Birthday Thoughts

Today would have been my Mother’s 95th birthday. 30 years ago on April 18, my Mom passed. I still remember it vividly. My sister called me at work. I was making the schedule for the upcoming week at the restaurant I worked at. I knew immediately something was wrong, I could hear it in her voice. When she said Mom had died, I asked, “what?” even though I heard her just fine. I was stunned. I always thought things might be different. That there might be time for another outcome. Now, there was no more time.

My mother was a difficult person to know and even harder to love. Though Mom could be witty and charming, she usually saved that for others, retreating to her bedroom and leaving us to manage for ourselves. We had what is now termed a free-range childhood. In our case, that is a generous description for neglect. I had hoped things would change and that I might have the kind of relationship so many of my friends seemed to have with at least one of their parents.

When Mom died, that hope passed with her and I had to make peace with what was and what would never be. Over the years, I came to understand that the demons Mom was fighting had little to do with her children and more to do with her own childhood as well as her mental health. Sometimes I still wonder though. I thought I had settled my mind about Mom but then I had my own child. That event both increased my understanding and my outrage. Every time I cared for my child, I saw the many ways I was not cared for and even put in harms way.

So, I didn’t know my Mother very well. I don’t think anyone of her children could make that claim. Mom was an enigma. We knew she struggled with depression. Some of my siblings believe she was manic depressive as it used to be called, bipolar as it is currently known. I’m not so sure. I think like many of her children, she was an extroverted introvert or what has come to be known as an ambivert. I know depression played a role but I don’t believe that was all of the story. Rarely is life so simple or tidy.

I believe some of the greatest lessons and pieces of history in the story of Catheryn Jane McMahon, are the choices she could and could not make as a child, a woman, and a Catholic. I wish I could say her legacy was a triumph over those choices but it is not. Those choices have had a ripple effect on her children and their own choices, but this is not an indictment.

I don’t know what my Mom actually felt. For the most part, she didn’t share her stories, her history, or her feelings. She did lash out when she was unhappy, sometimes at the very people who were closest and tried to love her. Those events had a dramatic effect on my life. If you have read the book “Where the Crawdads Sing” you know that the main character experiences loss. Everyone leaves because of her father.

In my story, everyone left because of Mom.  As the last of eight children some of my siblings were already out of the house by the time I was aware of my surroundings. I hardly knew them and never thought they had abandoned me. It did get more difficult as the siblings I had always relied on left to forge their own paths, or just couldn’t bear dealing with an unpredictable parent. Still, I understood and did not blame but it was sometimes hard and often lonely.

I have never shared this before, but I was sad when one sister had her own child and spent less time with me. I felt a little betrayed when another sister got married to someone I had never met. On my fourteenth birthday, I lived close enough to walk to my brother’s house. He was still in bed from the previous nights celebrations (my birthday is on New Year’s Day) and didn’t realize it was my birthday. I always felt alone but as an adult, I know that was the same experience my siblings had. One sister that stayed behind went out of state to get married. It never got easier. Our family was different and as I grew older, I knew that I was also different.

I am the last of the eight children that lived. 11 pregnancies, 1 death due to SIDS, two miscarriages and the odd kid with a different father, me. No one ever made me feel like I was a”half” sister. The honest truth is, I felt different because my father was different. A man who sent telegrams, had a driver, took my mother to the theater and showed her possibilities she had only dreamed of. It was pretty unlikely that a man of affluence, with a place in society and a family of his own was going to stay. I think Mom actually believed he would and I became the failed bargaining chip.

In some ways Mom was kinder to me than some of her other children and in other ways not so much. I think that happens even in so called “normal” families. One sister said she hated Mom. I wished my feelings could be so simple and concise but sadly, they are not. It doesn’t help that I am a chronic over-thinker inclined to rumination but able to reel myself in most of the time. It also doesn’t help that my parents were intelligent, one educated, one not, but both bright. I am also intelligent and can tell you, like everything, there are both positive and negative sides to intellect.

Often people use intelligence as a means of feeling superior but I feel anything but. I have explained to my very bright daughter, also the child of two intelligent people, that there is a fine line between genius and madness and we must be aware of it. I don’t want her to have to wander around and figure everything out on her own. Yet, I don’t want to prevent her from finding her own answers, making her own way or drawing her own conclusions.

Sometimes I wish my  Mother was here to see what her children were up to. I wonder if she would be proud, or even care? Would she have relationships with her grandchildren and dote on them? Probably not. I know that is a fantasy but once in a while the hopeful child in me wins out and I allow myself to dream.

Happyness Art-Vanessa Harvet Bennett