It’s Been Five Years Now
My mom passed away five years ago and I still wonder if I was a disappointment to her.
My mom passed away five years ago and I still wonder if I was a disappointment to her.
My mother had four children. I am one of them.
I sometimes wonder if I am the reason I don’t really want kids. I wouldn’t wanna raise a child like me.
I was a breech baby who grew from a colicky infant into a petulant child to a rebellious teenager and in due course, a rudderless young adult.
Given all of that it won’t come as a surprise that my relationship with my mother was often, shall we say, strained. There was always love, sure. I know that.
But there was just as much, if not more, bewilderment, frustration and anger … yes, there was anger.
As a child, I don’t think she knew what to do with me.
As a teenager, she looked me dead in the eye and said: “I love you but I don’t have to like you.” (in all fairness, who likes teenagers anyway?)
As an adult, I asked her why she never hit me as a child and without looking up from whatever she was crocheting she said: “Because I was afraid I’d never stop.” (I never bothered to ask if she was joking … but I don’t think she was)
As the youngest of my mother’s four children, I have always thought — and felt — she was burned out by the time I came along.
There’s evidence of that.
On my first day of preschool, my mother had her friend take me. I remember clinging to this woman’s leg, crying and screaming like a God damn banshee. She just nonchalantly shook her leg like I was a dog trying to hump it. This carried on until one of the attendants/teachers peeled me away.
All these years, and tens of thousands of dollars in therapy later, I still struggle with reconciling why you would pawn a pinnacle moment like that off on a neighbor. Maybe she had something to do … or maybe she just couldn’t handle taking her youngest child to preschool.
Truth is, I’ll never know, but for peace of mind, I try to believe it was the latter.
That was my introduction to the wonderful educational system. Wanna guess how that played out over the years?
Each new school year brought with it an inevitable Escape from Alcatraz type of effort from me. This was an annual, week-long, series of mini-events culminating in an escape . . . or at least an attempt.
I had varying degrees of success:
In kindergarten, my plan was foiled somehow and I was locked in the bathroom. Yep. Locked. In. The. Bathroom. Let that marinate. The teacher had locked me in the bathroom. Mrs. Fletcher, you’re a … rhymes with “punt”.
In the first grade, I used the old bathroom dodge. Got out of class to go to the bathroom and made a run for it. Since we lived within walking distance of the school. I made it about halfway home before my mom picked me up. The busybody school receptionist must’ve sold me out.
In the second grade, I used the same bathroom dodge and I made it all the way home and hid behind the couch. But our dog, Barney, gave me away by standing near the couch wagging his tail as my mother came in to find me. Different receptionist … apparently the same mentality.
In the third grade, I was presented with an incredible opportunity to move my escape efforts to a new level. We lived in Canada that year and since my mom drove me to school each day I knew how long it took to get there. I also knew on this particular day my mom was out and had left my half-sister with the keys to the car. So, I excused myself from class to go to the bathroom. I noticed the principal was not in his office and had left the door open. Seizing the opportunity, I went in and made the call to my half-sister telling her I was sick and to pick me up. I nonchalantly returned to class and watched the clock. What made this plan so perfect is that there was a door in my classroom leading to the playground by the field that led to the road into the school. Just at the right time I got up from my desk and bolted out the door. I ran as fast as I could across the field, losing a shoe in the process, just as my half-sister was pulling in . . . and just as the school secretaries were pulling out to get me. I jumped in with my half-sister like a fugitive on the run. Which I guess I was. Since she was completely clueless and not in cahoots with me, she simply rolled down her window and said: “I’m taking him home and you can deal with my mother later.”
This Canadian period was the most creative time of my school avoidance period — think Picasso’s Blue Period. We lived way out in the sticks so I would get up before everyone and run out into the fields and hunker down in the tall grass to get away from going to school. At eight years old, I thought I was brilliant. Barney foiled my plans. My parents would just let him outside while they stood on the porch smoking cigarettes having their coffee. They’d listen for his bark and look for the wagging tail popping out over the tall grass. My mother would yell: “Don’t stay out too long, you’ve got to go to school.”
In the fourth grade, we were back in the states and I just simply walked out and meandered home. Mom found me about a block from my house and I seem to recall us going out to get something to drink. She asked me if I wanted to talk to someone — it was less a question and more a directive. The only thing I knew about “talking to someone” (therapy) was that it involved me getting out of school — oh HELL yes, I was on board.
In the fifth grade, my parents removed me from public school. They sent me to a private Catholic school. Fine, right? Well, yea, except our family were practicing Lutherans. But that’s a story for another day. It was in the fifth grade I hung up my running shoes.
Until …
I got my driver’s license. Then my life got darker, and stranger, but those are also stories for another time. Eventually, I found my way out of that darkness … like I always knew I would.
I’m not so sure my mother was convinced.
I know my behavior hurt my mom and dad a lot more than I ever meant to. If I’m honest about it, I didn’t think about how my behavior impacted them at all. It was pure selfishness.
Now loads of people would say that they would take it all back if they could. I can’t say that. I regret the hurt and pain and I’ll have to live with that forever, but many of those experiences — good and bad — helped shape me.
The last few years of my mom’s life saw our relationship get more distant. We had our reasons — let’s leave it at that.
I would call my folks and my conversations with her were very brief. I mean two minutes, at the most, and always ended with “Here’s your father.” It felt like she never wanted to talk to me. That can’t be true … can it?
Every once and a while we would connect on those calls. It could be anything but the connection took place. She would laugh and tell me I was awful (I curse a lot) but I knew she didn’t think that.
I was able to piss my mother off to no end … but I could also get her to laugh better than anyone else.
Hindsight being what it is, I suppose I can trace much of the strain between my mom and me to this — like all mothers (and parents) she only wanted what was best for me.
The disconnect for us was that she was never too interested in what I wanted or thought was best, for me. She wanted me to WANT what she wanted — and had determined was best — for me … and I never did — still don’t.
All of the things I grew up with and around were nice and I am so lucky to have had them. I grew up privileged and I know this. I also know how hard my folks worked to give my brother and I that life. That is what my mom wanted for me … what we had. And the truth is I DID try going after all of that for several years but for some reason, it just never clicked with me.
Square peg … round hole.
So here I am five years later reflecting on all of that.
My mother got to see me realize some of the things she wanted for me … the education and the job at a company she could brag to her friends about. I’ve fallen in love with some great women, some of whom my mother even met … and liked.
Before she passed away, we would joke that it seemed like of her four children I was the one who seemed to have landed on their feet . I was the least fucked up and no one saw that happening … except me, I saw it. Maturity wasn’t a straight line for me … well, not as straight as my mother had wanted.
A friend said to me recently: “You definitely march to the beat of your own drummer.” I’ve always known that and felt that … this was the first time someone has seen it.
My mother certainly never heard it … but, the beat goes on.
For my mother and I:
There was love.
There was anger.
There was laughter.
There was crying.
There was crime.
There was punishment.
There was failure.
There was success.
There was support.
There was family.
I am 25% of my mother’s legacy.
I am 50% of my mother.
I am 100% my mother’s son.
I was never my mother’s disappointment.
I was always my mother’s confusion.