Some say I’m away – spun
out of control: the dissolution
of so many years of denial.
With restlessness I circle
male species, perspective
skewed by parental fray;
have sweetness to offer,
ripeness – opposition’s grip
extinguishing marketability
we are all crazy, our seasons
passed, preferring the nests
we’ve built to new family ties
fear we will be forgotten, solo,
too self-centered to recognize
independence as exclusivity.
I would stand on my head,
call in the big leagues,
imagine fun, opportunity,
but constantly meet with
the wall of your limitations.
My desire is innocent – impish
maybe – dependable; hope to
create memorable moments,
but boredom is oppressive,
and you are shutting me out.
I am alone here, hoop jumping,
giving of myself, willing to take
ownership in this rejection play
but relationship is not one-sided
and this game piece is opting out.
Tucks her granddaughter in,
gazes into wide blue eyes,
flashes back to another girl –
now grown – apple cheeks,
and an unruly thicket of hair.
Nostalgia is shattered as
the child smiles back, lips
betraying a trace of another –
once father – whose absence
clouds the old woman’s heart.
She holds the child closer,
reassuring her undying love,
cannot not shake the echo
of words spoken only that day:
Kayla’s daddy always picks her up.
Told the teacher her dad is dead;
a reasonable conclusion for a
young mind unable to articulate
the questions in her heart: why
his name is only ever whispered.
Tries to draw his picture, talks
of missing his cuddles, surely,
cannot remember a man who
left before she was two – the
grandmother prays silently.
What will they say when she asks?
Niceties about how he wasn’t ready?
Leave her to believe she is somehow
lacking, unlovable, when in truth
it is he who is incapable of loving.
Chases women like cotton candy,
three or four a day, cannot help
himself, an internet-driven obsession,
uses his daughter’s picture as bait –
perhaps she is right, her father is dead.
Winter came early –
seeped into intimate
corners, froze hearts.
Walls papered white,
intending cheer, only
accented bitter cold.
Layers of submission,
hope, denial, ineffectual
in refueling the warmth.
She followed him down
the unavoidable slope
deep into the abyss.
Chilled, shaken she
braced for the arduous
trek ahead, injected
lightness into an
impossible situation,
committed, unaware
that he’d moved on,
abandoned her with his
customary indifference.
Years later, thawed
by the warmth of solitude
she reflected, wondered
how the blatancy of his
oddities has escaped her –
his fixation on antiquated
ideals, how he furnished
her mind with incoherencies,
collected things, not values.
She had merely been
an observer in his life,
yet it had escaped her
that it was the fiery
summer of her soul,
that had melted his ice
her scorching, all-
embracing passion
that had united them
and, as in all things
seasonally inevitable,
their love would die.
We’ve set our sights on exotic locals;
imagined breathtaking shores; success
a sun-kissed cruise across the ocean:
effortless indulgence catering desires.
Cornered by adversity, we’ve sailed on,
tabled our dreams, re-examined goals,
argued over pronouncements; tensed,
forgone celebration, awaited reprieve.
You focus on the destination, denial
your fortress; whilst I take a stand,
grab an oar; proclaim merit in moments
fumble attempts to acquiesce – love you.
Sanctuary is not found in distraction:
uninvited invades: suffering assured;
ours is to embrace, appreciate, cherish
the gift of togetherness; joyous union.
I learned about love from movies, and novels, and my parents’ marriage.
Love Story etched in my heart the message that true love endures hardship, and illness, and even death.
Wuthering Heights taught me that love can be dark and punishing, but it is inevitable: not to be ignored.
These were stories of passion and romance, and I yearned for that feeling from the age of eleven.
My parents taught me about the kind of love I wanted to avoid: love born of convenience, fraught with oppression, fear, and denial. “He loves me in his own way,” my mother would say, and I despised her for being weak.
“You are waiting for your white knight to come and rescue you,” one of my high school friends told me. “It’s never going to happen.” Her words stung. I was too young to see the faults in my own brand of idealism.
I married the first chance I got. He was classically handsome, loved to dance, and girls flocked to be around him. I couldn’t believe he was mine. We were nineteen. When the pale pinks and blues of our wedding day faded, reality set in. Unable to hold down a job, my charmer slept till two o’clock each afternoon, then moved from bed to couch, where he consumed packs of cigarettes and watched television. He seldom came to the marital bed, but when he did, he made it clear that it was my fault he stayed away – he despised me. “Life is so easy for you,” he would lament. Working two jobs and running our household did not feel easy to me, and I told him so. The marriage was over before our second wedding anniversary.
“You couldn’t keep it up,” my friend told me. “You were burning out.”
