I Never Told You

My mother walked this earth for eighty-four years. Her walk was anything but an easy one. Yet she held her head high and taught her children and grandchildren to do so as well. How foolish I was not see how courageous she had been in her life.

I had been so angry with her for far too long. I carried this frustration throughout my teenage years and way into my late thirties. In my mind, she had been so different than other mothers. And all I had wanted was a normal mother...a mother that went to parent-teacher meetings and got involved...one that made cookies and sang in the kitchen with a smile on her face. One that didn't drink heavily or smoke incessantly and that wasn't perpetually sad or angry. I grew up lonely because of the many times she hadn't "seen" me because she had been stuck " inside her own head." And in doing so, taught me to do that to my own children.

I blamed her for leaving my father and blamed her for their divorce, too. I blamed her for the poverty of that status and the stigma that it left us in at a time in the world where being divorced was a blemish mark on a family. I blamed her for fervently expecting so much from me as first born, for all the responsibilities of caring for my siblings along with those duties for which it called, and for taking me to task whenever they erred because they had "followed my lead." I blamed her for every weakness I saw in her. And that was a countless number.

I resented her even more when I had children of my own. Why? Because they saw no bad in her at all. They seemed to all have a mutual enemy and that was me. I was the authoritarian who made all the terrible rules. My children ran to her and I had to be even stricter. They adored her and I despised her all the more for it.

There is an adage that time heals all wounds, but I don't believe it. I think time makes us wiser and self-awareness sets in, leaving a pathway open for compassion and forgiveness. See, anger, frustration, resentment, and even hatred can wear down the fiber of your whole essence if you allow it to. And by that time, you realize your own life, with all it's let-downs, insecurities, and hard knocks have taught you invaluable lessons. So it's no wonder I never told my mother I thought of her as courageous.

She had lost her father and brother from the shotgun blasts of a mean-spirited old man. She had only been nine years old, the baby of the family. Her other older brothers had left for service to their country during World War II shortly thereafter that traumatic event. Her oldest sister married and left home, too. She probably didn't get the emotional nurturance of her own mother who was left grieving and virtually alone and had nothing left to give of herself.

Her beauty though, was a blessing. Auburn hair, green eyes, a slim build. She was a high school cheerleader. She had a year of college but then decided to join American Airlines to become a "stewardess." She left the comfort of a southern home and was stationed in New Jersey. But homesickness set in and she soon came back to the world she knew.

By that time she had met alcohol and my father. Party after party and marriage to each other not once, but twice with divorce. Then depression. I couldn't and didn't recognize her pain. I had too much of my own when she was in the midst of hers.

It wasn't until her mid sixties when she had the first of many strokes that she stopped drinking. It was then that I could begin to "see" her and understand her behaviors. And to forgive and love her. She had been a survivor...one tough cookie. I'm pretty sure her determination was grounded by love for her children. I see that determination in myself, too. She had seen that in her mother.. And it seems to go back generationally in all the women of our family and continues with us. We are all survivors of various sorts.

But Mama, I never thanked you for your courage. I do so now.