HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
As any of you who read this blog know my mother and I don’t speak.
If you asked me why I would able to tell you very succinctly – she won’t own her mistakes and she prefers my ex-husband to me to the point that she hates me and adores him. We’ve had plenty of battles over the years but find me a mother and daughter who don’t. I’ve probably had more real fights with Taylor in the last five years than I had with my mother in the first thirty of my life and reality is Taylor and I adore each other. Despite the fact she took my best leather jacket to Boston on Sunday!
And there is nothing a cappuccino and a talk haven’t eventually fixed.
If mom could deal with either of those issues, if we could put them on the table then I think peace could be made – perhaps – it would have holes, it wouldn’t be Sweden but it would at least cease being the Gaza Strip. It would be Spain, small uprisings in the North, but democracy and peace overall. It would be a start.
Sometimes I harbor bitterness, which is not my best side.
Yesterday I started a TWITTER for about six hours called MYMOHTERSOOMEAN.
I had a great photo, I thought I would ride the tails of SHITMYFATHERSAYS, it was a bad idea. I deleted at ten-forty three last night, it was my demons online, not the person I aspire to be. And it’s not the sum of my feelings or the last fifty-one years of my life with her. We had many good years, tons of good times, she is a complicated woman, I understand her better than anyone and that doesn’t help things. Today is her 81st birthday.
I wish things were different, I wish things were such that she was here or I was there. I saw something the other day I wanted to send her but I figured it made me a schmuck, get kicked in the face send a gift, it’s been a habit with me for most of my life, I do it with my father at times and sometimes my mother. I decided to send more money to my kids in India instead.
Weirdly I’m having a dinner party tonight – I shouldn’t be having a dinner party, I’m on deadline. I invited my friend Joan who I pretend is my surrogate mother, though she is no such thing. But I’m crazy about Joan – I don’t think it’s an accident I’m making her dinner tonight. But I’m happy I am.
I only have one mother, and through all my ratings I love her. I don’t really like her a lot these days, but I love her and what I have learned through Taylor is I can be pissed and she can be pissed and we say terrible things and have horrendous battles and always find our way quickly back to each other.
It’s not that way with my mom. It takes two to make up. And usually the older one has to lead the way, but regardless both have to want it.
She has the shut off the love gene and I’m not sure what she gets out of it.
I don’t have that, I have the quick-trigger anger and use my words to get back at people gene, but that is it. I’m sure it has done its share of damage in fifty years.
Being a part of a family wins out over anger everyday with me.
In this life you only get two real parents no matter how badly they might behave sometimes or what the dynamics may be it’s a powerful pull. Sometimes a pull of pain, sometimes love –hopefully love more often than not.
I have many friends who have lost their parents this year.
What I go through seems like such waste of time and life.
Anyway, it is what it is.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM.
I wish it were all different and I wish you did too.
But have a great day. And I’m sure all my readers wish you a happy birthday too.
It’s an accomplishment to get to 81 – and especially to still be working and traveling and not cooped up in some home.
I admire that.
You may not know it but it’s my model, that other things I have learned from you along the way.
We are not the sum of our moments and we should never be the result of our fears.
HAPPY BIRHTDAY TO YOU!
FRESHMAN MOM and ALAWAYS A DAUGHTER
Posted in Freshman Mom
