Swim Away From the Sails

"Do the right thing and learn. You are eager and exceptionally bright (Pop's side), but most importantly, you have the attributes of Nan and Grandma - you are sensitive to others but don't take sh.."

Still love you more.

MUMMY

She never took the credit, not even in an email. It was July of 2011, and I was at Oxford University studying English and living a fairy tale that was half-motivated by the urge to escape her and the drinking — and the disappearing — and the burden she became to me at twenty years-old. She hid in the creek house. She hid empty bottles of vodka behind the washing machine. She hid who she felt she truly was because she — unlike me, the escape artist — could not physically run from herself. So instead, my mom ran into the darkness and never came back. She disappeared into the deep black-green like the creek outside our childhood home and tried to become it, and I watched it happen from the shore, helpless, small, and afraid.

“If we tip over, make sure you stay underwater and swim away from the boat.”

My mom emphasized away with her left hand as she unconsciously maneuvered the rudder of our old SailFish with her right. I looked up nervously at the twelve-foot high sail, pulled tight and bowed to the breeze. I held onto a piece of rope she handed me at the beginning of our little excursion.

“Don’t let this go, alright? If I ask for some slack, give me some slack.”

I nodded.

“If we do flip, swim away. Swim away from the sails or else you’ll get trapped under them and suffocate and drown. Okay?”

I nodded again.

It was 2002, the same year I became aware of my changing body, and the same year my mom became critical of my physical appearance. She liked to remind me how, when she was my age, she could easily wear a skin-tight white one piece bathing suit to the beach. I thought, well, so can I — I just wouldn’t look like you. And I didn’t look like her, not really. I had dark, thick tendrils of hair that never went the same direction and big, orange-brown doe eyes, a stark contrast to my mom’s straight, dirty blonde strands and bright green almonds that sat perfectly symmetrical on either side of her strong German nose. I was a Hungarian gypsy child, from my dad’s side of the family. I was stocky and built for harsh conditions long before those conditions revealed themselves. It would take nine years before I had to meet who I was while I stood in front of the person my mom hid from me my whole life.

And that’s exactly what she said to me just days before she died.

“I’m sorry I let you down for your whole life.” She looked at me dead in the face with egg yolk-yellow eyes, eyes that were once piercing green like the sea — strong and intimidating and honest. How could such honest eyes hide her all these years?

I refused to accept that my mom was an alcoholic, as someone without control over herself when she spent so long being someone deemed otherwise successful. She was an established real estate broker. An entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs didn’t have these problems, did they? I tried to reason. She had me, and I went to Oxford. I traveled the world before I was sixteen with her help and support. She so very often stood tall on her own two feet and I wanted to be like that, and at the same time I wanted to inspire her to stay off of the booze and stand tall in my life again. She taught me how to swim away from the sails when the boat tipped over; I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t swimming now.

My mom was a boss, literally and figuratively. She gave so much of herself to others to a fault, and ultimately that pulled away from her own introspection. So yeah, she taught me how to be an entrepreneur, she taught me to believe in myself, and she taught me how to sail. But more importantly, she taught me a lot about who and what not to become. I learned not to judge others’ bodies, knowing the internal struggle I had with my own, practically drowning in my own hair and flesh as a child, trying to mould myself after a woman I didn’t resemble. I learned to speak about my troubles and not bottle things up, and to accept credit for myself where it was due; I learned to take what I deserve. I learned that much of this world and life is out of my control, and I can’t influence people who do not wish it for themselves. And most importantly, I learned to swim away from the sails, and to know when it’s too much — it’s okay if it’s too much sometimes — in order to save myself from drowning.