My second husband swept me off my feet with sweet talk and limousine rides. “I don’t want to just live with somebody,” he told me. I interpreted that as a proposal, although he never actually said the words: Marry Me. We’d stay awake for hours and talk about our dreams, and before I could blink we were living together, then married, and having children. He was in a hurry, you see, to ‘have it all’ before he turned thirty. I didn’t see just how convenient I was.
The courtship ended once we were married, and I soon felt very alone, tending house and children. “At least he’s not abusive,” I’d tell myself. “Could be worse.” Even though I couldn’t see it, I was doing the dance my mother taught me, denying that something was missing. I wanted so much for love to work, to be a real thing, that I was a part of, and he played on that, telling me how “if I’d been more loving”, I would be something that I was not. In the end, when he left me, I was convinced that I was not good enough for love.
“You were dying inside,” my friend kindly told me. “I watched your spirit dwindle away.”
I grieved, then raged, but eventually found level ground, where, for the first time in my life I considered loving myself. It was a broken relationship, for sure, and I had to start with simple things, such as: What did I like to eat?
Through therapy, I realized that in trying to avoid my parents relationship, I had actually just recreated a different version. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck!
Loving myself, I decided would be the opening for true love to enter my life. So I played a game with myself, a game I called: What would it feel like?
I bought myself flowers, and allowed myself to feel the simple pleasure that such a gesture offered. When responsibility and obligation started to wear me down, I’d draw a bubble bath and pour myself a glass of wine, imagining that this is what love would do: offer solace rather than complaints. I even went as far as to visualize what it would feel like to be truly loved, not for what I could do for another, but because I am.
Accepting myself, just the way I am, and my life along with it, brought a sense of inner peace and I stopped longing for more. Maybe, I thought, this was the love I was looking for all along.
When Thor showed up in my life, it was already full, and his presence threw me off balance. I allowed the excitement for a couple of weeks, and then, to quote him, ” I kicked him to the curb.” I didn’t need this.
And yet I did.
Curiousity got the better of me, and so I invited him back in.
“These are the ground rules,” I told him at the beginning. “We will hang out for a year and see how it goes. There will be no talk of ‘us’, and no plans for the future. After a year, we’ll see how it goes.”
“What you see, is what you get.” Thor shrugged. “I am afraid I’m pretty vanilla.”
With Thor’s compliance, a friendship began to take shape, as well as a genuine, mutual, fondness. Most importantly, with Thor, I felt appreciated and acknowledged.
We married in a small, personal ceremony, exchanging our own, heartfelt vows. And on our honeymoon night, as I crawled into his open arms, he uttered the words that summed up all my years of searching:
“Let me be your soft place to land. No matter what life throws at you, or how harsh life can be, know that coming home will always be safe.”
Rain pelts against my window
cheered on by the relentless wind
inside I lie motionless
on my once-yearned-for
now resigned-to
bed.
Target has those things you’re looking for
texts my daughter
pic attached.
Exactly what I’m looking for
but millions of miles away
when energy fails me
Instead I give in to the fingers
of sleep
that pull me in;
blessed unconsciousness
oblivion.
Ping! another message
Starbucks has Oprah’s chai tea!
I can taste the sweet cinnamony warmth
and dream of the day
when I get out of this bed
and go for tea
the rain outside persists
the light fading
another day of suspended animation
in this gloom of isolated
silence
A door opens below me
footsteps, a voice
Do you need anything?
I don’t respond,
too weak for words.
Do I need anything?
The question reverberates
through mind
emotion
body
and comes up empty
what could I need?
too much
nothing
Rain abates, wind subsides
and a brief ray of sun
brightens the room
a promise
of spring
new beginnings
and I think
I need clothes
but clothes means shopping
and shopping means energy
and the cycle continues
and still I lay
unmoved
Then you enter
an offering of tea
and a gentle word
and with renewed momentum
I shift to make room for you.
and it all comes clear
You are what I need.
You are my must-have.
“Children like Ester don’t typically succeed in regular school settings,” the doctor advised me. “Most don’t function well in social settings at all.”
I tried to visualize the alternative. “What are you suggesting?”
“Montessori, perhaps, or home-schooling. She may not be very successful in school.”
I shook my head. I’d been seeking answers to Ester’s problems for two years, but this wasn’t the solution I was looking for.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I shook his hand. “Where do we go next?”
