Don't Call Me Mother

by Linda Joy Myers

  We went into her suite then, where I was grateful for a pleasant hour of conversation. The first part of our visits was always calm; she didn’t get mean or strange for about three hours. After talking for a while, we got dressed to go downstairs for dinner in the hotel. In the elevator, she looked me up and down, examining me closely, surveying my clothes, my face, my hair. Her eyes flickered and a slight smile appeared on her face.

  I began to smile, too, sensing that she was pleased with me. Then she looked away and said, “I hope no one thinks you’re my daughter.” She went on talking, but I didn’t hear a word. Stabbed in the heart, I gasped for breath, trying to suppress my tears. As the elevator made its way down to the restaurant, my mood plummeted, too. I felt crushed like an insect under the spike of mother’s high-heeled shoe.

  On the way to see Mother today, I coach the children, “Don’t tell anyone you’re her grandchildren, and don’t call her grandma.”

  “But why, Mom?” I can tell by Shannon’s serious expression that he’s trying to understand something that makes no sense, and wants a reasonable answer. I fumble for words, but just end up repeating Mother’s instructions. Amanda leans over and kisses my cheek. “Why doesn’t she want you? She should be proud of you.”

  I stare straight ahead at the road that bisects oceans of corn, unable to find an answer to my children’s questions. I wipe a tear off my cheek when Amanda isn’t looking.

  Mother’s building is in a neighborhood of lively shops and tree-lined streets. Children’s voices echo across the avenue from the Lincoln Park zoo. My kids are restless to get out of the car, but I circle round and round in frustration—there’s no place to park. I decide to drop them off at the hotel with stern instructions not to tell anyone who they are.

  As I drive away, it suddenly occurs to me that I’m doing just what Mother has demanded—accepting her crazy logic and passing it on to my kids. I keep feeling compelled to seek her out, though I’m still deathly afraid of her temper. She’s so unpredictable, fully capable of a dangerous, irrational rage. I want to protect my children from her, but I also want us to try to get along together. Everywhere I go, I see “normal” families sharing vacations and holidays. That never happened with us. When I was young, no one got along well enough to share a holiday. The few times Mother did come for Christmas or Easter, the day was memorable only for how terrible the fights were. Usually she’d go storming off and return to Chicago early.

  When I get to the hotel, Amanda runs to me excited, her cheeks flushed. “Mom, everything is all right. The desk people asked us who we were, so I told them we were there to see Miss Myers, that we’re her grandchildren, so they called her and told her we’re here! Nothing bad happened.”

  “You what? You told them? I told you not…” I hear Mother’s words spilling from my mouth. Shocked, I stop talking, but I’m worried about the kids. If they displease Mother, what might she do? By the time we arrive at her door I’m breathless with anxiety, but she motions us in with no fuss, and the visit proceeds without any disasters. I observe the children watching my mother, their solemn eyes taking in everything. It is clear that they’re uncomfortable when her sharp voice corrects them, telling Amanda she must have perfect posture at all times and telling Shannon not to bite his fingernails. They look at her as if to say: You’re a complete stranger, so why are you telling us what to do?

  After dinner, Mother ushers us through the back door of the hotel, and Shannon whispers to Amanda, “She doesn’t want anyone to know we’re hers.”

  My children are wise beyond their years, healthy enough to see through Mother’s crazy logic, which is more than you can say about me. I’m stuck in my own kind of madness, still believing that if I just keep trying, someday she’ll turn into a loving, welcoming grandmother.

  It will be my youngest child who finally gets me to accept the ugly truth.

  The next summer, I repeat the routine, going to see Mother once again, this time only Shannon at my side. Amanda is staying with her father. Shannon asks me if we can tell anyone who we are. I just shake my head, unwilling to mouth the same stupid instructions of the year before.

