Dear Mom: I Refuse to See you as Evil

I remember one of the first times I looked at you like maybe you were the Devil. Ignited by the Y2K disaster hype, you flew me to the south of France, liquored me up in an old castle filled with strange adults and bade me tap dance for them like a monkey. Later that night on my way to the bathroom, you disappeared behind a wooden door in the castle dark and leapt out at my drunk and disoriented form. When my soul returned to my body, I looked up to see a glint of satisfaction in your eyes; a monolith giggling at my terror and skipped heart beats.

Thinking back, this was relatively tame in the grand scheme of our history. By then I had grown used to your changeable brick red eyes that brighten at the dimming of my own, often confused by your brutal displays of affection. Enduring your peculiar, burning gaze has been the price I pay for the chance of genuine connection. I have found that, no matter what, I can always find reasons to love you.

Flipping through the rolodex of life’s meaningful memories, there are many more snapshots of subtle cruelty peppered in with the good:

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Hitting my first soprano C6 in preparation for a big audition and glancing over to you expecting celebration but finding blatant envy instead. The next day the audition didn’t go so well. I pretended I didn’t know the music.

*

At your PhD graduation celebration I thought about the sacrifices you and I made to get you to this high honor! It’s no easy task being the perfect presenting teenage child of a single black woman academic. It dawned on me the buckets of love and attention I’d get from you now your stressors were gone, and tears began to flow that just wouldn’t stop. The tears spilled gently at first then grew torrential into an ugly cry of relief. Eventually snot and drool were invited to my elaborate display too. I remember chasing you from conversation cluster to conversation cluster with zombie arms extended, begging for a hug. I gave up, humiliated, after your third or fourth backwards look of disbelief and self soothed with ivy league party hors d’oeuvres in a secluded corner of the tent.

*

It’s a few years later, I’m still young, and heavily pregnant with my first child. I’m crouching, bare assed in an oversized sleep shirt, screeching my eyes bloodshot and sweating in the Summer sun. You’ve chased me room to room to front porch, skillfully poking and prodding at my hormonal nerves. [I can’t remember what we were fighting about; it was probably something to do with my baby’s father. Regardless, it was serious enough for me to finally square up with you, belly be damned.] I stand up and whip around, ready to tussle, but stop immediately because I realize you’ve been smiling the whole time.

*

Fast forward to now, a bad marriage and two more children later, and I’m decidedly down and out after a few years of highly unconventional choices. The most unconventional being the choice to leave the children with their father in order to pursue an opportunity to work overseas in Ghana. Two years of cultural adaptation and laying foundations yielded nothing but wisdom, and I’m forced to return to the USA, tail tucked and penniless. I’m a hard worker and my reputation is still fairly bankable. I could’ve stayed in Accra, grinding hard to regroup. But my extremely low budget was turning me into a sickly pseudo vegan with brittle nails and tired feet.

My inner teenager begged me not to come back to this town. She knew better than to once again become a ward at Chez Momma. Long before I left for Ghana, I realized that my shallow breathing and habitual cowering were trained into me by our codependent dynamic.

Do you remember how the drive up from JFK was pin drop silent? I was mentally preparing to return to the place I’ve resisted for years. A place where my room stays frozen in time, ready to receive every one of life’s failures.

Despite my dread, something told me that continuing to run from you isn’t giving me enough space to heal. If I don’t confront you now, I’ll continue to find you in another and this cycle of pain won’t end. Adult me, True Me, has to stop pushing forward against a heart tether that is needing to be examined with respect and gingerly untied. I came back here to truly see you, not with fear, but with understanding.

At least the dynamic of the house is enriched by the presence of your mother! When I found out you were taking Grandma in, I was intrigued. I remember you crying out in your sleep, “I miss my mommy. I miss my mommy!” And even as a small child, that heartbreaking. It was strange to get a glimpse of your soft underbelly, an aspect you never showed when you were awake.

Grandma is wrongfully labelled a “Traumatized schizophrenic” by our family. I believe she’s just autistic. Regardless of the reason for her lack of connection, she was tasked with churning out baby after baby every two years, creating life she couldn’t properly engage. It wasn’t fair to you.

