Where’s Your Mom?

Most kids go through an awkward stage at some point in their childhood. My childhood was just plain awkward from day 1. From the time I was old enough to recognize my own thoughts, there was something off, something unspoken. A great big elephant in the room that everyone just pretended wasn’t there.

My mother never left the house.

I mean never. She didn’t do the shopping. She didn’t hang out in the backyard. She didn’t take me to school, gymnastics, or track. She didn’t go to any of my school or sporting events. She didn’t watch me walk across the stage when I graduated from high school, university, or law school.

More than that, she didn’t even answer the door. If company came, the knock signaled her departure as she’d scurry to her bedroom. Sleepovers were obviously not happening at my house.

It wasn’t until I was 6 or 7 that I realized just how different she was from other moms on our army base. On milk days, the days the milkman would deliver to our area, she left an envelope with cash and her order written out on the porch. The milkman would take it and leave the products requested. other mothers just answered the door when he knocked.

It was around that time too that other children started asking about her. Some accused me of lying about having a mother at all, given she was unseen. Others heard her voice, either on the phone or calling to me out the window (as she stood to the side to avoid being visible).

It was yet another thing that made me different at a time I desperately needed to feel like I fit in. I was already a mixed-race kid, being raised in a Black home on a white military base. I remember those early days as being filled with loneliness and a sense of longing. Longing for a mother to take me to the mall, to buy me cute things, or even to come outside and watch me do backflips in the yard.

Yet nobody ever talked about it. Not my father, not my brother, and certainly not my mother. And neither did I. There was always a thickness in the air as we sat in the living room, eating supper on trays in front of the TV. I didn’t know what it was, but I sure knew what I wasn’t supposed to say.

As I grew into my teens, our relationship became more and more complicated. My mother made it quite clear that she didn’t want to adopt me. She also made it clear that I paled in comparison to my brother, 15 years my senior, in every conceivable way. He was agreeable, mild-mannered, obedient, clever, and a damn good tennis player. He was also the only biological child she and my dad had.

I was not. I was strong-willed, opinionated, mouthy, very bright but prone to challenge authority.

He was born in 1956. I was born in 1971. There’s a literal generation between us. Aside from us being completely different people, we grew up and came of age in completely different times.

But as they say, kids have a really nifty way of making things their fault and this was no exception.

I found a picture when I was about 13. Mom was digging through her hoard and there were about 40 small brown envelopes filled with photos. Most of them were of people I didn’t know from the 50s and 60s.

One caught my eye, a pretty young Black woman, smiling and holding a chubby baby boy. A pretty young Black woman, obviously out in public with that fat little boy.

I knew who they were. I asked her if it was her and my brother. Her eyes lit up like Christmas trees. She took the photo in her hand and began telling me stories about the base they lived on and how she had to keep my brother in a harness as they went out and about. I repeat, AS. THEY. WENT. OUT. AND. ABOUT.

My heart sank into my heels. She’d taken pictures with him. None with us existed. Not one. Not a single photograph ever existed of her and me together. No proud mommy moments with her sweet baby girl. No silly impromptu Polaroid snaps. Nothing.

She’d gone out with him. In public. She took him shopping. He needed a freakin’ leash, but she took him out.

It was then I knew in a way only a confused teenager can that she didn’t go out because I wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter how cute I was. It didn’t matter how many competitions and meets I won. It didn’t matter how many academic awards I won. I wasn’t him and I wasn’t worth stepping outside the door.

When my dad got sick with end-stage kidney disease, she went out. She bundled herself up in a long coat, kerchief, and sunglasses, in July to make the drive to see him in the hospital. Yes, she went to great lengths to hide herself, but she still went.

It made me resent her. It made me hate myself. we’ve all heard the saying, “A face only a mother could love,” but what do you call the kid whose mother doesn’t even love her enough to step one foot out the door?

Clearly, there was something fundamentally flawed in me. She didn’t even love me enough to go outside. Yet, I still didn’t bring it up. I was caught in a strange paradoxical existence of railing against her and desperately wanting her love and approval.

When my father died in 1994, she did go to the funeral. She put on the same coat, kerchief, and sunglasses.

For decades, she refused my invitations to spend holidays with me and my boys.

She turned down invitations to my wedding and my law school graduation.

I was a lawyer, a grown woman over 40 and I still was afraid to address the elephant in the room. The unspoken thing was just that.

Then, she started seeing things and hearing voices. She was about 85. At first, they thought it was Lewey Body Dementia, but as time went on she had none of the dementia or Parkinsonian symptoms that are usually associated with that disease.

Late-onset psychosis ended up being the final diagnosis. She had to go to a home. Suddenly, my brother and I had to have conversations beyond the usual surface crap. We had to make plans and organize things.

And we talked. We actually talked. And one of us brought the big unspoken thing up. It turns out, that picture, well, it was the last one. He had no memory of her taking him out at all. She didn’t attend his graduation in 1973. She didn’t go to his concerts or sporting events. She never went to see him and his band play.

She didn’t refuse to go out because she hated me! She just didn’t go out. She was agoraphobic, and she was suffering silently for decades.

It sounds odd to say, but her illness later in life was almost a blessing. Suddenly, at 85, she was a social butterfly.

I remember one time, taking her to a local emergency room because of ear pain and I had to firmly instruct her to sit down and not bother all the other patients waiting. She was just making rounds, talking to everyone as if she’d never been out…because she hadn’t.

Suddenly she wanted to have tea at Tim Hortons. She wanted to spend holidays with us, mostly me because I had her grandsons and I’m a mean cook, as she said.

She wanted to go shopping and see things and go for car rides, without camouflage.

The picture you see is the only one I’ve ever had with her. I was 43, she was 86.

Growing up in a Black family, mental health wasn’t something that was discussed. Even if it had been on our radar, I doubt we’d have had the words or the courage. Discussing such things, airing dirty laundry, just wasn’t done.

It needs to be done. We need to talk about these things. Imagine who I could have been knowing my mother was sick, not that she actually hated me and thought I was worthless. Imagine the drugs I wouldn’t have tried, the booze I wouldn’t have drank, the worthless boys I wasted time on just to feel special for a second. Imagine a young life without that burden.

Or even better, imagine a young mother, who with treatment, may not have had her life cut down to existing in a box for 60 years, never feeling the sun on her face, never watching from the stands proudly as her children kicked serious ass.

When things get too much for me, I find myself wanting to retreat, to stay inside and shut the curtains. It can’t be hereditary because my mother and I have no biological connection. So it could be learned somehow.

I can stay inside away from people for days on end, left to my own devices. The difference between Mom and me, I talk about it. I feel safe to tell my husband what’s going on. And he’ll let me stay in for a day or two of my anxiety is super bad. Then, it’s time to get up and get out. It doesn’t have to be far, as long as it’s outside and Rudy, our dog gets his exercise.

I can’t stress enough how much we need to talk about mental illness. All of us, but especially for my Black sisters, please, if you’re struggling, speak up. The stereotype of the strong Black woman is all well and good, but we can only be strong if we take care of ourselves. The brain is an organ, just like a heart, lung, or pancreas. If one doctor dismisses you, find another one.

My mother and I can never get those lost shopping trips, graduations, weddings, births, awards ceremonies, and whatever other memories mothers and daughters are supposed to have back.

Don’t cheat your babies out of a mother the way I was cheated. And don’t cheat yourself out of a rich, full life! Seeking help is a sign of strength, we all need it sometimes.

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Originally posted on Medium.com