The doctor prescribed medication which would retrain Ester’s brain, allowing her to sleep. The poor child had not slept more than an hour and a half at a time since her birth three years earlier. She and I were both exhausted, and equally distraught. This specialist was the first to offer a diagnosis. I suffered from toxemia during my pregnancy and he explained that toxins seeped into Ester’s brain causing this disorder. In layman’s terms, he called it “short-fuse syndrome”. Apparently, whenever Ester reached the stage of sleep where deep relaxation occurs, her brain would release the wrong message, causing her muscles to tighten up, waking her up in pain. Ester woke up screaming frequently during the night, so the diagnosis made sense to me. She was also “short-fused” as he described it, giving up easily and given to fits of temper. Could this really hinder her social development?
From the moment Ester was born she started to scream, and I often tease her that she didn’t stop screaming for three years. In the beginning, I just thought she was colicky, but when it continued, I suspected something else was happening. When her baby brother was born, and sleeping through the night, I knew there was a problem. Ester’s screams and temper tantrums interfered with her development of speech. Although she was physically advanced, she hadn’t spoken her first word at eighteen months, whereas her sister was forming sentences at a year. Discipline was futile and heartbreaking. It just didn’t seem fair to punish a child who was in a constant state of anguish.
In our search for answers, we were shuffled from doctor to doctor, and given advice from everyone we met, whether solicited or not. Well-meaning relatives told us we were overindulgent, strangers also suggested it was our parenting skills that were lacking. No one, not even Ester’s father, offered to give me respite. She was too hard to handle.
“She is not bad,” the doctor explained. “She is reacting to her physical discomfort and the stress she is experiencing due to lack of sleep. Just as you and I would. Unfortunately, these are the formative years. Ester’s condition will effect her self-confidence and esteem. Children like her are not risk-takers and will not respond well to change.”
The diagnosis I could accept. The prognosis, I could not. Ester and I had our work cut out for us.
It took six months of drug therapy before Ester started to sleep through the night and the screaming fits diminished. What was left was a highly anxious, impatient child, who clung to me. By the time she went to nursery school, I was ready for a break.
And I was nervous. What if what the doctor said was true? What if Ester couldn’t adapt to school? I wouldn’t allow myself to go there.
Nursery school was great. Ester received lots of one on one attention and the reports back were always glowing. Things changed when she started school full-time.
“Ester cries all day, Mom.” her older sister informed me a week after school started. “I go by her classroom everyday and she is always crying.”
I was furious. Why hadn’t her teacher called me? Turns out her teacher didn’t notice. Quiet, shy, Ester, was weeping silently, afraid of getting in trouble. I went back to the doctor. He gave me the name of a play therapist.
Ester spent the rest of the year in therapy, and she and I worked out strategies to help her cope. We practiced breathing and visualization and set achievable goals. I soothed her through endless stomach aches and more sleepless nights. By grade five, I convinced her to set a goal of raising her hand once a day to answer a question. At the end of grade eight, she and two friends sang at their graduation. Ester survived public school.
High school brought new challenges and greater stress. Ester, who always feels the pressure more than others, could not relax into the teenage social scene and chose to be a loner. She spent long hours in her room, pouring over her homework, never willing to give up. She became a perfectionist about herself and her grades and the tension grew. Her self-esteem plummeted, and she withdrew into herself. But she never gave up.
When Ester graduated from college, I could not have been more proud. As she walked across the stage to receive her diploma, I remembered the words the doctor had spoken on that day so many years before, and thanked God I hadn’t listened.
Yesterday, just minutes before she walked down the aisle to take her wedding vows, Ester and I spent a moment, hands clasped together, eyes locked. There was so much we wanted to say, and no words to express it. Then I pulled her to me and we embraced.
I hope she heard the admiration in my voice as I told her I love her. I hope she felt the absolute pride and respect I have for the woman that she has become.
I don’t know anyone who has worked harder to get to where she is in life.
That is diligence.
The sound of tinkling glass alerted me to an incoming text and despite the company around me, I had to look.
“A new video of the baby!” I exclaimed, hitting play before anyone could protest. (As if that would stop me anyway.)
“Look at how tiny she is,” my friend noted. “My granddaughter is twice her size.”
“Does she have any teeth? My grandson has a full set of teeth.”
“Just got her first one. She is late on that, but so was my other granddaughter. She’s not talking, either.”
“Neither is my granddaughter, but she being walking for awhile.”
Cellphones emerged from purses and pictures were passed all around. We all basked in the grandmother’s right to brag, completely oblivious of Sue, who sat quietly throughout the process. Sue’s children had not produced offspring, nor did it look like they might be close to doing so.
Thor came limping through and I passed him the phone. “Here’s the latest.”
“How are you doing?” my friend inquired of Thor.
“Better. On the mend. Still frustrated with this leg brace.”
