Mother's Day is weird for me. It's a holiday that I have to celebrate, but do not wish to at all. It's not that my mom's dead... not really. It's just she's not my mom. It's complicated and strange and not very pleasant really, but here goes. So, biologically my mom is my mom. Except no bonding happened, which is crucial. I don't blame her. She'd had troubled pregnancies that ended prior to me and this time her spleen had exploded. They just slashed their way into her and removed me in the process and handed me off to a nurse with an incubator.
I came out alright. Mom was a mess with normal post-partum depression and all these pains and scars from the emergency surgery. She didn't hold me, not even in hospital, and couldn't when she came home. She didn't take care of me. It went on longer than her recovery time though. If not for my six year old sister, I would have never had a diaper changed or been fed. I wouldn't be here typing this. So, who did I bond with? The Sister. She was my mother for the first three years of my life before she decided she wanted her childhood back and rightly so. Mom also didn't have a great life emotionally growing up and she turned around and inflicted that on her daughters. Depending upon the daughter, it depended on what form of tongue-lashing we received. The Sister was a whore, where as I was the loser that no one would ever love. Actually from age three to about seven, I raised myself. I'm sure she was there in the house somewhere, but I rarely ever saw her. It was just me. I was pretty much Mowgli from The Jungle Book. I was only guaranteed dinner when dad was home from work, so I foraged and fended for myself. I smelled things to make sure they were still OK to eat and a lot of times things in our house had gone bad. I ran around the neighbourhood and the woods like a wild child. I didn't brush my hair, I bathed in the creek, I didn't wear a shirt. I didn't realize until I was older that I was completely and utterly neglected and cast aside. I found the freedom to be sheer exhilaration at the time though. Then when I was seven my mom decided she needed to be a parent. Her own mother, who had adopted her, felt that she was fat merely because her body structure was different. My mom decided the same about me, so I was put on a strict diet and starved. I'd already been starving and foraging; having absolutely no basis in proper nutrition, and I wasn't going to get that now. She only kept up the parental appearance for my dad and family and friends. I still had to forage during the day, eating whatever I could; pie, moldy bread with the mold picked off, scooping mold from cool whip to mix into some rice krispies because the milk was rotten. It was barely enough to sustain any kid who spent her days running and being active. But come dinner time, I was only allotted meager portions of a few vegetables and fake milk. There were fights. I couldn't express my words of "You're a bad mother and you've neglected and starved me!", so I would just say I wanted more food and if I didn't get what I wanted, I'd pick it up and throw it in the fake milk that was supplied for me. To anyone else it just looked like a fat kid who was spoiled and my dad certainly thought this was the case because he believed his wife that she was taking care of me during the day or wondering why I wasn't rail thin like he'd been in his youth, or my sister was. Really people were seeing Dudley Dursely, when in fact I was Harry Potter with a non typical white girl body. If dad did come home during the day he'd see me eating junk food because it's all I could find and I didn't know how to cook. But what he didn't know is that it was the first thing I'd eaten that day, but because mom said she was giving me three square meals a day plus snacks, he assumed that I was eating in between all of this. Just eating extra. She was also cruel in words as I've said. Basically that I wasn't good enough, no one would ever love me, and why couldn't I be beautiful and wonderful like my sister. Which I'm sure is what she was told and was just delivering the verbal blows down the line to me because they seemed to fit. I'm not even sure if she realized what she was doing or not. She was also cruel in actions besides neglect and starvation. She'd belittle me in front of people and push me away, say I was bothersome. You can probably see why I'm not a fan of Mother's Day. I don't hate her anymore, but there certainly isn't any love there. There's no real love from her. It's like an actor pretending to love, it's all fake. There's no love for her from me either. There was never a chance for that love to be honest. And while dad has problems with mom, the sun rises and sets with her for whatever reason. Perhaps because she wanted him when he thought no one else did? Who knows if it's for messed up abuse reasons or real reasons of love. I mention dad because I still live with both of my parents. It's like constantly walking on egg-shells. Dad won't believe what mom did to me growing up. He believes her and knows what he saw even if it was completely out of context. Mom's in denial that she was anything but the most perfect of mothers, adding special notes to their perfectly prepared school lunches (I'm not fishing for a perfect mother, she's actually said these exact words), when in reality I'd get rotten slimy bologne on stale bread and a bruised and rotten apple. It's not because that's all we could afford, we had better. I just didn't get better. And the only note I ever received was a forgotten grocery list that found it's way in there, a note to keep to my diet, or an often unsigned permission slip to a teacher. My lunches were so terrible at school and inedible that I'd forage for food off the filthy floor or scam school mates out of things off their lunch trays in order to cobble together something halfway decent as a meal. It got to the point where one kid had told her mother, who in turn made a lunch for me. I was scared. I already got in trouble at home for eating merely to live, and had learned to hide when I ate so as not to get beaten for the apparent "over" eating. This extra lunch business was involving a parent. Parents talk. They'll tell my parents. I'll be beat for eating. I refused the food and stopped pan handling for food in my elementary school. So there were a few years there that I didn't get any food until I came home and snuck something before my forced diet dinner. So, living with my parents I have to pretend that things are peachy keen. That mom was this absolutely perfect mother and I was never abused. Dad wouldn't hear of it, saying something so damning against his lovely wife. I didn't even realize I was still living like a wild and beaten animal well into my twenties. I was just following the motions of how I'd grown up, without a second thought. I'd instinctively smell any and all food before eating it to make sure it was safe to eat, and whatever food that I got I ate all of it because there was no telling when I'd get anymore food. This makes for a girl no longer being starved, but eating like she is, to become a rather plump girl. It also probably elicited weird looks from on lookers when I'd smell my food. It wasn't until a trip to Starbucks with The Sister and a friend, where she said, "I think it's cute that you always smell your food before you eat it, like a little woodland creature." She wasn't being mean, she was being completely honest. But it made me pause and think. 