The Mother’s StoryOne of the earliest memories of my mother is also one of my saddest memories. Not sad at the time though, as I saw the situation through a child’s eyes and not with the experience of an adult. No, it is only now that I look back on that time and sigh acknowledgement. I was down in our unfinished basement that day, all of, oh, 6 years old? I was drawing pictures in order to cover the bare studs, brighten the place up. My mother was behind me, and without looking up, I asked in my casual way “Mom, how old are you?”. Shifting my brother on her hip, she didn’t miss a beat “I’m 28” she sighed.
To be so young, and in such a predicament. Husband, gone. Two children, 6 and 3. No money. A house to look after, a job to show up at, a car that was falling apart. And every day she had to wake up and look at herself in the mirror, probably saying to herself what she had said to me. “I’m 28”.
My mother is an enigma to me. I have no idea where she is coming from, and I hardly even know where she has been. I try and patch together the stories of her life, making up the parts that I do not know about. I know that she was born in India, to wealthy parents. Of course, back then, any white person was deemed wealthy in India, as the class line was so prominent at that point. She was practically raised by her nanny, her Aiya, as her mother was a socialite with no time for children. Her mother would feature heavily in her life, as someone to fear, exalt and be compared to forever. As many socialites were at the time, my Grandmother was both an alcoholic and a prolific charity volunteer…she worked with Mother Teresa in the orphanages of Calcutta. Another female ancestor, yet another enigma. But this is not her story. My mother was moved to England, followed by a move to Canada, each time for her darling father’s work. From what I can construe, he doted on my mother, and their bond was strong. I know that she is, and always will be, a Daddy’s Girl. During her teens, she was a quiet girl and I imagine, not unfamiliar to bullying. She was also a late bloomer, and by her senior year, was quite a looker. I have those pictures of her in my home. The dozen poses for her yearbook. Lean on the elbow here, hands under the chin there. I recognize the pain in her eyes, for I have been there too.
The rest of the story is disjointed, as if parts have been edited for clarity and continuity. She met my father at a young age, probably about 16. The families were friends. She graduated and went to the University of Toronto to study Biology, but walked out after learning she would be euthanizing a cat. If this were a film, I think I would applaud then. Her love of animals is strong, from her beloved dog, to her many, many cats…I think her heart just wasn’t strong enough for Biology, and she transferred to Urban Planning for some unknown reason. I have no idea what she planned to do with her life, and I don’t think she did either. In my head, I think that she knew she was to be a wife and mother, and that she would be taken care of. Urban Planning seemed almost a cop-out for such a bright woman. But maybe she was drawn to the creation of order, the straight lines, everything in its place. I will probably never know the reasons.
Marriage to my father came at 19. The wedding photos are painful to look at, even without knowing what was to come. She just looked so damn sad. She would tell me later that it was her mother who basically shoved her down the aisle, convincing her that it was just cold feet, telling her it would be alright. But it wasn’t alright. My father began to cheat almost immediately. At 21, a case of the flu was diagnosed as a case of a baby, and I was born 9 months later. I heard that he left her for the first time shortly after I was born. During a reconciliation, my brother was born, and two months later my Dad left for the final time. On Christmas Eve.
Professing to be “a little bit fey” in her own words, I always thought that my Mum was invincible, powerful and strong beyond her years and able to overcome any obstacle. Now, I sometimes catch myself thinking “how stupid were you?” and “how many wrong choices can one person make in one lifetime?” before I retract the thoughts as quickly as I formed them. What I regard as choice is never such when one is in the situation themselves. She had no choices. Her father died in 1982, her mother in 1984. Now it was only us.
Enter a fairytale, because we sure as hell needed one. A young, bright professor, friend of friends. Engaged and unavailable, he meets my mother and within one weekend he had ditched the fiancée, the unfortunate Rachel. The courtship was swift and we were moved to England within a year. My father did not try to stop us, and off we went.
The other shoe, as it always does, dropped. I’m not sure when, but I believe it was after the last of the children was born. The downward spiral is a tricky thing, as I do not know who was to blame. Dr. Phil tells us that anger and lashing out is just a symptom of a deeper problem, and if so, boy did we have problems. My mother became angrier by the day, more volatile, to the point where we never quite knew what we would get when we opened our front door. She was never physical, but the belittling and the blowing hot and cold was too much to take. I was given a lot of responsibility, some say too much for my age. She seemed furious at the world and we were the objects in her way. I felt blamed for being born. As I said previously, I don’t blame my step-father for leaving. She must have been intolerable at times. I can only think of the irreparable damage to his masculinity. After he left, I took over. Christmas was the first time of trials. Every year my step-father would put together a stocking for Mum, as she did for us. We took over the stockings, surprising her with gifts. She cried from relief, loss, and probably love. I don’t know which was strongest. It was after that year that I lost her, not physically, but that was the last time I saw her as my mother, and not as some sort of force to be reckoned with.
I moved to Toronto and was harangued. I came back every six months to visit and was scolded and put to work like a skivvy. She didn’t seem to understand that I was using my vacation to vacuum her floors. She felt that I “owed” her. She refuses to visit me, claiming that she doesn’t want to waste her time visiting somewhere that she doesn’t want to be (she has a hate-on for my chosen country). My visits became less frequent, dropping to once a year, then once every two years. Each visit became worse. A new boyfriend appeared, the wrong one of course. My brother and sister feel neglected and pushed aside. It is not uncommon to hear “I’ve raised my children, it’s time for me to have fun” while conveniently forgetting that there are two needy kids still living with her. They need her love, her attention and her understanding, and they do not receive it. I try my best to give them what they need, but I am so far away. MB and I visited this Christmas. The most generous thing he said about her was “Are you sure she is not bi-polar?”. I hadn’t seen her in two years and she complained about picking me up at the airport. I was vacuuming the damn floors by the next day.
I love this woman, this terrifying unpredictable, smart-as-a-tack-woman. We email every week to catch up, neither of us asking too much of the other. But I have backed away, looking on her as less my mother, more that difficult friend that you want to help, but her problems make you want to shake the sense into her. I know I will never understand her, but I will continue to try. I am torn between being the daughter that she needs and the daughter that I am, because I cannot ever be both. But I will continue to listen, to take notes, and to swear that I will be exactly like her, exactly unlike her, and make my own choices. What more can you do?
