mother's day

When my parents got divorced, they did not tell us kids.  My folks were weird. They filed for divorce, life went on the same until their divorce hearing. After the hearing, mom showed up with a truck and movers to take the stuff she was going to take and then she disappeared, taking my baby sister and baby brother. They disappeared.

Mom had dropped out of college when she married Dad. When she decided to divorce him, she decided she would first finish college. Her credits were so dated that she pretty much had to redo all college creditds. She went to college full time while I was in high school. She worked part time to pay her tuition. And she was able to pull this hard work off, even though she had six kids, because she used me as her slave. But I was happy to be her slave.  I loved my baby brother and baby sister.  I rushed home from school to be with them. Caring for them, fixing dinner for the whole family, doing the whole family's laundry and even doing the grocery shopping with a double stroller and groceries stuffed all over that stroller -- a kid shopping for a family of 8 with two babies in tow, hauling those babies and those groceries with a stroller. I had to grocery shop nearly every day because I could not bring home a whole week of groceries with the babies.

My sis had been born the week I had graduated grade school. I literally spent more time with her during my high school years, which were also the first four years of her life, than our mom. Mom was at college full time, and spent her evenings working in a department store.  Mom admitted she liked the calm of the department store, that she preferred it to running her household in the evenings. My dad worked long hours, was not usually home in the evenings. The other boys (I have four brothers in total) would hole up in their room with tv and I hung out with 'the babies'.

I loved those babies as if they were my kids. I am now a mother. I know what it feels like to love babies like your own babies.

When my mom took off with most of the furniture in the house, leaving behind four children and her ex-husband -- she even took some of our beds, she left us with no living room furniture cause, she said years later, she needed it.

What about us?  Didn't we, like, matter at all? I get that she was scared. But she was, like, the mom?

During the time that I did not know where my babies were, I was in hell.  I had never thought about things like therapy or depression so it did not occur to me that I was depressed or grieving. But I spent my freshman year of college in grief over my babies. And I don't remember anyone around me understanding my sorrow cause to my college pals, I was just talking about little brothers and sisters. Big deal, right? All my friends had brothers and sisters back home.

But I had lost mine.

How strange is my karma, huh?  Later, I had my daughter and lost her too.

Then, I found out that my mom had remarried the day she was legally able to do so. That she had divorced my dad because she had a new husband all lined up. That she had been secretive with her children about the divorce cause she wanted to keep the new husband a secret. She swore under oath at the divorce hearing that she would not remove the babies from Illinois.

Then, about a year later, my dad hired a detective and found her living in eastern Ohio.  My babies lived ten hours away from me.

I am an idiot. Just like a little kid goes on loving their abusers because babies come programmed to be loving, I went right on loving my mom.  I forgot all about how I had keened over the loss of my babies.  I even managed to skip over the pain of realizing my babies were going to grow up in a whole world apart from me, that I would not really get to see them grow up, as I had always assumed I would. (Just as I always assumed I would know my daughter as she emerged into an adult. I last saw her when she was 19.  Now she is 28. Does she look different, ya think? What kind of a person has she turned out to be, other than the person who can callously cut her mother out of her heart?  Is she kind to children? Does she still like to dance? Does she still care about fashion? Is she a liberal? . . what the fuck. Why do I torment myself with such thoughts.

I completely forgave my mom. As soon as I heard where my family was, I rushed to visit them. And while I was there, I swear to god, mom had me shampoo all her carpets and, and I still find this hard to believe but it is also true, she had me wash all the walls in the house. She bought murphy's wall cleaner, a couple buckets of it. She wanted all the walls scrubbed down cause her new man was a heavy smoker and she thought all the walls and ceilings were filthy with years of smoke and she put her slave to work. I mean, why not?  I had been her slave for years. And I did it.  I scrubbed every inch of every wall and every ceiling of that dark, dreary house.

Then came Mother's Day, the first one after my mom had left.  I saved up. I never had much spending money in college. I had a very part time job on campus, as part of my financial aid and that was all the spending money I ever had. I worked about 8 hours a week for minimum wage. I saved up enough money to order a dozen yellow long stem roses for my mom for that Mother's Day.  I did careful research and learned that I could avoid the FTD fee, the service in those days where you could pay a premium fee to have flowers delivered anywhere. Cleverly, I thought, I called the phone company and chose a flower shop in mom's new town and paid for those long stemmed yellow roses. I got long stemmed yellow ones because I knew they were my mom's favorite.

So Mother's Day comes. I expected mom to call me and thank me profusely, to shower me with loving gratitude. But she did not call. Fair enough, I reasoned, I should call her to wish her Happy Mother's Day. So I called her. And she did not mention my wildly extravagant gesture.

After we had chatted a while, and in those days, most people did not talk long distance very long, most folks mindful that it was expensive to talk long distance, I asked her if she had gotten my flowers. And this is what she said. I wish I were making this up.

She sighed dramatically, kind of a whoop. My mom does this dramatic whoop a lot. She say "Whoo boy, I got them. It was such a disappointment."

I waited. Stung. WTF?  I was so proud of my gesture.  I guess I was a very immature nineteen year old. I had given those long stem yellow roses magical power. I thought my mom would open the door, see them and rejoice. I thought those yellow roses would signal what I wanted to be true, that we were still a family, that she still loved me and I loved her and I was going to be all right. Because it is unsettling to have your parents divorce, your mom disappear and have your babies disappear with her and I still had goofy ideas related to moms. I thought my mom was suppose to, like, take care of me.

"Why were my flowers a disappointment, Mom?"

"When I saw the flower truck pull up, naturally I assumed that Ron had given me flowers. Or else Ron's girls. I thought they were honoring me on this first mother's day in our new marriage, and I was so flattered that Ron was recognizing me on Mother's Day. I thought they were from Ron until I saw the card. When I saw they were from you, I realized Ron had not recognized me on Mother's Day. It was such a disappointment."

She never thanked me.  Well, she did after I prodded her. It was clear that she didn't give a crap about the flowers or the fact that I had basically sacrificed an entire semester's worth of pocket money to pay for them. They cost $36 in 1972. A ton of money to me. We had ten-week trimesters and it really was about all my spending fun money for a trimester. No cokes in the student union.  No french fries after an evening studying. All my money that spring had gone into the yellow roses.