Mother's Day fills me with angry secret bees.
I am a mama. I have two amazing kids. I like being a mama. I've always been motherly, in a nurturing, "Here, let me help you" kind of way. I have an A+ Infinity Surrogate Mama Friend who is utterly fabulous in all the ways I always wanted. And, those are things that are totally worth celebrating. But yet, this time of years rolls around and all my own ancient, secret mama drama comes floating to the top. I find myself forced to smile a lot when I don't mean or want to, and I try to ignore all the sappy sentimentality I never got to experience, because it might make me sob. Or double plus loud swear. Or take off running.
I grew up with a terribly young, mentally ill, alcoholic mother who slept with shiftless layabouts to propel herself forward. A woman who regularly told me I was a mistake. That my whole self, the very life of me, was a gift that she decided to give me "on the table" when she chickened out of the abortion at the last minute. She also told me she regretted her choice, that she once had the power to snuff me out but didn't, a gamble she regretted because look how terrible I turned out and how fat and stupid and how old I made her look and how few choices she could manage now that I had the nerve to eat her food and hate her boyfriends and need new shoes. There is no bouquet of weeds or pastel scripted card that covers all the feelings at the chewy nougat center of that kind of relationship.
I am not mentioning any of this because I want pity or because I think you can do anything about it, I mention it because I understand how weirdly and quietly those of us who were badly mothered can seethe and weep on a day like Mother's Day, and how hard that is to convey to people who just can't wrap their minds around it. Thankfully, we are not the majority. But those who had good mamas, or even mamas they came to love and understand later, can never ever get the pain and guilt and anger involved in never getting there, even for a tiny brief moment. Some say, "Oh, but there is still time! You can forgive, all mothers deserve to be cherished for the best gift you could ever have, she did the best she could with what she had!", but that grates even more.
I hear, "I had a good mother. Because of that good relationship with my good mother I am unable to imagine not having it, and I want to believe there is some way you can have that too, even if it just means you need to open your heart to your mother and adjust your attitude about her because we ALL had problems with our mothers and this brief time I just spent imagining the possibility of not having a loving mother has made me feel like throwing up. I hate talking about this. Why did you even bring it up? What is wrong with you?" Which is why I hardly ever do, I don't want to put anyone through even a tiny sliver of what I went through. Privately, heavily loaded words like, "Mother's Day" provoke an expansive fireworks display of words, memories, tragedies and quiet secret sucker punches, even though I can usually smile through it so no one will know.
Not every part of the word Mother makes me cringe like an abused dog. But the fact that it could makes Mother's Day a monumental effort to keep it normal on the outside. People who got to love and be loved by their mamas are luckier than they can even imagine, and the good ones deserve their the whole cherished cycle of macaroni necklaces and PB and extra sloppy J breakfasts in bed. I learned the painful hard way that no one makes time to soothe the sulky badly parented adult in the corner who grumps about about commercial holidays, cramming down all the feels with way too damn much cake. They don't know what to say, because they can't possibly comprehend it. And maybe that's actually good. What good is secondhand heartbreak anyway?
Mother's Day becomes Quiet Weeping and Avoidance Day, party of Me, eventually rounded out by knowing it’s just a stupid day and only has the meaning I give it, and that I have plenty of other rad mama stuff worth celebrating.
Someday I will learn how to tell this story without feeling like I’m the jerk who took a turd to a tea party.
xo
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