  The three of us eat at a café close to her hotel. While I’m out of the room making motel reservations, Mother has Shannon all to herself. I don’t know what she says to him, but when I come back, he’s been alone for several minutes, and now he’s acting strange. He’s limp, and his head droops onto the table in some kind of stupor; it takes some effort to rouse him. Finally, he sits up and opens one lazy eye, staring at me with an empty, forlorn expression, as if a vampire had sucked away all his personality. I’m horrified. I’m so used to Mother, I don’t notice how drained I feel when I’m with her, but my son is not used to her. That is a good thing.

  Shannon stares at me flatly, finally opening the other eye. “Why do you bring us here when she doesn’t want us?”

  His words stun me into a whole new perspective, but right now I just want him to be okay. I get him to stand up and put on his jacket, desperately hoping he’ll turn back into a little boy again and not this zombie-like person. My heart is pounding, everything is tumbling around in my mind.

  He’s right: Mother doesn’t want us. She never has. All my life, I’ve tried to get this woman to do something she simply isn’t capable of doing: to love.

  I kneel down to look Shannon in the eye, a prickly, sick feeling spreading throughout my body. “You’re right, Shannon. I’ll tell you this, and I mean it, you’ll never come here again, and neither will I.”

  I make a silent pact with myself never to come begging to Mother again. This is the last time my son ever sees his grandmother.

  I find my mother, who acts as if everything is normal. She thanks us for coming and tells Shannon and me to write to her. I politely kiss her on the cheek, and we take our leave. Mentally, I say goodbye to the woman who gave birth to me, the decades of her betrayal burning through my body, my sense of who I am and what kind of mother I have have been stripped down to the basics.

  How this afternoon has changed me will become more evident over the next few hours, and the next four years. I will find that leaving my mother behind, and abandoning the dreams I’d always had to win her, isn’t so easy.

  Lost

  All is broken, dark and ashen, with no hope in sight. The landscape I have fought against for so long is all around me now. Rumbling thunderclouds hover overhead, gray and empty of life. No one inhabits the world that I am lost in. I am alone, without comfort or nurture. There are no trees to reassure me, only scorched earth, powdered dust. I stumble and fall, my cries echoing across the emptiness.

  No, no! I cry out my protest, but to no avail. A voice tells me that this is the way it is, this has always been true, this darkness. All my life I have tried to make it not so, and at last I have failed. This darkness is the fundamental reality of my life. My mother doesn’t want to be my mother. She never has.

  Scenes march across the landscape from my past: my eager waiting for her at the train station, my excitement when she arrived at the door on a surprise visit. I feel again the grief that swallowed me every time she left, my pain at her obvious delight in leaving me in Enid with Gram to return to Chicago alone. I finally admit the truth to myself: That is where her heart always was, in that other place, where I was not.

  No! I can’t bear it. My mother doesn’t love me. Vera was right; my mother doesn’t love me…

  Finally, I can’t fight any longer. All right then—I admit it. I have no mother. You don’t want me, Mother? I am not your daughter? So be it. I will stop resisting. You win.

  We are not mother and daughter.

  So now I belong to no one. No one will hold and comfort me. Okay, I can survive that. You never nurtured me anyway. It was just a fantasy I had.

  I am alone? Fine. It’s better than trailing after you like a lost puppy. All you do is criticize and abuse me anyway. Why the hell do I want you? What good are you to me? All you do is hurt and reject me. I won’t let
you do the same thing to my children.

  Have it your way, Mother. I do not exist for you.

  I promise to leave you alone.

  I’m Not Your Daughter

  That very night, after cutting short our visit with Mother, the threads of my previous history snapped.

  My new story began ragged and raw. I screamed in the bathtub, a towel in my mouth so that Shannon, asleep in the motel bedroom, wouldn’t hear me. A lifetime of grief and rage poured out of my body, wrenched from the depths of my being. Words of surrender and protest, sorrow and anger, repeated over and over again in my mind. Everything I’d held onto, everything that had given my life purpose, broke into pieces. For a time that night in a motel bathroom in the middle of the Illinois cornfields, I had no identity. The person I had called “me” ceased to exist.

