my mom loved yellow roses

My mom loved yellow roses and spoke of this love for them often. In my childhood, she  reminisced about the many dozens of yellow roses dad had given her over the years. She traced her preference for yellow roses to her mother's preference for yellow roses.  I came to love yellow roses as a way to love my mother and my grandmother.  Mom's fondness for yellow roses did not seem connected to my dad, who always sent her a dozen for her birthday, their anniversary and Mother's Day. She had also liked them as a little girl. She thought they were special, which is probably why my dad took to sending her yellow roses whenever he bought her flowers.

I grew up also believing yellow roses were special. I wanted to be like my mom. I wanted men to send me flowers some day and I began to hope, at a young age, that men would give me yellow roses.

My ex-husband, while we were still dating, knew all about my thing for yellow roses. I had told him about the time I sent my mother a dozen yellow roses for Mother's Day, the first Mother's Day after my parents had divorced, mom had moved out of state in secret and I had not known where she, or my baby brother and sister, who I had raised as much as mom had, were. When he and I had a bad fight, I suggested we break up.  He did what was probably the only thing that got me to talk to him again. He sent me a dozen yellow roses, between Christmas and New Year's, in the frozen tundra of the Upper Midwest. The first dozen didn't open so he made the florist, the best one in town, send a second. When the second dozen did not open, the florist refunded his money.  He had belittled me, abusively, because my apartment was furnished with used furniture and home made bookshelves. I was a grad student, and so was he. He rented a room in a house owned by a little older lady, he had no furniture but he ridiculed me for not having a middle class, well appointed apartment. I broke off from him. Then he sent those yellow roses.

I should have known we were supposed to break up when those roses didn't open. Live and learn.

Just before that my mother's first post-divorce  Mother's Day, and my first post-parents'-divorce Mother's Day,  I learned where mom and the kids were living. I came up with the idea, which does not seem entirely reasonable to me now, that I would send my mom a dozen yellow roses for my first Mother's Day apart from her. I was thrilled to know where the kids were, hoping I might get to see them during my summer college break.

I had to save all that spring trimester to have the money to pay a local florist in Wisconsin. The florist had said if I ordered the flowers far in advance, he would not have to charge me for a long distant call, he could just mail the check for my flowers to a florist in my mother's new town. I was that frugal that I saved myself a few minutes long distance phoning.

My months' long plan, saving for the yellow roses, consulting with the florist to do it as cheaply as possible, and anticipating mom's happiness when she received her long stem yellow roses from me on Mother's Day took on a life of its own. All my college pals knew about my yellow roses plan, just like they knew I had been shattered when my mom, baby brother and baby sister had disappeared.

In my tender, naive and grieving eighteen year old heart, I imbued my surprise, long distance, order of a dozen long stemmed yellow roses with magic. I imagined mom would get the roses, rush to the phone, tell me she was sorry she had left me and three of her other children and just disappeared with our baby brother and baby sister.  I fantasized that my mom was actually going to act like a mother who actually cared about me when she could no longer use me to raise her kids, feed her family and do the family's laundry. I was the only girl until I was fourteen. When I would ask why my brother's didn't have to help with all the household chores, and all of them fell on me, Mom and Dad both said housework and childcare was girl work, that my brothers couldn't do girl work.

Neither of my parents told me, or any of their kids, about the divorce. Mom filed. Dad didn't think she'd go through with it. We only found out the day of the divorce hearing. It wasn't until I was in my fifties that I realied that mom had kept the divorce a secret because she wanted me to be her servant until the very end. And I also realized, long after the fact, that my mom had made sure she finished college, with my babysitting her babies, grocery shopping with two babies and a stroller for our family of eight and cooking dinner for eight every weekday of high school because mom was determined to graduate from college before I graduated from high school. I thought she was just being cute when she said that, even though she said it hundreds of times. Duh. She wanted to graduate from college before her slave, the daughter who made it possible for her to go to college, left home for college. She used me. And then she took my babies away.

At their divorce hearing, mom swore to the judge, under oath of course, that she would not remove the kids from Illinois. A few hours after the hearing, an interstate moving truck pulled up to the house, removed most of the furniture, including my bed, to furnish mom's new life in another state. She had lied to that judge. She lied to my father and all her children by refusing to tell us where she had moved to.

Drinking for the first time when I started college,  I would get drunk and cry into my beer about my lost babies. Learning that my babies now lived, permanently, 500 miles away, was very hard on me. I wouldn't see them grow up. I wouldn't see my mom very much.  I'd get drunk and cry for my David and my Margaret.

All my heartache related to my parents' divorce, the trauma of losing my babies for nearly a year, leaving home for the first time for college and seeing my dad's deep grief over the sudden loss of his life and some of his kids had made for a tough year got wrapped up in those Mother's Day roses for my mom.

In my eighteen year old naivete, I thought sending mom a dozen yellow roses would signal that I was ready to put my past family heartaches behind me. I also imagined mom would be thrilled to receive her favorite flowers, a dozen long stemmed yellow roses. Perhaps I had unintentionally blundered, sending my mother a symbol of my father but, oh lord, my intentions were good.

