Mother
Funny thing - ever since I wrote the post about my Dad; I can't stop thinking about my mom.
Why can't we seem to bridge the distance?
Why can't I understand her?
Why doesn't she understand me?
How come she's not interested in my kids?
Why can't she call? (Ok she doesn't have my number but gosh we have family in common.)
Anybody that's reading this blog knows the story so I won't bore you with the gory details and honestly that's not really my intent for today. (That can wait til one of my kids has a birthday and she doesn't call. :) )
I do want to say - for the first 9 or so years of my life, you would have had to scour the earth to find a better mom. She was there at every ceremony, every parent meeting, every show. She'd embarrass me by screaming my name (along with my rowdy aunts) at performances/competitions I was in and she made every holiday special.
As a matter of fact, she was known in my family for her cakes. Yeah, they came in a box but there was just something about Deborah's (pronounced De bore ah) touch. She was frequently asked to make the celebratory cakes for our family.
That hit me the other day - I was loading up a bunch of pictures on Flikr and I noticed that most of the pictures of me were from birthdays and in all of them I had a big old cake in front of me that my mom had baked for me. And anybody that bakes me cake can't be all bad right?
My mom doesn't know it but I idolized her as a kid. No mom was smarter, prettier or badder than my mom. And she was good about teaching us, that as her offspring we were no less. She taught me not to stay hit and how to be a femme fatale ; p
She also drilled in my head the importance of being well educated and independent and to scream out against injustice. Pride in being black, Puerto Rican, 100 lbs, bucked teeth and nearly blind. She'd say "You are beautiful Michele and don't let anybody tell you different."
Somewhere along the line my mom changed. Perhaps, it was not being within the protection of my father's love that changed her. She suffered the fate of many women. Women who have given too much, been mistreated and let down. She lost a little of her sparkle, a little of her fierceness. She settled.
Those aren't the reasons why we don't speak (what kind of daughter would I be?) but slowly those changes turned into behaviours that were so hurtful and selfish that I built a wall around me. As my wall grew, she completed construction on hers.
Now the divide is so deep that I don't know how we can ever bridge it. Maybe, if she became a true grandmother to my kids I could forgive it all. Look the other way, never look back. She could heal me by loving them.
Maybe, just maybe.
Funny thing - ever since I wrote the post about my Dad; I can't stop thinking about my mom.
Why can't we seem to bridge the distance?
Why can't I understand her?
Why doesn't she understand me?
How come she's not interested in my kids?
Why can't she call? (Ok she doesn't have my number but gosh we have family in common.)
Anybody that's reading this blog knows the story so I won't bore you with the gory details and honestly that's not really my intent for today. (That can wait til one of my kids has a birthday and she doesn't call. :) )
I do want to say - for the first 9 or so years of my life, you would have had to scour the earth to find a better mom. She was there at every ceremony, every parent meeting, every show. She'd embarrass me by screaming my name (along with my rowdy aunts) at performances/competitions I was in and she made every holiday special.
As a matter of fact, she was known in my family for her cakes. Yeah, they came in a box but there was just something about Deborah's (pronounced De bore ah) touch. She was frequently asked to make the celebratory cakes for our family.
That hit me the other day - I was loading up a bunch of pictures on Flikr and I noticed that most of the pictures of me were from birthdays and in all of them I had a big old cake in front of me that my mom had baked for me. And anybody that bakes me cake can't be all bad right?
My mom doesn't know it but I idolized her as a kid. No mom was smarter, prettier or badder than my mom. And she was good about teaching us, that as her offspring we were no less. She taught me not to stay hit and how to be a femme fatale ; p
She also drilled in my head the importance of being well educated and independent and to scream out against injustice. Pride in being black, Puerto Rican, 100 lbs, bucked teeth and nearly blind. She'd say "You are beautiful Michele and don't let anybody tell you different."
Somewhere along the line my mom changed. Perhaps, it was not being within the protection of my father's love that changed her. She suffered the fate of many women. Women who have given too much, been mistreated and let down. She lost a little of her sparkle, a little of her fierceness. She settled.
Those aren't the reasons why we don't speak (what kind of daughter would I be?) but slowly those changes turned into behaviours that were so hurtful and selfish that I built a wall around me. As my wall grew, she completed construction on hers.
Now the divide is so deep that I don't know how we can ever bridge it. Maybe, if she became a true grandmother to my kids I could forgive it all. Look the other way, never look back. She could heal me by loving them.
Maybe, just maybe.
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