Hoisted by her own petard

Above all else, my mother swore she was a good mother. She might not keep friends or jobs, but she insisted she was a good mother. And if you dared say otherwise, you would catch hell. She would scream and attack you and then when she couldn’t deny it any longer, she flipped the script; she was the worst, everything was her fault, she was a horrible person. Now you had to console her, because she was the one hurting. Somewhere along the way, I realized that surviving meant not contradicting this central tenet, so “Yes, you’re a good mom” became a quick way to salve her ego and salvage a few hours of peace.

Nor would she let me forget it; when I did have contact with her and I would bring up an issue, that was always her first defense: “That can’t be true. You’ve never had a priblem with it before. You always said I was a good mom when you were a kid. Your evil grandmother must have brainwashed you to say that now!” Context never mattered. The myriad signs of stress were shrugged away. Happy children grind their teeth so hard they have arthritis in their jaw by 20. Everyone knows it, I’m just making mountains out of molehills.

Yesterday, after going out to check on a relative who had just been released from the hospital, I came home to an unexpected surprised. I haven’t had contact with her for a year, apart from the time she showed up to my doorstep unannounced. Boundaries have never much mattered to her before, though. A large storage box with my name on it was on the doorstep; she had kept this all through my childhood for various memories. I asked my husband to make me a drink as I hauled it inside. It felt like a handgrenade with a rusting pin, or someone leaning over your shoulder with heavy breath. I needed it to be gone ASAP but I still felt like I needed to see if there was anything worth keeping.

Opening the box was vile. 30 years of cigarette smoke coalesced on piles of paper; I had to shower as soon as I was done to get the stench off. Now I have an inkling of what I smelled like to classmates. My mother has hoarder tendencies that have not improved with time, and this box suffered from it. Any paper I touched as a child seemed to have found its way here. Empty workbooks and blobs of paint were plenty. The first paper I pulled from the box was a plea: begging my mother to admit that my brother was her favorite(they remain emotionally incestuous) and that she did not, in fact, care about me. It was written in unsure large-lettered pencil; I doubt I was more than 8. It was not the only one of its kind.

Most of the material was not so charged. Many birthday cards from the evil grandmother, terrible fingerpaints that every child makes, obsessions with cats and horses as soon as I could write. But there were a few gut punches that made me sob: the crude drawing of my family together laughing at me, while I stand alone crying with a speech bubble saying “That’s not funny.” Packs of unopened toys and piles of invitations never sent. I found a dozen coupons for free treats at one place or another due to achievements in grades or the like that were never used. No wonder I struggle to celebrate myself; my mother couldn’t even be bothered to when celebrating was free.

And my teachers knew something was wrong. We moved houses and schools every year until I was in high school. I still struggle to remember names, I think, because after a year, I would never see friends again. I found notes from my teachers, the quarterly grades. Top grades, but notes about behavior, consistency, motivation. The last sentence of the last quarter of first grade, my teacher wrote: “I will miss her; [mercurial] is a kind-hearted girl and she needs more love than we can give.” She must have affected me deeply, because I wrote a postcard to her, telling her I missed her. It was also in the box, unsent.

My second grade teacher seemed to suspect something was wrong, too. There were notes about evaluations, about how the principal and a social worker had observed me, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The social worker still recommended a support group (which never happened). And through the cracks I fell again after we moved schools at the end of the year.

It was telling to see my test scores. In 6th grade, I score 99th percentile nationally in 2/3rds of the topics; in 9th grade, as the depression set in more heavily, it was only a few. I had excelled in athletics, art, choir, math, and language. How might my life had changed if I stayed at one school for a bit longer? Long enough for the staff to see through my parents’ veneer? I had so much promise. It’s not to day I’m a lost cause — I’m starting a doctoral program and have cultivated myself and my circle — but I have grieved what could have been. I have made peace with it before, but its still sad to revisit. You still cry at the sad parts of a movie, even if you know it ends well.

Its validating, too. I never had this mythical happy childhood she wants to pretend was there. She gave me the evidence herself. It was all there, she just never cared enough to notice. Next time she claims otherwise, I’ll just send her photos of what she left on my stoop.