Today is my mother’s 80th birthday. I will not call her, I will not give her a gift. I believe she wants it that way. You see we are estranged. How did it happen? Well, lately it happened when I called and she would not speak to me. Like answered the phone and seemed to forget momentarily that she did not want to talk to me and then hung up. Thereafter my calls were not answered and not returned. This is not the first iteration of this cycle. Throughout my adulthood we have had periods of not speaking. What got me out of bed to write this morning and try to process was the memory of my mother holding me against a wall screaming at me, aged 7, telling me I don’t know what – I can’t go to Nicole’s, the babysitter’s after school, that my father is not there to protect me from her wrath. The last time my mother beat me it was September 1992. I had just graduated with my master’s degree from UW-Madison. I was job hunting and mentally ill with undiagnosed, and therefore untreated, bipolar disorder. A toilet cracked in the upstairs bathroom of the house my McDonald’s earnings helped buy. She was convinced that I had abused the toilet by putting the seat down too hard. Have you ever heard of cracking a toilet by putting a seat down too hard? As she hit me my only thought was don’t hit her back, don’t hit her back. They won’t believe you. My father, again, was not there to protect me from her wrath. He was 300 miles away in his second legitimate marriage advising me over the phone that this woman was not my enemy. The only other time I’ve heard that voice in my head a would-be boyfriend was cutting and hitting me as I escaped a hotel room we shared in Kingston.
I will not call my mother because rejection hurts, even rejection from an abuser. It seems what is left is emotional abuse, neglect. I know my mother does not want my call because my birthday comes 21 days before hers and she did not call, text or send a present. It just so happens that the day after my birthday is my sister’s birthday. My sister texted me happy birthday, a text I was more than relieved to get. I sent her presents of smooth-writing pens and bath gelee, two of my favorite things. When I did not hear that she’d received them, I inquired. Stacey informed me that she does not use that bath product, does not write in that color ink. I acknowledged that I did not know what she liked and inquired about a wish list before she clarified that in the three days since receiving them, she had disposed of the presents so she could not forward them back to me. I was stunned. It was an emotional punch. I recalled that many years I had not recognized my sister’s birthday. I had pledged to her to do better when I chose in my coach training to work more intensively on our relationship. But how do you have a relationship when the other person doesn’t want it?
There should be a term, a ritual, for exiting a family. A funeral, as it were, to retire a tie that binds imperfectly, blood. I have a spiritual family. Neil, Gina, Tod, Alison, Angela, Karim, Barbara, Zaynab and Satiya. My blood family now consists of Pascale, my only daughter. I conceived three other children but did not feel capable of raising any alone. It was my obstetrician who convinced me to go to term with Pascale, that lots of mothers were single moms. By then I had two degrees, my dream job as a local news print journalist, a roommate in a house and, despite my shame from the stigma, some ounces of the courage it takes to bring a child into the world alone.
My mother was there at the birth. She invited herself and flew from Hawaii to make it. She was the first to hold the child after the midwife, Karen Carr. I had hired a midwife and doula for the emotional support I knew I needed to accomplish this thing called giving birth, giving life. Karen comforted me as my body hesitated to let Pascale out. One lip of the cervix needed to release. In my first experience of coaching, while alone, Karen asked me for my thoughts, my fears, my hesitations. I said that I did not want to be like my mother. I was afraid I would be a bad mom. I did not know how to love this child. Karen gave me sage advice when she said, “Smile. Smile at your child.” She looked around my room at my futon bed and white Ikea bookshelf overstuffed with books. She said, “You have so much to offer this child.”
I think about my grandmother. My father’s birthday, August 29, starts the birthday season. She was a single mom to three. She only got a third grade education growing up in Newberry, South Carolina, and never learned to read. Her parents died young and left her to the care of her older siblings. I have heard that they were cruel, but perhaps were just overwhelmed and under-resourced. She ran away young. Eventually she and her three children settled in Newport News, VA. Hers and my maternal grandfather’s love were unconditional and having experienced it, I was propelled through life in my search for it.
As you read this remember perspective. I am writing purely from my own perspective about the meaning I create from my experience. Each one of us has perspective. My peace, the piece I contribute to this soup pot, is divorce. Not from possibility. Not from connection. The phone may ring one day with good news, a celebration, or a funeral. But divorce from that open circuit, that jangling wire connecting but not allowing communication to flow. I am closing the disconnected loop and moving to an embrace of love, support, honest feedback and a multitude of joyful moments I savor. I am happy as I express this pain. And once expressed, I accept it. I can let it go. I am complete.
These reflections help me put in context the joy that is ever present in my life. The love of friends, a significant other, of self. I am overwhelmingly grateful for the addition to the birthday season of Neil. We celebrated our September birthdays by traveling to UW-Madison and enjoying a football game we lost, while I reconnected with an institution that likely saved me. I learned about the Menominee and Ho-Chunks and relaxed on the Memorial Union Terrace as I hadn’t in my undergrad or graduate years there. We met Phil and Joyce who lovingly restored the Gonstead property in Mt. Horeb. I ate fried cheese from Culvers and realized anew you can never taste your first fried cheese twice. Mine had been 25 years prior and the taste of toasted salty fat still causes me to salivate. On Neil’s birthday, for my birthday, we went to see Hamilton at the Kennedy Center, beyond a treat.
It’s not the events or the trips that make my life special now. It is the moments of joy, sharing in consultation, discovering old wounds and healing them, working side by side to heal the next generation, learning, always learning and growing not just in knowledge, but in peace and self-acceptance. Don’t dial 911. I feel pain over my blood family, AND I feel joy and love and gratitude for them for starting me on my quest for the love and acceptance that I found in the world and within.
P.S.
I did send my mother a birthday card. I know she received it and appreciated it because in the instant I was preparing to post this blog, she sent a text.
