When I was young, I gravitated toward friends who had struggles with their mothers.\u00a0 I felt overwhelmed by my difficulties with my mom, and needed orientation from others with similar experiences.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I\u2019ve been startled to see many friends gradually resolving their conflicts and coming to appreciate their moms\u2014most of whom turned out to be not all that awful.\u00a0 For me, mom-trouble wasn\u2019t a phase, but a permanent condition.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an uncomfortable truth that bad mothers must exist; otherwise there\u2019d be no bell curve of nurturing motherhood.\u00a0 Some people are the offspring of those moms.\u00a0 As angst-ridden teens, these kids might look and sound just like other angst-ridden teens.\u00a0 The difference is that the mere passage of time, the natural progression into maturity, won\u2019t fix things.\u00a0 In other words, not everyone will\u2014or should\u2014look back eventually and say, \u201cAh, now I see things from Mom\u2019s point of view.\u00a0 She was right, after all.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mom was tough from early on.\u00a0 Very rejecting of two of my sisters, she clung to me for emotional support.\u00a0 Despite her divisive and inappropriate parenting, as a child I viewed Mom as the saner of my two parents, because of my father\u2019s explosive temper.<\/p>\n
After my parents\u2019 divorce, Mom became increasingly blaming and unstable, lashing out at us and sometimes barely leaving her bed.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t much to eat around the house.\u00a0 Finally, when I was sixteen, she evicted me and my two younger sisters from the family home so that she could rent it out and go on an extended car trip.<\/p>\n
It was then that my father, who had recently lost his retail store and livelihood, sued for custody.\u00a0 Practically destitute and drowning in business debt, he took his lawyer\u2019s advice and scrambled for work, landing a job at a fast food joint.\u00a0 In 1971, men were simply not awarded sole custody of their children.\u00a0 Dad won.\u00a0 That was what the court thought of our mother.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say that Mom got help, came to her senses, tried to make things right.\u00a0 Instead, she was so furious about my father having gotten custody that she barely spoke to me for a number of years.\u00a0 Eventually she returned to Berkeley\u2014only to make a permanent move to New York as soon as my sisters and I started having children of our own.\u00a0 Contact was infrequent and often painful as Mom kept up old behaviors.<\/p>\n
And at 87, back in Oakland now, she\u2019s still keeping up those behaviors, though with somewhat less frequency\u2014and more pharmaceutical intervention. \u00a0My current relationship with her, while sweet, is the product of my emotional distance, not resolution.<\/p>\n
So how is it that year after year, I make the trek to the card store, wading through racks of \u201cYou\u2019re my inspiration\u201d and \u201cYour love has meant so much to me\u201d to find a suitable marker of the occasion?\u00a0 Like all my efforts in my mother\u2019s behalf, the card is partly about loyalty to my sisters, who\u2019d have more of a burden if I weren\u2019t pulling my weight.\u00a0 Really, the card is for them as much as for her.<\/p>\n
A simple floral picture with the barest of messages would be best\u2014or perhaps no message at all.\u00a0 That way, I\u2019ll have something to write.<\/p>\n
\u201cHappy Mother\u2019s Day, Mom.\u00a0 Love, Lisa.\u201d<\/p>\n
Published in The Piedmont Post<\/em>, May 5, 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was young, I gravitated toward friends who had struggles with their mothers.\u00a0 I felt overwhelmed by my difficulties with my mom, and needed orientation from others with similar experiences. Over the years, I\u2019ve been startled to see many friends gradually resolving their conflicts and coming to appreciate their moms\u2014most of whom turned out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[113,115,114],"yoast_head":"\n