Dating : Me and Mom

She kept this little tableau on display for the rest of her life. I always remembered that I had given it to her, but until after she died I did not remember the feeling that had inspired the gift. One day last year I glanced at that little keepsake and suddenly I felt my seven year old adoration: Mommy! Love came pouring over me, a huge surprise. As huge as the ocean, the feeling swept me off my feet, knocked me down and made me cry.

The bliss of it lasted for a while, but became more and more mixed with confusion, and strangely, evoked even more anger. The sudden juxtaposition of that pure, innocent love, and my later views of my mother couldn’t be reconciled. I wasn’t sure I even WANTED to love her! My identity had been carved out of antagonism. Now did I have to forgive everything she’d done and said that I’d been holding against her? If I did actually love her, why had I built such a huge case against her, carefully detailing everything that I felt she had done to hurt me?

I’m not sure when I stopped loving her, whether suddenly or gradually, but it happened. I know this worried me as I grew up. I remember trying to tell my father, but he just reminded me of her good qualities. I once begged my grandmother to let me live with her, but she said I mustn’t say such a thing.

My mother was very clear with us that she had not loved her own mother. And yet in the last days of her life, it was her mother she was seeing and talking to lovingly in the nursing home. In the past year I’ve had a number of experiences of Mom’s love for me, and my love for her — but this only began to happen after she was gone. All the while when I was taking care of her in the last years of her life, I did not love her. I was kind, I was helpful, and I was secretly resentful, wanting her to be gone.

One day she asked me why I had been angry with her as a child. “Because you were weak!” I said. I don’t know where that answer came from, or if it is the real reason, but I did always long for caretakers who could control me, make me do what was good for me. I loved the teachers who could do that. I loved my grandmother who could do that.

Around Mom I could get away with anything. I could lie and she would believe me. I could sneak and never be caught. There was no backboard. I knew if I exerted my whole force I would overwhelm her. That was scary. I had to step down my power, weaken myself as a way to manage my emotions before I really knew how. I’m sure other children, children of alcoholics for instance, have had similar experiences. Our mother was never scary in a mean way, she never yelled or punished, and children from other families all seemed to love to spend time at our house. But Mom’s weakness was scary to us, her own children — it made us scared of ourselves. At least that’s how it worked for me as the oldest child.

Dad had a backbone. He knew when I was lying. He made me obey the rules. He WAS scary! And guess what? I loved him. But Dad had his own problems, and he became more and more remote as I grew older. Mom, who always told me she loved me, couldn’t give me what I wanted.

Who knows how these things work? My siblings have all had different reactions to, and experiences with each of our parents. For me there was not only fear and anger, but also shame in not loving my mother. My father and grandmother seemed to think I should love her. I mean, is there anything worse than hating someone who loves you and who did her best to take care you? The intense anger at such a sweet woman made me feel like a monster.

In the year since she died, I have found room for both the anger and the love. I learned that love can get covered up by layers of other feelings, and seem to be gone. And yet, in a momentary glimpse that stripped me back to my seven year old’s heart, there it was, right where it should be, at the center of my being. My emotions today towards my mother are more like a flip book of see-through pages, the love at the back of the book always still visible through all the years and layers and memories of fear and resentment that were piled on over top.