I wake hot and throw
off the covers.
The sun is shining in
through the window and I wonder what time it is.
My mind drifts to the
approaching holiday. I’ve been pretty chill with Mother’s Day for the last few
years, but this year, with all the emotional turmoil that has accompanied this
move,
I find my mother keeps floating to the surface.
I think we carry our
moms deep within, like a disease waiting to blossom.
The last time we
spoke was perhaps five years ago.
The caller ID says
Betty Ball and I wonder why my grandma is calling.
I say hello and my
mother’s voice is on the other end of the line.
It has been too many
years to count since I have heard her voice,
but you don’t forget
the sound of the mother.
She doesn’t ask how I
am, how her granddaughter is, if I have cancer, if I’m happy, the plethora of
things I would ask my daughter after a decade or more of not talking. She wants
to talk about
herself, about how I have wronged her,
about her terrible
place in this world.
Another lost chance to
mend this gaping wound.
I hang up.
Lump in throat.
Willing myself not to
lose my shit over her again.
It’s not her fault. It’s
the disease. Insidiously pushing my mother out
and replacing her with this
person that I don’t know.
This weekend my heart
aches for those of us who have mothers with mental illness, for those who are
estranged, for those longing for a connection that will never be.
Self pity is not a place that I like to visit
for too long and I remind myself of all of the wondrous people that I can count
on, and I think it’s time, time to shake this off and to love the people in
front of me. Time to be happy exactly where I am, with exactly who I have in my
life today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. But today, and today I have too many people
to count that support and believe in me.
So why give so much power to one?