“My cousin’s husband is going through the same thing. He’s been a year though and it looks like he might lose the leg.”
“I work with a woman who lost her leg. I hear it’s more common that we think. Good thing you’re on the mend, Thor.”
Thor had exited the room.
“He’s doing better though, right?”
“Way better! It has been quite the year. Wouldn’t want to go through that again.”
Sue remains quiet. Her husband has been ill for many years, dependent on her.
“What a lot of noise!” he expressed to me later. “Do you even hear each other?”
He makes a good point. In our excitement to “catch up”, my old friends and I talk at each other, competing for air time, but nothing is really said. In fact, in our need to get a word in, we may have inadvertently created rifts.
I hate this about myself, this need to compete in the conversation. Someone always gets left out and overlooked, and an opportunity for authentic communication is missed.
Next time, I will remind myself to listen and observe, before jumping in so aggressively.
“Can I have a bike for my birthday this year?” A typical, impatient eight-year-old, I must have asked my parents this question a million times. I was excited for my upcoming birthday, and really wanted a bike with a big banana seat, and raised handle-bars.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” was the constant reply, but my birthday falls in the middle of the summer, and so many perfect bike-riding days were passing me by.
As my big day approached, my father teased me that I was getting bubblegum for my birthday.  I was confident he was kidding and that I would soon be soaring through the streets on my new, longed for wheels.
Birthday morning came, and no present. “You have to wait till your party,” Mom informed me. The hours just didn’t pass fast enough.  My friends arrived in the afternoon, and we swam for awhile before my father barbequed burgers and hot dogs, and then it was time for gifts. After opening all the gifts from my friends, the moment I had anticipated finally arrived.
“There is one more gift,” my father announced, disappearing into the garage.
And there it was! A shiny, new, all-mine, bicycle. “Here’s your bubblegum,” Dad beamed. I beamed back. It was exactly what I wanted.
“Thanks so much!” I gushed, and was about to say more when I noticed my mother following with something else. Another new bike……for my little sister.
What? It wasn’t her birthday until November. “Me too, me too,” she started to squeal.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I got what I wanted, so why was this bothering me so?
It was a question that would fester inside me for a long time. That year would mark the end of birthday excitement for me. It was the start of a legacy of disappointment that I never addressed, and therefore; allowed to grow out of control.
For my ninth birthday, I got a new bike, but I also gained the realization that life is not always fair. I knew without asking why my sister got a present on my birthday – it was so she wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum – but I also knew with certainty that I wouldn’t get a present on her birthday, and somehow that didn’t seem right. I wasn’t given to temper tantrums, but did that mean that I also had to forgo being special for one day?
In the years that followed, my birthdays were celebrated on family vacations, usually in public places with just a cake to mark the occasion. I told myself it didn’t matter.
I lied.
Truth is, I allowed that initial seed of disappointment to ferment inside me. I didn’t confront the issue because I thought I was being oversensitive. I didn’t want to hurt my parents feelings, and I certainly didn’t want them to think I was ungrateful. But the more I pushed the hurt down, the bigger it grew. In my own mind, I compounded the issue. My parents didn’t love me as much as they did the other children; there was something wrong with me.  Every time I felt left out or overlooked, my feelings were just confirmed. I came to dread my birthday month. By the time I reached adulthood, this dread was accompanied by depression.
The issue exploded on my 40th birthday. My mother, in her usual way, had been calling me leading up to my birthday, making comments such as: “You have everything you need, I don’t suppose there is anything I could get you anyway,” or “Don’t know if I’ll get you anything for your birthday this year,” and so on. When she showed up with a frozen turkey, I lost it.
“Mom! Why do you have such a problem with my birthday! If you don’t want to celebrate it, then don’t, but don’t taunt me with it!”
“Of course, I want to celebrate your birthday.” She was taken aback.
“You never have! You always make it sound like it’s such a hardship. I’d rather you didn’t acknowledge it at all!”
“What do you mean? I’m here with a gift aren’t I?”
“Yes, Mom, but all week longed you’d hinted that there might not be a gift, as if you really don’t want to give me anything.”
“Well, it’s just that you have everything.”
“It’s not about the gift, Mom. It’s about the acknowledgment.”
The conversation didn’t go well. My mother left feeling hurt, and I felt I had made a worse mess of things. I would like to say that things have improved, but they haven’t. For the second year in a row, my mother has completely forgotten my birthday. I asked for it, I guess.
When you allow things to fester, they grow roots, and like untended weeds, can get out of control.
I am fifty-four years old, and I still don’t know how to uproot the weed associated with my mother and my birthday.
One Woman's Quest 