No regrets, Yeah right!

My final entry into this contest is a collection of embarrassing moments that have one common denominator, my mother. Humiliation can be funny or it can be torture, The bottom line is feeling shame which sometimes you can laugh at later and other times you have to suck it up and move on. My earliest memory of my mother feeling indifferent towards me was when I was 14. I don't recall the details but I was having a conversation with my great grandmother and she said something pretty hateful to me.

My mother got a gleam in her eyes and said "Ha ha she scoped on you." I'm thinking to myself, "What kind of mother gets a rush out of someone scopeing on their child.?" This was 1970s slang for trumping someone, getting the last laugh, one uping them or saying something so embarrassing it shuts them up. I was humiliated that my mother felt this way towards me and it did not get any better with age.

Two years later she made fun of the way I fed my cats. I had about 7 or 8 kittens plus the mother cat and they ate out of the same dish. Sometimes they would stand on each other. All I did was separate them so they all could eat and I heard her through the window laughing as she said "Look at Cheryl with all them cats." About a year later One Wednesday years later, when our vehicle was in the repair shop my husband and I picked our 3 children up from my mother's house and were headed to church.

They had a plastic swimming pool at their grandma's that we needed for a skit at church that night. We called a cab to get us to the service and as we were getting into the vehicle I noticed my mother standing in her front door watching us. She was on her cell phone and I heard her say to whoever she was talking to: "You won't believe this but they just got into a cab with a swimming pool." I could hear the humor in her voice and again I was humiliated because this was my mother. She was acting just like the kids in school who seemed to feel triumphant when they picked on me without provocation.

One day in 2002 we were all at my mother's house to visit my grandma and for no reason at all she did it again. She announced in front of my grandmother and my 3 children that her current boyfriend could purchase my oldest son a brand new car and she added that my husband and I always bought someone else's used junk. I asked her why she liked to embarrass me in front of my children and told her that if she had anything to say to me she should talk to me woman to woman, one on one. She seemed to take pleasure in it.

I also pointed out that if she obtained a brand new car for my son, she should not expect me to maintain it for him. She stood yet again with that gleam in her eye and shouted that she could take my children from me. This was an outlandish thing to say and I was so humiliated that I walked out the door and went home. There were several other occasions, prior to caller ID when I would call her house and get no answer. She would later say, "I knew it was just you" or "I knew it was nobody but you." This was a harsh blow each time to know my mother thought so little of me.

There had also been 3 or 4 times when she had a cookout in her back yard and when I was leaving she ignored my saying goodbye. Each time she would turn to one of her friends and stick out her neck towards them as if to tune me out and I would walk away in shame. The final straw came one day when my youngest son told me that one day when he and his sister were sick my mother told them I would let them lay there and die and she would have taken them to the doctor. My daughter later confirmed that this was true.

My children had simple head colds and there was no need to take them to a doctor. My brothers and I and others we grew up with were not taken to the doctor each time we sneezed so again I wondered why my mother would try to hurt me by saying ugly things to my children. A year later she was diagnosed with cancer but the doctors could not determine where the primary source was. She ended up going to numerous doctors in 2 cities and they could not cure her and she died 5 weeks after her diagnosis. In my opinion, her words about the doctors had come back on her.

I hope this story about a lifetime of humiliation at the hands of my mother will let someone else know they are not alone in experiencing abuse from their parent. To this day I do not enjoy Mother's Day and I cringe when I read posts on Facebook almost daily about those who miss their mothers. I have no idea what it is like to have been loved and cherished or share secrets with my mother but I cared for her those last 5 weeks until she passed away and did not put her away anywhere. I don't regret doing the right thing even though she never did the same by me.