Would your time together bring you catharsis? I guess I came home to hold space for the evolution of your own mommy dynamic.

So, we’ve been sitting through the winter months and into the spring, three matrilineal generations in one house. We’ve shared food, hot air and various odors. Everything but meaningful conversation.

You’ve tried to rile me up a few times, but your disturbances read much more like a petulant teenager or wounded animal than the monster I convinced myself you were. When I watch you jab words at your mother - who is more hilariously sentient and intelligent than our large family gives her credit for - I see where you are shadowboxing your own disappointments and blame. I let every subtle realization breathe within me. My bemusement slowly rewrites the narrative of victimhood I’ve held onto for so long.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of ways you continue to threaten my equilibrium. There are daily reminders that my time here is growing short, everything is not ok and that you are not my friend. In recent memory you’ve given much surprise with how cruel you can be. For example,

I know that when you visited me in Ghana you met with key connections and friends behind my back and filled their ears with the highlight reel of my worst attributes.

When I came back to the States, you made it clear that you were no longer a generous benefactor and I was to only expect a place to stay, nothing more and nothing less. [Let me tell you after two years of international couch surfing and improvisation, a place with a hot shower, gas stove and soft mattress is More Than Enough.] But when you witnessed my satisfaction with the basics, you did everything you could to make me feel like a second class citizen. Off limits car keys and wifi passwords insured we were living two different lifestyles within the same home. I think your favorite thing was watch me bundle up for a long walk to the library for internet while you and your laptop cozied into the couch. No, your actual favorite was to drive past me in the rain.

It bruised my inner-child ambition when I proudly invested my tax return into a creative idea for a business and tentatively broached to you the idea of investment. Silly me, (the conversations went) how could I ever consider myself to be a worthwhile gamble after all these years of failure? Obviously someone my age with my credit score and track record should Just get a Job.

I am far from blameless. I haven’t been an easy burden over the years. Messy love choices and jumping off every cliff has had me turning to you for financial support more often than not. Somewhere around the end of high school I started to give up on you ever being like the mothers I saw in the movies or some of my friends’ houses. I triflingly decided that if I couldn’t get emotional support from you, I would get love’s weight in dollars. That’s some kind of emotional extortion isn’t it? How embarrassing. But it’s true, I never hesitated to reach out a hand because it’s all I could concretely count on you for.

Given all this tension, what is our next step? What mutual truth can we stand on?

The internet says the reason you choose not to nurture me is because I was your mother in a past life and I let you down in the extreme. Perhaps I deserve every bit of your ire. I can actually accept that.

I think our dynamic illustrates a hallmark of the collective experience. In a post covid world my generation has just entered or just passed their “Jesus year” (33), which is the year of cosmic testing and karmic review. There's a sacred work needing to be done before we can be entrusted with the vision of the collective future. I believe Millennials are facing the truth of decisions made on this earth lifetime after lifetime, generation after generation, and are tasked to move differently than our parents did in this coming age.

I’m mystified when I realize that in this house our ages reflect sacred numerology. I’m (3)4, you’re (6)2 and Grandma is (9)4! As you already know, In mathematics, there is a mystical interplay between these three numbers and the way they divide into each other indefinitely. They are often understood as Tesla’s vortex key to the universe. The number nine is the completion principle of this magical interplay and represents the end of a cycle. Grandma, you and me all stand at differing points in the current reality. I’m preparing to inherit (and shift) it, you fiercely defend and grandma - having borne the brunt of the failures of man - is ready to exit. I believe the way we conduct ourselves at this crucial time matters immensely.

I simply cannot make the mistake of resenting you, even though there’s plenty of temptation. Resentment is the thing that threatens my ability to be a healthy mother working her way back into the lives of her children. They deserve a lighter experience than the one you gave me.

I’m writing this letter on the new moon and there is a ringing in my ear and an electric buzz running through my body. I’m experiencing an explosion of optimism about mine and my children's future. I think I’ve learned some lessons that you haven’t yet. And that’s ok. I just know now I’m allowed to disentangle our soul journeys at long last and that this is what acceptance and eventual forgiveness looks like.

I refuse to see you as evil, Mom. Thank you for everything you have revealed to me about love.