  Everything I’d tried to do to heal the past, to create a better future for my children and me, now seemed futile and pointless. Layers of shock eventually wore away, and in my new consciousness I could see so clearly what was true and what was not true. I began to accept this new reality. It was clear that I had defined my life around an illusion: that one day my mother would wake up and see me. She’d open her arms and take me in, sobbing her apologies. That one day she would be proud to call me her daughter.

  I felt clear in my decision not to write her, call her, or try to manipulate her into being different. There was nothing I could do to make her love me or accept me. I had tried everything.

  Whether from newfound clarity or the unmet need for a positive end to our story, I made another promise to myself that night: when Mother became ill and was dying, I would attend her despite everything. I believed in the possibility of transformation at the end of life, such as what happened with Gram. I didn’t want to miss that chance for Mother and me.

  Four years would go by before our next contact. And when it came, all our history, all the generations of mothers, lost and found, would rise up like invisible ghosts.

  Motherless Child

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

  Motherless children have a real hard time

  Motherless children have such a real hard time,

  So long, so long, so long.

  —from a Negro Spiritual by Harry Burleigh

  Over the next four years, my healing journey continued. My spiritual quest, a search for peace, love, and forgiveness, kept me going during many periods of inner turmoil. Approaching fifty years of age was especially difficult. Memories of Gram lurching around the house like someone half dead and of Mother behaving outrageously made me terribly anxious that I might become like them as I grew older. I was constantly vigilant for signs in myself of their irrational qualities.

  My search for understanding, along with my unresolved emotional pain and dark moods, had led me long ago to leave my Baptist and Episcopal roots and discover other forms of spirituality. I read the works of spiritual teachers, practiced mindful breathing, and developed a calm centeredness in meditation. Though I never attended meditation retreats, I learned that flashes of enlightenment can occur at any moment—while walking down the street or petting a cat. Nurturing plants, chopping vegetables, and interacting with a child can all provide a means of paying close attention, being present, and finding inner peace. Of course, my work as a therapist, listening with complete attention to each client, had always been a healing meditation.

  During this time, I became even more dedicated to my old standby—journal writing. It was an extraordinarily liberating practice for me to capture in writing my agonies and insights. Little did I know that writing would someday play such a significant role in my work and my life.

  On Easter Sunday in 1995, four years after my self-initiated break with Mother, I found myself reflecting on the theme of resurrection, viewing it as a symbol of ego death and renewal. I asked myself, “What needs to be attended to that I haven’t had the courage to face? What aspect of my life needs renewal?” The answer came swiftly: my relationship with my mother.

  I had begun to wonder if she was well after receiving various legal documents in the mail, including her will, in which I was named her only heir. I signed the papers as she requested, but included no personal note, in keeping with the promise I had made to myself. I wasn’t ready to let her back into my emotional life.

  Since my breakdown in the motel room, my general attitude and sense of self-worth had improved. After all, Mother was no longer tearing open my rejection wound several times a year. By refusing to contact her, I was breaking my see-saw pattern of thrilling hope followed by devastating defeat. I was no longer holding onto a fantasy about my mother that had only hurt me in the past. I knew it was essential in my growth and healing work to keep saying no to further abuse. However, I was concerned about her health.

  Shaking with nerves, I dialed her number, stopped, put the receiver back down. What if she’s nasty to me again? What if she attacks me? I took a deep breath. If she does, I’ll just hang up. I tried again. Tingles went up and down my body when I heard Mother’s voice on the other end of the phone, a voice I’d always loved. I was surprised to find her in a tranquil mood. Relieved, I made normal conversation, filling her in on my activities and those of my children. She said she was sorry she hadn’t heard from me for so long, but there was no blame in her voice. The conversation led into reminiscences about our Iowa relatives, and eventually our past. I told her that I’d put the past in perspective by now. She spoke the oft-repeated phrase—she had done the best she could when I was a child. Suddenly it became clear to me that this simple statement was true. She had done all she was capable of. Now it was up to me to accept it and find whatever peace and forgiveness I could.

