Being that it was my mothers birthday last weekend and Mothers Day this coming weekend, I felt this was a good time for this post.
I usually try to keep personal experiences for this venue upbeat and positive but sometimes that is not where my heart is and other things need to get said.
"One day you're going to have a daughter and she's going to grow up and treat you exactly the same way you treat me and then you'll understand how I feel."
I lost count how many times my mother said that to me. I didn't know a lot back then but one thing I did know was there was no way that was ever going happen to me because I was not going to treat my daughter the way my mother treated me. I was going to raise her differently. My daughter would understand me and I would understand her. We would be best friends and together we would take on the world.
Since the last time I heard that I have learned a thing or two. Not only about my mother but more importantly about how I perceived her.
And all the knowledge that I have gained and the insight and understanding that I have come to have meant nothing at that moment as I sat on my bed, tears trickling down my face as my own daughter repeated many of things to me that I had accused my own mother of doing.
"You only cared about yourself and what you wanted. You gave the good part of yourself to everyone but me and the only part left over was the bad."
I wanted to say so many things. But she was in no mood to hear any of it. She wanted me to listen to her and anything I had to say was coming from, in her opinion, a place of complete lack of understanding of how much she had suffered by my hands.
All I could manage was to tell her was that some day she would understand all the things that had happened and be able to see both sides more clearly.
But as far as she was concerned, she saw everything perfectly clear right now and her opinion would never change because it was the truth. But she did want me to know that she wasn't mad at me anymore and had forgiven me for everything so that should at least make me feel better.
Not so much.
After she hung up and as I sat staring at the phone in my hand all I could wonder was how this happened? Was it the mothers curse? Passed on from generation to generation from one frustrated mother to angry daughter again and again?
When I was her age I was so sure my mother was wrong about just about everything and completely lacking in any understanding of how I felt or what I had gone through at her hands. I was also bound and determined to tell her about how she had been mean to me, treated me with no respect, never understood what I needed because she only thought of herself. Not the innocent child who was at her mercy.
The similarities were scary.
I realized years later that I did not even begin to understand where my mother was in her life. How she got there. Why she felt and acted the way she did. At the time none of those things mattered because I was the smart one. I was the one who knew more about how life worked and the way things really were. It didn't matter if she was older and had lived through more, seen more, done more. That she had had more heartache, more pain, more disappointment than I had ever had or probably ever would have. She had had life experiences she had never told me about and I didn't learn about until after she was gone. But none of that mattered because I understood life more than she did and that was that.
And now I could hear it my own daughter's voice. All the things I thought and felt at her age were now bubbling out of her in the same frustration and anger that they had bubbled out of me.
And now I knew all the things my mom had felt. All the sadness and heartbreak and confusion about where these feelings could possibly have come from.
This was more confusing to me at this moment because two weeks before my daughter had been in town and everything seemed so wonderful and I felt so completely connected to her. We talked about the fun we used to have, going to the beach, shopping and laughing. I couldn't wait until she moved back to California and we could do it all again.
And now suddenly it was all gone.
I did not know why and I was at a loss as to what to do about it.
But as I have come to understand over the years, life is a fluid and changing entity. Happy and satisfied one moment and angry and vengeful the next. Two sides of the same coin. And if two people aren't standing next to one another then they each see a different side.
I will wait, with a heavy lonely heart much as my own mother had done. Before she got sick and grew increasingly weak with disease and eventually was taken far too young and in far too much pain and suffering for me to really heal the rift that had grown between us.
Now I can only wish for what never was. Wish for healing and for the opportunity to tell her I was sorry I said all those things. Felt all those things. That even though I thought I meant them at the time, I was wrong to have acted the way that I did. I can only ask forgiveness to the quiet empty night and hope she hears me and knows that I loved her with all my heart. And I now understand exactly how she felt and if I could take it all back I would.
