I write a lot of posts about how frustrating my mother was. I realize this. My mother was an alcoholic, difficult, sad, too young to have had me, and frustrating. She's also dead now, so there is no way I can really process my feelings for her with her. So when I do process them, it's from this place of knowing there is no way I can ever get to a better place than where our relationship was. This can get me angry sometimes. Often, even.
Having said that, there are a lot of things about my mother for which I am grateful. Mother's Day is Sunday so I thought I would take time to do a list of these things.
1. My mother gave me music.
One of my earliest memories is of being in the back seat of one of my mom's friend's cars and listening to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album. She always had music around us and it was always playing. It may have just been the radio, but it was there.
When I was six, we lived with my aunt and uncle for a while. When they would go out, my mom would entertain my cousins and me by playing albums for us. So yes, in 1980, there was a house in Colorado where a young woman, three little kids, and two babies were all dancing to Off the Wall. It was glorious.
2. My mother inspired me to art.
I won't say she encouraged my art, because even when I was very young she was deeply critical of it, but she did inspire it. I started drawing because of Mom. She was an artist as well and when I was little, her paintings hung all over the house. I loved them and loved the idea of creating art. It was something she did and therefore, something I wanted to do as well.
3. Because of Mom, I got my first taste of weird.
Another one of my earliest memories concerns one of my mom's college art books. I remember being very young and standing at this cradle bookshelf in our dining room and looking at pictures of Hieronymus Bosch and being so drawn to the writhing and twisty figures. I think I fell in love with all things ghastly in that very moment.
4. Because of Mom, I am a feminist.
I will never in any moment say my mom was the best example of a feminist. She tended to give over to the menz and always needed to have one around. She basically walked away from her children for a manz and had done so emotionally many times over before even that. However, despite her inability to embrace her own independence, I saw it shine through anyway. Mom's menz were losers, so she did have to do everything herself. She could work on cars, handle a farm, build things, work any job, and live by relying on her own wits and skills. She was awesome in that way. I just wish she could have seen it.
5. Because of Mom, I learned to embrace being a freak.
When I was seven, my mom brought a refuge from Cuba into the house to live with us. Have I talked about this already? I might have. I repeat myself a lot. Anyway, there is a huge population of KKK in the area where we lived, and they would shoot guns at us at night.
We lived too far out for the police to bother to show up, so we were more or less on our own. Mom's solution, of course, was to get guns and shoot back. We also spent many nights sleeping on the floors on mattresses so we would be below the level of the windows.
It is a curious thing to be someone who others wish death upon. Curiouser still to be someone who had spent all of their life in an area, but suddenly be so unwanted. Whenever we would go places, people would stare at us. As a little kid, I always wondered how many of the people in the crowd were some of the ones who would drive by our house with guns once the sun set.
And while I really wish I didn't have to live through that, I know it helped to shape my outlook on life. It ripped away so many myths about what people were like and how life would be. A lesson perhaps taught to me too young, but a valuable one.
As much as my time with my mother could be dangerous, frustrating, heartbreaking, and stupid, she is still the person who gave birth to me. I can't change that, so I might as well embrace it. There are horrible things about it, but also very good ones. And even the horrible aspects can be something I transform into facets of myself that are strong, positive, and deeply ME.
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