Mothers' Day

R. and I spend the afternoon strolling downtown, window shopping, dipping into stores, trying things on. I talk about my creative drought. She talks about studying for finals. We lock arms, hold hands. Like old friends.  

This never happened between my mother and me.

“I’m not your friend. I’m your mother,” my mother would proclaim during our hateful fights, when she was drunk, and I was as nasty and disrespectful as a teenager can be; before she finally lost her temper and smacked me across the face. She never apologized, never considered that she may have been wrong. She just issued this slogan. It was her warning shot: Remember who I am and watch your step.

By the time I was 14, letting my mother touch me was out of the question. We’d be shopping or crossing a street and she’d surreptitiously inch her hand across my back and try to curl her arm around my waist to pull me close. This may have been her plea for forgiveness; her demonstration of love. But the minute I felt her fingers on my waist I’d stiffen and withdraw; widen the space between us and keep walking, rejecting her and reigniting her anger.

I wanted to love her, as every child loves its parent. But she channeled enough pain and bitterness into rage toward me, that whatever love I once felt became a phantom limb; a shard of fossilized bone.

Only now, 20 years after her death, do I think of my mother with compassion, probably because she’s not here.

I’m sorry she didn’t live to see me marry and have children. I’m sorry she didn’t get to know R. and E. or see the bond we have. I’m sorry she didn’t get to know me, the mom, who always apologizes to my kids when I am wrong. I’m sorry, but I don’t miss her.

A fierce clap of thunder splits the downtown sky and the ensuring downpour gives R. and me a delicious excuse to keep shopping. School ends next week and she moves back home for a few months. Our boundaries will shift then, and we’ll needle each other, no doubt. Until then, I bask in her love and the love of my family; a love I'd never imagined.

On the corner, near her dorm, R. wraps her arms around me and says, “You’re the best mom ever.”