Red Lipstick Gang

As I write this on my gray sectional, sturdy and held together with duct tape and love, I look over to my amazing, talented roommate and disclose that I am writing my next piece about my mother. I don’t know what that's going to mean for my mood, but there will be many emotions over the next few days.

There's a certain calm I feel when I listen to Frank Sinatra or Harry Connick, Jr.. Sometimes, I listen to my Old Blue Eyes playlist for three weeks straight on repeat. I hear the same songs covered by different artists across generations and genres. Nostalgia washes over me when I hear these songs, conjuring a handful of lovely memories from my childhood. The swell of emotions hurls me back to the third grade, sitting on the edge of the toilet seat. I’m captivated by my mother who is steadily curling the corners of her mouth with a bright red pencil. She smacks and puckers a few times before twisting the jewel green tube of lipstick and carefully swiping the round shape of her mouth. I uncontrollably mirror her movements with my mouth. She fumbles through her makeup drawer and pulls out a small tube, roughly the color of my fingers, but there is a little shimmer as it catches the light. My mom squats down next to me and begins tracing my mouth with the giant stick of cream. It tastes like cocoa butter and vanilla, but tacky like glue. I grimace at the decision to taste the lipstick, but my mother just smiles how she smiles when I amuse her.

I have always seen my father as a shadow figure lingering in the doorways of my life. Never there to say yes or no, good or bad. He existed; always waiting for something to happen to him. I spent years seeking something from him: approval, humor, something, anything showing he was connected to me. It never came. As I grew older, I learned to accept our relationship for what it was. I didn’t truly understand until I was an adult.

My mother tried, desperate to fill the void of my fathers presence. My mother’s love for my father took the shape of an endless well he would drink from until it was dry and then complain about the taste of the water. He took advantage of that love, making her work harder than she should have for his affection. He did the same with me, constantly keeping me at a distance and making me feel at fault for something. Making me feel almost as if I was the burden on my mother’s heart.

I watched him idly stand by as my mother’s mental health slowly deteriorated over the years while she was trying to create something that was never going to come to fruition. I'm still so furious at him and I haven’t spoken to him in roughly a decade. I can’t say that I ever will.

He's done so many unforgivable acts to hurt my mother. Never physically, of course, but emotionally and mentally. When my Mother asked for a divorce, he poisoned my younger sister against her. My mother decided to move out and he decided he couldn’t bear to be miserable alone, so he manipulates my sister yet again and makes her think our mother is abandoning her. His special ability to maintain his stronghold on my sister exposed how afraid of being alone he really was.

This isn’t about him though. This is about who I became despite him. This is who I became because of the strength of my mother. He sat, waiting for life to happen to him, while my mother woke up at 4 am to get us ready for school because she worked mornings at a grocery store and nights at Taco Bell. She fought to provide for us, whereas he would spend his last dollar on a lottery ticket hoping it would be his escape from his obligations.

I dig deep within my personal journals and come to the conclusion that I have been mourning the loss of my mother most of my adult life. The woman I remember waking us up early on the weekends with Reba McEntire’s Fancy blaring, the one trying to dance with me as we cleaned the house. That woman was slowly chipping away before my eyes, before I could ever truly appreciate the fire she started in this world.

My mother would go out of her way to give us a fun life despite how little we had and with no real support from our father. There would be coin rolling breakfast parties so we could go to the family hour at the skating rink. She would pour kool aid into fancy tea cups and sit with us outside and eat sandwiches while watching us run around catching an evening breeze. The moments mattered for my mother because they were few and far between. She created magic for her children because she never stopped believing in the magic of this world.

There were moments where I would lay awake in my clutches of depression beating myself up for saying every horrible thing a daughter could say to their mother back when I was a functioning addict. At the time, I hadn't known what a monster mental illness was for our family.

My fondest memory of my mother was when she finally got a stable office job. She could wake up and have breakfast with her children and see us off to school. She would be home in the evenings so we weren’t left alone with the t.v. as our babysitter. My childhood evolved from living in a one bedroom apartment with my parents and 2 sisters, to eventually having my own room, where I could slam the door for every imaginable teenage tantrum. I credit her for breaking her back to provide us with a home where I could sit on the toilet seat and watch this warrior paint her face for her daily battle.

When it comes to what sets my mother apart from the rest, it comes with her dedication to making sure her children had every possible opportunity at a better life. My mother was my advocate. I was diagnosed with tourettes at a young age. Tourettes, at the time, had only recently been introduced to the lexicon of mental health. There was suspicion of early childhood depression and anxiety. I exhibited signs of obsessive compulsive hoarding. The more anxious I became, my tics became more intrusive to my daily life.

Doctors told my mother I would need to be put in special education, as I'd be too disruptive for a normal classroom setting. My mother right-hooked back with, "Well, I guess I’m homeschooling my daughter, then." When they suggested I wouldn’t be able to participate in activities with other children, my mother took on an extra job to enroll me in after school activities such as the Boys and Girls Club or Y.M.C.A.

My mother believed in me when everyone told her I would likely never graduate highschool or live a life without a constant caretaker. Super Mom saw that theory & TKO’d it into final victory. My mother encouraged my independence. She rallied in my corner whenever there was a supposed expert telling me I could not and would not. My mother made it her mission to give me every opportunity she knew I deserved.

My mother, Annette, was diagnosed in 2017 with early onset dementia. My older sister currently takes care of her in Georgia. I'm at an age where my peers are discovering the amazing friendship they are able to foster with their mothers and I'm envious. Visiting my mother always opens up the wounds I clumsily bandaged, leaving me to begin the grieving process all over again.

I inherited my mother’s gallows humor. I think it's a survivor's instinct to laugh in the face of our adversity. After my struggles with addiction and depression, I realized all of the extraordinary events my mother overcame to give me this life. It saddens me to think that I can’t hear that fight in her voice anymore. That when I look into her eyes, the fire that once blazed with determination for her child is now just a quiet ember. Naturally, I blame myself and my lack of gratitude. The silent battles she was facing inside, coupled with the battles she fought for me, contributed to the early atrophy of her spirit.

She wasn't conventional in how she raised us, and most mothers would shudder at some of her ideas, but she loves us. I think we were the only part of my father that could ever love her back as much as she loved him. So it’s nice to sit in my pajamas and think back to a time when I would have been embarrassed to salsa dance with my mom in the living room in front of all the open windows. I am ever so grateful for the sacrifices she made because she believed I would be someone who contributed great things to the world. I don’t know how I could ever ease the burdens of her mind as it slowly fades other than to live with the virtues and values she bestowed on to me.

I have my apartment, my dog, my life, my friends. I have my successes and defeats. I am discovering strengths within myself I hid for years because of shame or insecurities. I live with the voice of my mother telling me, “Do no harm, but take no shit my little adventurer.”