  A deep sense of compassion for my mother as an abused and abandoned child in her own right came over me, and I felt sorry for that little girl who had lost her mother too. Before hanging up, we said we loved each other. Words of love had so infrequently passed between us, it was like a beautiful dream to speak them and hear them that day. After I put down the phone, I sat without moving for a long time, absorbing our surprising conversation. My four years of serious psychological and spiritual work—letting go of the past and knitting together a new sense of self—had borne fruit. I wondered if Mother had sensed my acceptance of her, and if it had influenced her, in turn, to be more accepting of me.

  Six weeks later, my intuition that Mother might be ill was proven true. I received a frantic call from her, which led to a conversation with her doctor about a spot on her lung. Even more terrifying, she had a brain tumor. On the phone later that same day, Mother demanded that I be on hand when she entered the hospital for further tests the next day. My heart pounding wildly with the shocking news, I chose not to challenge her imperious tone and simply agreed. I put everything else in my life on hold and took the red-eye to Chicago.

  After the long flight from San Francisco, I felt I had entered a dream. Suddenly I was off the plane and in a cab riding through the bustling city, the Sears building looming before me. The city bore many memories for me of those years when I had gotten to know Daddy and Mother away from Gram’s negative influence. I frequently came up on the train from college and imbibed of my parents’ love for their city. From the time I was little, Chicago pulled at my heart. It had seemed to me then a magical and magnificent place, where my fairy-tale parents lived without me.

  During the cab ride through a city filled with vibrant green trees and lawns—so unlike dry California—I thought about the cycles of nature and about the cycles in my own life. Now it looked as if Mother’s life would end in this city where mine had begun.

  Making my way to her place with the usual knot of anxiety in my stomach, memories swirled around me. She let me into her small apartment, kissing me hastily on the cheek. Her sweet scent enveloped me as I clung to her for a moment, still unable to believe that she wouldn’t live forever.

  I soon realized that she had developed some memory problems. She left cigarettes burning in ashtray
s, and left stove burners blazing long after she was finished using them. When the time came, we made our way to the hospital by bus rather than cab, because she insisted on it. The fact that it was raining, and that I was fatigued from my trip and had two suitcases to carry, couldn’t change her mind. Despite her illness and its attendant anxieties, she was as stubborn as ever.

  At the admissions desk, Mother was given forms to sign. I was horrified to see “TERMINAL” written on them in big letters. I wanted to grab the papers out of her hands, to protect her from this awful pronouncement. Mother and I hadn’t spoken about her diagnosis, but the doctor had told me she was likely to die within three months—by August.

  She became frantic when she couldn’t find something in her purse. “It’s all lost, it’s all lost,” she wailed, sounding like a child, and I realized again that she was not quite herself. She must be feeling vulnerable and angry all at once, I thought—a dangerous combination. I held my breath, remembering how unpredictable her behavior could be, even when she was at her best. One thing I knew for certain: At some point, the denial of me as her daughter would come up. I was prepared, but my heart beat fast as I thought about confronting her, as I knew I must.

  We followed a burly man down a warren of polished corridors until we reached the oncology unit. Mother’s roommate, a kindly gray-haired lady, and her attendant greeted us politely. I immediately felt sorry for her, having my mother as a roommate. Poor thing, I thought, you have no idea what you’re in for.

  Don’t Tell Them You’re My Daughter

  Immediately, Mother began holding court, sitting on her bed in her street clothes, brandishing an unlit cigarette between her fingers. Various hospital personnel bustled in and out to check on her. After about an hour, a perky-looking woman carrying a clipboard arrived, saying she needed some more information for the records. When she noticed me standing on the other side of the room, she broke into a cheerful smile and looked back and forth between Mother and me, taking in our faces, no doubt observing our family resemblance. Squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath. I knew what was coming.