So, approximately 37 nanoseconds after I wrote “To say that my Mother and I had a troubled relationship is like saying the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground,” I had a revelation.
Not just any revelation, mind you, but the kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night with the cold hard facts of your life. The kind of cold hard facts that include irrefutable evidence that you have screwed everything up on a cellular level.
My Mother had her private battles, and, as her Only Child, I of course thought they began with me. After all, weren’t my parents happy for 11 years before I was born? Didn’t the problems begin with me?
No. They did not.
What I thought was rejection was in fact fear-fueled retreat. My Mother’s fear that she would hurt me in the ways she had been hurt. At best, she was completely ambivalent about having children out of fear of hurting them. Not an inability to love them. Not a lack of wanting them. An instinct to protect them.
Isn’t the most loving thing a Mother can do for her children (manifested or not) is to keep them from harm, even if she is the one who can inflict the harm? Particularly if she is the one who can inflict the harm?
When a mistake in her calculations created me, what was she to do?
My Mother was the toughest person I have ever met. I scared her out of her wits for 35 years.
When she retreated into silence, it was because she was trying to protect me, not abandon me. When I screamed about my abandonment, she retreated even further. Out of fright, not anger. Not hatred. Not rejection.
In her attempt to minimize the damage, I maximized it.
I understand all this 9½ years after my Mother died. Any chance for apology or reconciliation has been fertilizing her graveside magnolia tree for years.
My Mother loved me with her entire being.
I misunderstood completely.
My God it is hard not to jump on that easy slide into the pit of self-loathing.
Beautifully written and very insightful.
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