Sunday, May 01, 2016
Random memories of an outsider
It's odd what you remember sometimes.
On the last day of her life, I sat on the side of her bed, trying to keep her calm so she wouldn't struggle against the oxygen and palliative medications as she had been earlier in the evening. Having been with her every day for 5 years, I had accepted the inevitability of her death. It was different for my brothers.
She had put my brother through the wringer on the late night shift, and his wife had insisted he go home, grab a shower, some breakfast and some sleep while I took the next watch. He was in need of a break
Mom wasn't a warm and fuzzy person in the best of times, and when upset she could be tough to take.
I make dark jokes about it, but this really was our very last conversation.
Me: "You know, Mom, I know I was never the kind of daughter you wanted, but I think in the end I was the kind you needed."
Her response was classic Mom. "You were always so strange. I never understood a goddamn thing about you."
I am 62 years old. My mother died almost exactly 15 years ago. . .just a few days before Mother's Day 2001. The older I get, the more I understand and accept about my mother. She wasn't cruel, but she was distant and demanding. With me. She was probably rather damaged by a tough and unforgiving childhood of her own. As the oldest, and without a consistent presence of her father in her life, she had to grow up much too quickly. Having BEEN her mother's favorite child, she never experienced the feeling that her mother wished she had never been born. And, while she never used those words directly, she would tell young women "have your children when you are young... if you wait too long, it's not good for you or them" So the sadness has never really left me. When I found that poem in the box of papers and photos, I realized that she always knew I felt like an outsider-- but she was unable or unwilling to deal with it. I got over the anger years ago, but around Mother's Day all the missed opportunities and misunderstanding, and unasked and unanswered questions still make me sad.
- My sister was 6 years older than I am. I remember that she loved Pat Boone in the 60's. I emphatically did not. I had moved on to edgier stuff like Motown and the Beatles and Beach Boys-- not that their stuff was all that edgy, but in our household it was revolutionary. It was also a bone of contention from about 1963 to 1971. (when she got married and I went away to college) we never lived together again.
- She was the third child, the first girl, and the first to be born after WWII. I was the youngest of 4, born when a 40 year old mother was considered "advanced maternal age".
- She wanted to look like Doris Day and later Mary Tyler Moore. I wanted to look like Jackie O and later Mary Quant and Ali McGraw.
- We looked nothing alike. If I didn't look so much like my father's family I would have genuinely wondered if we had the same parents.
- This was underscored by the fact that there are baby pictures of all of my siblings, but in the youngest picture of me, I am about five. No birthdays, no Christmas, no christening, nothing. I was told that my pictures were lost when our basement flooded when I was 6 or 7, but somehow mine were the only ones lost. I suspect the real answer is less "act of God" and more human nature. I am the 4th child. My father wasn't away in the service any longer, and every youngest knows that there is an inverse ratio between birth order and photos. The firstborn has a camera in their face for every milestone. the last .... not so much.
- We were typecast from the beginning. She played sports, I was a klutz. She was small and girly, ("she wore size 6x til she was 9") I was the tallest girl in my class. She worked hard to get good grades. I got better grades without really studying. She was left-handed and couldn't spell well, I was right-handed and won spelling bees. Ed has brown eyes, like my Mom's, Peg and Stan have blue eyes like my grandfather's, mine are hazel or green, like my Dad's.
- I loved her, but I can't tell you that we were ever best friends. A big part of that, other than the age difference, was that we were so different, and the primary reason we were so different was that she "belonged" in our family in a way I never felt I did.
- I never really knew why I felt like an outsider, I just knew it was true.. I have a crystal clear memory of sitting on the foyer steps in the Alton Street house, sobbing my heart out after yet another fight with my mother, asking her why I could never, ever please her. If it was the Alton Street house, I had to be younger than 12, because I celebrated my 13th birthday in the Applegrove house. (Another crystalline image.) I don't remember what that fight with Mom was about, it could have been anything. It might just have been the combo of her menopause colliding with my puberty.
- Initially I tried to emulate Peg, but of course no one can be as successful pretending to be someone else as they are at just being themselves. Besides, I couldn't convince my parents it was real-- they never bought the act. So I resigned myself to being strange and misunderstood and went back to being me. Pretending didn't get me what I wanted anyway.
- At 9 or 10, someone gave me a book of "The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe". I was drawn, not to the horror or detective stories, but to a poem called "Alone." It struck me so intensely, I copied it in my very best penmanship, put it in a frame, and hung it in my room in the Alton Street house. Mom hated it and made me take it down. I found it in Mom's papers after she died, in the same box with the portraits of my sister and I that I hated so much. (the portraits are a story for another day)
What I wanted--what I always wanted-- was to be accepted. To be seen and not found wanting when compared to my siblings, cousins, or my mother's friends' children. It never, ever happened.
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were--I have not seen
As others saw--I could not bring
My passions from a common spring--
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow--I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone--
And all I lov’d--I lov’d alone--
On the last day of her life, I sat on the side of her bed, trying to keep her calm so she wouldn't struggle against the oxygen and palliative medications as she had been earlier in the evening. Having been with her every day for 5 years, I had accepted the inevitability of her death. It was different for my brothers.
She had put my brother through the wringer on the late night shift, and his wife had insisted he go home, grab a shower, some breakfast and some sleep while I took the next watch. He was in need of a break
Mom wasn't a warm and fuzzy person in the best of times, and when upset she could be tough to take.
I make dark jokes about it, but this really was our very last conversation.
Me: "You know, Mom, I know I was never the kind of daughter you wanted, but I think in the end I was the kind you needed."
Her response was classic Mom. "You were always so strange. I never understood a goddamn thing about you."
I am 62 years old. My mother died almost exactly 15 years ago. . .just a few days before Mother's Day 2001. The older I get, the more I understand and accept about my mother. She wasn't cruel, but she was distant and demanding. With me. She was probably rather damaged by a tough and unforgiving childhood of her own. As the oldest, and without a consistent presence of her father in her life, she had to grow up much too quickly. Having BEEN her mother's favorite child, she never experienced the feeling that her mother wished she had never been born. And, while she never used those words directly, she would tell young women "have your children when you are young... if you wait too long, it's not good for you or them" So the sadness has never really left me. When I found that poem in the box of papers and photos, I realized that she always knew I felt like an outsider-- but she was unable or unwilling to deal with it. I got over the anger years ago, but around Mother's Day all the missed opportunities and misunderstanding, and unasked and unanswered questions still make me sad.
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