'I'm still smelling my food? I used to have to do this... I didn't think...' and I dropped the morning bun that I was intending to eat, got up and ran to the loo and cried. There were a lot of emotions and memories flooding forward from her statement; a statement that slapped me out of the vicious cycle I was still in. That's when I started working. Working on accessing all of those buried and long forgotten memories from my youth. Reliving all of those feelings and hurts in order to move past them. It took awhile, but I did it. Do I hate my parents or cry when I'm reminded of my childhood? No. Do, I still have a problem with food? Yes, and honestly it's no wonder. I no longer smell my food before consumption unless I really do have to smell the ham I've pulled out of the fridge or the milk, but on rare occasions I do end up hiding food from my family. It's the one habit I can't seem to shake. I suppose it's because I've never been sick from food, but was always beat because of food. And while we're a family that still lives together, even The Sister, we're more like house mates. She spends her time in her room working or watching telly and she eats meals in there. I'm the same way. So, I'm just minding my business eating my meal while watching telly and someone comes in to ask me a question and my first instinct is to hide the food. There's no reason to hide the food. I'm a woman pushing forty and I haven't been beat in twenty years and I won't be beat now, no matter what. Not merely because my parent's wouldn't, but because I wouldn't let them. But I am working on this one, so that it's not even a second or third response, much less a first one. But back to Mother's Day. I do really want to celebrate it... just for the women who have been actual mothers to me during my life. The black lady who helped clean our house when I was really young because mom couldn't manage it from the surgery and because this lady needed work. I cried like a crazy girl when she was leaving. Mom and dad couldn't afford to pay her anymore and mom could keep house now. She didn't want to be a house keeper but a nurse. I didn't understand being only five. All I could see is that the only woman I'd known as a mother was leaving and I couldn't go with her. Hell, I cried when the bug sprayer man wouldn't be coming to our house anymore. I was so starved for affection, attention, and human contact that I was excited for the days he'd be at the house and would follow him around just for some sort of human companionship. However, besides sort of telling me about how the process worked and not minding that I tagged along with him, there was no connection there. He was just a human and I rarely saw them during the days. This woman however, while she cleaned our house, I never saw her as a house keeper. I didn't even realize it was her job. To me, she was just part of the family and that's what she did. Like everyone's second mom or aunt came over and cleaned. I considered her children my siblings and the youngest girl, my age, was a close sister to me instead of the others just being older siblings to me. This woman also saw how my mother treated me and would sometimes secretly intervene and tell me to pay no mind that I was good and lovely just the way I was. It was like some messed up scene out of The Help, which that movie made me cry because it paralleled this time of my life so closely. The mother who was cruel to her three year old daughter and Viola Davis' character was the only thing close to a mother that little girl had and how she wailed and cried the day her "mother" left. Only my mom was more like the sassy party girl towards Octavia Spencer's character. Great as a friend, rubbish as a mom basically. I know that this woman realized I had clinged to her as a mother and I'm sure she's not surprised why. We kept in random contact over the years and seven or so years ago she stopped by the house. I, of course, was elated! My mom treated her like an old friend, and belittled me in front of her. This lady gave me the same look across the room like she used to when I was small and her eyes said, "Baby girl don't you listen to it." I had to leave and cry. This woman who isn't related to me, isn't the same colour as me, whom I honestly barely know, loves me and treats me like her own child, or even an actual human, more than my own mother. So, I want to celebrate her as my mother. I want to celebrate The Sister as my mother too. She was my mother for the first three years of my life and is still this older sister/mother/super BFF to me now. I want to celebrate my old Filipino piano teacher. She was fussy and a perfectionist and I always liked her. I knew she was a pretty awesome lady. She'd also give me the time of day when other adults wouldn't. I always felt a kindred spirit with her, but thought it was just my imagination. However ten years ago when she found out that Sarah Roberts was getting married and didn't invite her to the wedding or to play at the service she was really, really, really upset. The Sister had to tell her it was some other girl whose mom works at the church and then my old piano teacher could have cared less about that Sarah Roberts. She also couldn't stop talking about me to The Sister during that encounter; how nice and sweet and wonderful I am and how great it was I was her student. She basically gushed for an hour and that woman isn't a gusher. When The Sister came home she said, "Mrs. Christina LOVES you! And when you get married you better ask her to play at your wedding!" I also saw her a few times since then and it was like seeing a mother after a long time. She was happier to see me than anyone else there and hugged me (and she's not a hugger) and now we're sending each other Christmas cards and she's telling me how much she loves me. Warms the heart, it does. I'd count my mom's older and adopted sister, Aunt Jan, as a mother to me. I think sadly, she was a better mother to me than her own son, my brother, but that's another story for another time. It really is like my mom and her switched children, with my brother becoming the shining star in my mom's life and me in my aunt's life. She was really swell and somehow there is a connection there between us. We hadn't seen her since my brothers death twelve years ago, but her and her husband were going to be near here and wanted to stop specifically to see us. They stopped by the house and then we met at this restaurant. It was assumed and a little forced that I should be the one to sit by Aunt Jan. Her husband jumped up and proffered the seat to me, as in 'of course I would let Jan's daughter sit beside her!', which is exactly what it felt and seemed like. And Jan was all 'absolutely you have to sit beside me because why wouldn't my daughter sit beside me!' I don't know why there is a connection there of that nature between the two of us and not between her and The Sister, but there is. But I can't verbally tell these women that they are mothers to me, as I live with my own mother and snubbing her would not make life any easier for me. But to Mrs. Eliza, Mrs. Christina, and Aunt Jan here's your super secret Happy Mother's Day from a girl you treated as better than human.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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