorites… even when you were the favored child, it was impossible not to see how her favoritism broke others.

She damaged many - we all felt the brunt of her actions, her words, and especially her silence.

One person. So much destruction.

And for what?

How do I reconcile what I don’t understand?

Guess I’ll start with what I do understand. She was a lot of different people.

Hostess:

She loved to throw parties – displaying her best China, crystal, sterling... flutes of champagne, a suckling pig that had to be cooked in two different ovens due to its size. Thank you, Mrs. Carnigan, our elderly neighbor, who allowed us to commandeer her oven in the days prior to the New Year’s Day Fete.

Mom prepared the desserts weeks and months ahead, freezing them til the appropriate time. Dad’s cassata birthday cake, an Italian delicacy filled with ricotta, Grand Marnier and candied mandarins, was tucked away til just after Christmas. We were permitted one tiny slice on December 12th to celebrate him. Then, it would disappear into the bowels of our freezer, hidden next to the croquembouche – a tower of cream puffs glued together with sticky caramel sauce. My brother and I attempted to steal a few from the back side hoping she wouldn’t notice. She always did.

Weeks and days prior to the party, we’d be shunned from the kitchen. Only Dad was permitted to do her bidding. This was the only time Richie and I were able to run feral through the neighborhood. So busy with party prep, she’d forget to make us practice the piano for upcoming lessons and barely glanced at homework assignments. Her extreme attention to tedious party details: knowing where to place each guest… how far to shove the perfectly round Red Gala apple into the poor suckling pig’s mouth for that Williamsburg effect… was to our benefit.

I found her notebook a few years after her death… a small flowery journal, sauce spattered, binding broken, covered in her illegible scribble. This Bible held her entertaining secrets for every special meal or party she ever organized. She listed which stores she’d frequent for certain items. Sammy’s in the Flats for the lobsters and clams for our Labor Day Clam Bake; Malley’s for the decadent chocolate eggs we’d find in our Easter Baskets; Heinen’s for sweetbreads or roast leg of lamb. There was little to no variation in these meals or parties – each carefully planned and enacted with the precision of an orthopedic surgeon wielding a scalpel during his 1000th knee replacement.

Time Traveler:

She existed in another era – Victorian, I think. As a child I was not permitted to wear pants until I hit middle school. I could wear corduroy or colored denim but blue denim was considered low class or trashy. God forbid we be considered ordinary or run of the mill. I’d sneak camp t-shirts under fitted blouses and plaid wool skirts. I desperately wanted to fit in with my peers and to rough house on the playground… impossible to do in tailored skirts and dresses. On Sundays, I was forced to wear long dresses and my poor little brother had to suffer in short pants and sailor suits, as if he were heir to the royal throne in jolly old England.

I longed for long hair but was never given a choice. The pixie cut she insisted on made me look like a boy. Maybe that’s why she insisted on all those damn dresses.

Teacher:

My mother’s idea of showing love was ten-page math and grammar papers to make sure I got through middle and high school math and language arts assignments. She trained as a teacher and wanted to be sure I could keep up with my fellow classmates. I still suffer PTSD when I think about diagramming sentences or the Pythagorean theorem. She’d rewrite anything I wrote for English class – including my college essays. I never learned to write a paper until college. With the help of a patient professor, I figured it out. I believed I wasn’t that smart … that I was slower than everyone else. Maybe I was slower – but I wasn’t stupid. Wish she could have let me know that.

Writer:

She’s likely the reason I love to write. She liked to draw a line in the sand, demonstrating an impressive but impossible vocabulary with Shakespearean flair, illustrating clever word play. As witty and intelligent as she was, her writing was unapproachable – exclusive and not entirely enjoyable. But she was creative with an imagination and a terrific sense of humor I envied when she’d reveal it, unexpectedly.

Mother:

She had fixed ideas on motherhood. We were taught to obey, to listen with respect and to do our very best. Those were good lessons, for the most part. We didn’t question things because that wasn’t tolerated. Obedience was crucial in her world. As we got older and braver, we tested her. Eventually we realized she wasn’t as scary as she seemed when we were little. In fact, we realized how scared she was of life. How fragile she was…

My mother loved me in the only way she knew how and believed her strict rules were a demonstration of that love. I shouldn’t hold it against her, but I do. Or I used to… I’m still working on this. It’s hard to forgive and forget, even all these years later. She had a venomous tongue that struck when I least expected it. Apologies and compromise were not in her vocabulary. Her world and ways were hard and unyielding. I learned to be a block of stone to keep from crumbling.

Sometimes it felt like impossible love. One-way love… Her way or the highway love…

But still, I loved her. I still do – even now, all these years later. Even when she left me gutted and feeling worthless.

How can I move forward if she’s dead? How can I find my own way as a parent?

She was imperfect. So am I. I do believe she tried her best, despite it all. She experienced trauma in her early life… something snapped in her…. After a little digging I learned more about her skeletons. She never spoke of them openly. I only discovered things by way of whispered voices in the night or digging in trunks of old photos in my grandmother’s attic as a curious child. I also learned the necessity of silence if I wanted to maintain a relationship with my grandmother. My mother’s secrets were to stay buried, deep and impenetrable.

How do I reconcile with a woman who never shared her whole self with me? How do I keep from doing the same thing to my own children?

All I can do is forgive.

Forgiveness is love. Forgiveness is grace.

Forgiveness sometimes feels impossible.

It’s easier to stay mad and resentful. Those feelings fill my belly more than empathy and mercy. Anger and exasperation take up more space. But maybe that’s because I’ve allowed those things to balloon inside me.

I need a California Closet make-over. Sweep out blame and guilt. Make new shelves for compassion and consideration next to my boxes of sweaters. Put in dividers to keep magical wishing from getting mixed up with unrealistic expectations. “Does that size 8 prom dress really not fit anymore? Try it again and suck in, for God’s sake.” Add an ironing board to take out the wrinkles from favorite things shoved and stuffed into corners, afraid to show them the light of day. And don’t get me started on footwear…. deciding which shoes to walk around in…

Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. It’s granting clemency to a woman who spent her life hiding. Hiding from those she loved and hiding from fear of failure, beneath a mask of perfection.

I can’t live that way. I never could, no matter how hard she tried to force me.

May I learn from her life… from her pain and secrets… those things that likely drove her to drink…to numb…and to hide.

May that be her gift to me.

Forgiveness and Compassion

And Love.