So many hard words end with the letters ITY. I notice words and letters. I have about 700 fonts loaded on my office computer just because I like artistic letters. Yes, I had a calligraphy set as a teenager.
I am thinking this morning of responsibility. A woman wrote into Dear Abby in today's paper that after a difficult divorce, her grown children still blame her entirely and she has to "walk on eggs" around them in order to continue seeing her grandchildren. What kind of adult children do not understand that it takes two to tango? That no single person on the planet is without flaw, so probably daddy contributed something to mom's angst even if he didn't mean to? And haven't we enough evidence of that? That even when you love someone with your entire being, you still let them down?
I have let my children down so often. I don't know some days how I can keep living with myself. When Kim was in first grade, I was PTA president at her school. A virus ran through the entire population which resulted in 60% absentee rates. In our household, Kim got it first. One night, after a long day of being a mom and president and wife and maid and banker and cook I was worn out. Kim was just sitting like a zombie on this chair in the living room, and I told her to wash up and go to bed. She said she couldn't get up. I said get up or I'll wear your butt out with a belt. Why she believed me, I don't know. I must have said it really mean, because I was not a butt buster ever. I could never aim to hit them on their tender bottoms. I tried a few times, but I would look down at my baby lying there crying, and I could not do it. I don't know how anybody can. I'm not criticizing anyone's parenting. I'm saying I made those little butts in my belly. I have struck out of anger, hit shoulders and slapped them and I'm ashamed of this. But to calmly administer lashes, no. That is my mother, not me. Anyway, Kim must have believed something because she got up, but it looked like it hurt her to get up. She was literally dragging.
The next week, I had the virus, and when I felt how bad it was, how much dragging I had to do, I felt like slime for not being more sympathetic to her. I apologized then and now too. She doesn't remember this. She remembers plenty of other things as there have been so many.
I am sitting here with tears flowing down my cheeks just remembering. I have never been more aware of my imperfections in any aspect of my life quite like I am as a mother. I just want to be perfect for them. I love them so much. Those failures are the hardest to bear. But I don't pretend I've been a perfect mom.
It takes a lot of humility to take that kind of responsibility. Sometimes I think we can be too humble. That was a problem with Abel. He was so quick to make excuses when he showed something inappropriate on his TV. Eventually he apologized, but he jumped on all the reasons it was not his fault first. And I cannot be with someone like that. I am too quick to apologize and admit my mistakes to the point that I become that wife writing Dear Abby. Low self-esteem can masquerade as humility. Balance is the key to so many things.
I am thinking also of charity, and I am still thinking about my mother. A friend emailed me in response to yesterday's blog that she wonders what her daughter might say about her. I would like to point out a major difference. My mother does not treat me the way I want to be treated as her daughter. But she does not treat me the way I want to be treated as her spiritual sister. I would not treat a stray dog on the street the way my mother treats my daughters. She has no charity in her heart for us. I have asked her for economic help one time in my life and I was sorry for it ever after. In 1994 David had to have orthopedic surgery and was off work for five weeks. We had to go on food stamps, but you cannot buy detergent with food stamps.
I asked her for laundry supplies because the girls were in school and I literally had nowhere else to turn. She sent a box of Tide over with my father and a single grocery bag filled with bounce, suave shampoo, a few other things. She never asked us if we needed additional help later, and she was gainfully employed and happily married at the time to a man with a very comfortable station in life.
Yesterday, I was so crushed by her letter and yet so relieved in a way, like the straw broke my camel's back and I give up. Towel thrown. I wanted to write her back, but what left is there to say between us? She has always done every possible thing she can to ignore my facility with language, to ridicule my writing. I thought well what would I say to her if I was going to write her a letter? And that became yesterday's blog. I did not write her, but I sent her a printed copy of the blog. And maybe that was wrong. Not to her especially, but to you. I used this medium to pursue my own agenda.
But, I take responsibility for that and have enough humility to admit that was not a bright shining moment in my life. I trust you have enough charity for me to love me anyway, and that is why you are not my mother, but my sisters. My mother ended her note by saying she did love me. Maybe she does. Maybe she thinks backs to moments like my standing in a little red wagon and feels regret for her choices. But there is also this adage: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. She seems incapable of change, of moving forward in our relationship. It has to be her way or the highway. She even said that in my childhood: My way or the highway. See, I got some of that poetry from her.
I pick the highway. I want different results.
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