Looking back, I feel a bit sheepish as I recall the fantasies I had wrapped up with those roses. Mom would want, in my fantasies,  to have  better connection with me when she saw my love represented in those roses.  Mom would realize she had been wrong to take away my babies, to have disappeared for almost a year and she would suggest I visit right away. Mostly,  I fantasized as I gave up treat after treat to save up to buy those roses, I believed Mom would love it that I had sent her a dozen yellow roses, an expensive indulgence for a college student. I believed all mothers would be pleased if their children remembered them on Mother's Day.

I saved my money, handed it over to a florist. Then I eagerly awaited Mother's Day. I didn't call my mom on Mother's Day, not at first, because I assumed she would call me when she got the flowers to thank me. As that day turned into evening, I finally called my mom. When she answered, she did not mention any yellow roses. I said Happy Mother's Day and then I asked if she had gotten my roses.

I feel so tenderly towards my vulnerable, wounded eighteen year old self as I remember that Mother's Day gift, given with so much longing to feel my mother's love. My hopes were wrapped up in each unfurled yellow rose. And my mind also saw my babies, my baby brother and my baby sister, in the background of that phone call. I had imagined they would be pleased to see I had sent the flowers, too, a connection with their much loved big sister.

When I asked mom if she had gotten my flowers, her voice became whiny. "Oh, yes, I got the yellow roses, but it was awful to see that they were from you. When I saw the florist truck pull into the driveway, I thought Ron was acknowledging me as a stepmother to her daughter's, that he had sent me the flowers. I was so happy that Ron was recognizing me on our first married Mother's Day. Everyone knows I love yellow roses and I thought they were from Ron. I was so happy. Then I read the card, saw they were from you and, well, I nearly threw them out. I was so disappointed."

My mother had, at that point, been the stepmother to her second husband's daughters for a year. The girls lived with their mother, despised my mother and my mother had not done much parenting of her own kids, let alone someone else's. Her fantasy that her new husband, who shared no kids with her, would send her long stemmed roses on mother's day was a bit childish.  Additionally, her second husband, an odd choice for my brilliant, college graduate (ahem) artist mother, was brusque, insensitive and not inclined to send her flowers once in the twenty years of their marriage, which ended with his death. Ron had never gone to college. He was crude. He once told me my mother was a really good fuck. I wish I had made up that last sentence.

As I listened to mom complain about her disappointment that the roses were for me, I sat in the phone room of my college dorm, in the dark, on the single chair and cried silently. Our dorm rooms did not have phones. Each floor of our old dormitories had two rooms with phones where students could receive calls and make calls. It was private. I always liked talking in those wood-paneled phone rooms, usually in the dark.  I listened to mom until she was done complaining, grateful I was in that  private phone room, glad no one passing by could see me cry.  She didn't tell me about the kids, my babies. She didn't ask me how I was doing, how college was going. It was the first time we had talked since that moving van pulled up and hauled away my bed. All she did was whine on and on about how the flowers had upset her since they were from me, not from her husband.

His 'girls' were sixteen and eighteen. They were not pleased their parents had gotten divorced so Ron could marry my mom. Mom was delusional to think she had done any mothering of those teenagers. The Ron I knew never came to see my mom as his daughters' stepmother. He barely had a relationship with his own daughters. He would never have been able to recognize my mother as mothering his girls. It was just whackadoodle crazy for mom to have imagined, when she saw the florist truck pull up, that her husband would send her flowers on Mother's Day. And, maybe, it was a little crazy that it did not occur to her than one of her own six children might have sent her flowers.

I let her run down with her selfish, petulant words, crying silently the whole time, then ended the call. I don't think she had any awareness of how unkindly she had spoken to me. All she was aware of was her fantasy that when her oldest daughter, me, had ruined her absurd Mother's Day fantasies. Her disappointment was my fault. She came close to suggesting I should not have sent her a Mother's Day bouquet and that, I see now, is probably the right interpretation of her ungracious, even churlish, receipt of those roses.

Then there was the time, years later, when my mom had a hysterectomy. I was raising a newborn in Nebraska while she had that surgery in Ohio. Since I could not be with her, I sent a care package. Her favorite cookies, a new novel and some other things. I don't remember what all I sent.

During a call to see how my mother was recovering from her hysterectomy she said "Oh, listen to this, your sister did such a marvelous thing. She sent me a care package at the hospital. She even knew my favorite cookies. Your sister is so thoughtful."

Again, I listened to my mom say things that broke my heart, cried silently and did not point out that I had sent that care package. Obviously she did not value my gifts. Clearly she did not see me as any kind of a gift in her life.I think I cooed to my own little daughter, in my arms as I talked to my mother, whispering to her that she should never treat me the way my mother did.  Always naive and a romantic about all the people I have ever loved, I believed I would have a loving, happy relationship with my daughter forever. No fool like me, eh?

