Ambivalence

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Nellie. She grew up and married a farmer named Ben. I have seen a photograph of her, and she looked a lot like me, with the same facial shape, curling brown (no longer!) hair and a lack of height. I love that photo--Nellie is standing with her feet planted firmly on the ground, and the reins to a large horse in one hand and her small daughter (my grandmother) in the other. She looks strong and capable.

Great-grandmother Nellie outlived her husband, and then went to keep house for her daughter and her grandchildren. My mother was among those grandchildren, and learned everything she knew about cooking and cleaning and managing a household from Nellie. This is because my grandmother Keitha was a working mother. Whether or not she needed to be a working mother was a subject for debate, but the fact of the matter is that Grandma really liked to have a paying job, and had one paying job or another for most of her life. I have no idea what my grandfather thought of this--he never said, at least not in my hearing.

But I do know what my mother thought of it, and it wasn't favorable. Mom thought that her mother should stay at home and BE a mother to her children. She loved Great-grandma Nellie but wanted her own mother to be at home. Well, Grandma Keitha would have been miserable at home. 

So when my mother became a mother, she stopped working for pay and stayed at home with her children, as she thought was right and proper and the best thing to do. Unfortunately, my mother also really loved working, and once we children emerged from toddlerhood she didn't really know what do to with us. We had become uninteresting. So she was miserable too, as her mother would have been.

This came out in all sorts of ways, including the fact that I was never really "mothered". There were plenty of repercussions of this later in my life, especially when I left home for college and discovered just how little I knew about life, being a socialized person, and even about basic manners  and hygiene. She didn't like to be touched, and once we were past early childhood had never touched us without anger, so I was a little stunted and starved.

With two daughters in college, Mom had to (!) go back to work, so our much-younger brother had a very different upbringing from mine, and didn't experience the same unhappy atmosphere. I think it also helped that he was a boy, and so Dad took a lot of responsibility for his parenting. 

So after all those long boring years of wearing a cotton house-dress and slippers, which got replaced every couple of years when they wore out, Mom had to wear suits and heels (oh she did love those high heels!) and make-up as though every day was Sunday. She had income of her own and that was the end of the years of scarcity of funds, and there were fewer people at home on which to spend it anyway. Mom was happy.

Of the two of us, my older sister was the one who learned to cook family dinners and do all the house-running activities. She went as far in the 4-H sewing projects as you could go, eventually tailoring her own suit. I was as entrenched as possible in school in music and theater and dancing, which left precious little time to learn all the domestic arts. My still-single sister and I were as different from each other as we could be.

Eventually, I married and had two children of my own, but I could not stay home with them as money was extremely tight. Even with my income, every month came down to the penny, and we did not waste any of it. There were no dinners out, cable television, new cars. For several years, most of the kids' clothing was second-hand. Everything had to last as long as possible. Finances got better by the time both kids were in school full time. So when it might have been possible for me to stay home with the kids at last, there was no longer a need for it.

To be honest, I'm not sure I would have been a happy stay-at-home mother either. I always thrived in the work environment, and on days off I was stymied by the need to play with my kids. I still don't really know how to play, but fortunately they both loved to be read to (a thing I never experienced myself once I could read) so I had that activity with them, and I made it a policy that my lap was always open. I have never turned down a cuddle, even now that they are both adults. 

The whole reason to get into all this is to explain the ambivalent relationship I had with my mother. Stu and I moved into a two-story house twenty-some years ago, and when my parents came to see it I was happy to see that they were pleased with it. Until my mother hissed at me how it was unfair that I had the husband and house and children, as it was my sister who deserved it. 

That shocked me, and devastated me, and it was many years before I was able to put the pieces together and figure out where that angry remark had come from. It wasn't until I finally understood my mom's relationship with *her* mother and grandmother that I was able to forgive her and let go of the hurt. 

It took sitting down with a large pile of seemingly unrelated facts to start to understand my mother, and once I put them all together and realized what her outlook and experiences had been, I came to peace with so much more than anyone knows. I did love my mother, and I wish I could have known her as a friend before motherhood happened to her. I hear she was a sparkling person with her own forays into community theater, who loved to go to the movies and dancing. I remember her becoming so alive the year that Dad was in an officer training course, and she was suddenly part of the Officer's Wives Club. When it ended, she deflated again. 

Mom wasn't a terrible person, she was just not suited for the role that life handed her. Bless my husband, who insisted on showing her love in ways she probably secretly yearned for but didn't know how to ask for. I tried to make her last years happy, on the times we visited, and by talking every Saturday night on the phone. The last time I saw her, she confided that she was certain she would not live out the year, and she was correct. Nothing made me happier afterwards than the realization that I had made her laugh a couple of times during that last meeting, a difficult accomplishment during her intermittent dementia. 

It was a gift from God that I was able to understand and forgive, and show her the approval that she had rarely shown me. Only having known the love and approval of God made me capable of examining my past and letting God blow the chaff away. I hope I get to see Mom in heaven, so we can start over and do it better next time. And I hope that my own kids will be willing to forgive any damage I have inadvertently afflicted on their own sweet selves. Family is a gift, and God is good.

Love, Spud.