My mom died two years ago. She had dementia and could not recognize me when I visited her in Chicago. Demented, dead or back when she still her her full faculties, my mom never really saw me, never knew me. She didn't want to. Now I know that for true narcissists, other people are not real to them. Narcissists see other people as extensions of their own ego, see people as things to be used. Narcissists love narcissistcally, by only loving themselves. I know that now. I did not know it when I blamed myself for my mother's treatment of me, her use and abuse of me. And I didn't know it when I poured every ounce of love I had in me to give into my daughter.  I can still get down on myself for never having won my mother's love or my daughter's, even though most days I know I am perfectly good and perfectly loving just the way I am.

When I visited mom soon after that awful Mother's Day, to see the kids,  at one point, I tried to talk to my mom about the divorce, to tell her how hard it had been when she disappeared with babies I had help her raise. She didn't seem to understand a word I said. I wanted to get through to my mom, to feel like she saw me, like she heard me, just once, I said "Mom, you don't know anything about me. Aren't you curious?"  I was hoping she would respond by saying "Yes, I would like to know you better." Again, I had fantasies that we would finally have real conversations about our real lives, that we would be friends and my mother would not just see me but love and admire me.  I saw myself as an adult, after a year of college and much recognition by both peers and professors. I thought "I am finally an adult, she'll see me now!".

She sneered, imbuing her voice with a venomous tone "You don't know anything about me."She spoke harshly, angrily. I was taken aback by that venom.

"But you are the mom and I am the kid and you have never known me. Aren't parents supposed to want to know their kids?" Again, I was crying, unable to articulate much.  I think she said I was selfish and had always been selfish.  My father, who incested me when I was seven, once said the same thing. When my daughter was about five years old, during a visit with my dad, he suddenly reupted with one of his unpredictable rages. Instead of quarreling with him, and trying to reason away his anger, as our whole family had always done, I spoke quietly to Rosie, telling her to be sure she had all her things and to wait for me in the car. Then I turned to my father and I said "I had to let you treat me this way when I was a child but I don't have to allow it now. Rosie and I are leaving."  We had planned to visit for two more days. My dad was disabled at the end of his life, isolated and lonely. He loves kids, in spite of his tendency to molest them, and he adored his first grandchild, my Rosie.

I rushed home to tell my therapist about that fight with my dad. I knew as the fight was happening that I had healed from my father's abuse of me.  I knew because I remain calm and I focussed on maintaining a calm atmosphere for Rosie. Later, when I described the scene to Jane, I told her that at once point, I almost brought Rosie into the fight, only by analogy. She and I never quarreled. She had never heard any of her relatives shout and speak meanly to one another, at least none of my relatives. I didn't know what she heard when with her father. For one second as my dad was screaming at me, I very nearly said "I would never talk to my Rosie the way you are" but my healthy, healing self instintively knew it was wrong to draw my daughter into the quarrel, even by such indirection.

Jane, my long time therapist, agreed with me. We both concluded that since I had kept my cool, instead of sliding into emotional panic and relapsing into childish emotions, I had kept her out of it.

Rosie and I left the house with dad shouting after us to come back, he was sorry. We left in silence. I buckled her into the back seat. As I began to pull away from the curb in front of dad's place, Rosie said, also in a calm voice, in her usually happy chirping voice, "Wow. I never saw anything like that before. Do you think we will ever see grandpa again?" She spoke calmly and seemed of good cheer. I found comfort in that, believing she had not taken on any of my dad's anger as being related to her.  She was wiser at five, or better able to not take on other people's emotions.

Neither of my parents were fit to parent but I was and I am.

Now I know projection when I hear it. My mom projected her unhappiness onto me. My dad projected his unhappiness onto me. My ex husband project his damage onto me.  Every man I have ever been attracted to tends to not see me. The men I am drawn to see their own boogeymen, just as my folks did. And, just like my folks did, the men I have been attracted to blame me for their own unworked shit. At the time, I internalized my mom's dysfunction as being my own. I thought it was my fault my mother didn't know me. I believed that if my mom thought I wasn't worth knowing, that I wasn't worth knowing.

If I never see another yellow rose again, it will be too soon. Don't get me started on mom's favorite cookies. And own your own shit.

I have sometimes, usually at vulnerable times in my life, done my own projecting, offloaded my own junk onto others. I don't think I have ever been as damaged as my parents were.  And I know I am perfectly good, perfectly lovable. I know I deserved to be loved by everyone lucky enough to know me.

I give good love. I am kind. I am joyful. I am unusually thoughtful because I remember everything people tell me and I make thoughtful choices based on things they have said. If someone I love loves yellow roses, I send them yellow roses. If someone I loves complains about being forced out of San francisco and tells me hum is sad to move to Oakland, I make a welcome-to-oakland care package with gift cards for local shops near their new home. I actually did that for someone I thought was my friend and he was angry about it. He said I had invaded his new neighborhood and he hadn't actually grasped that it was a 'welcome to your new neighborhood' care package.

So far, no one has ever sent me a care package. I don't think there is anyone in the world who would know enough about me to put together a care package.

Fuck yellow roses. Fuck Pepperidge Farm Brussel Cookies, my mom's favorite.

Oh, I am supposed to honor social norms and not say fuck. Well, fuck that.