Re: Lessons from my mother/Looking into her mirror
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Re: Lessons from my mother/Looking into her mirror |
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Posted by megirl on October 04, 19101 at 16:14:24:
In Reply to: Lessons from my mother/Looking into her mirror posted by Maria on August 09, 19101 at 15:22:25:
:It is interesting what we learn from our mothers.
:That men are wanted and needed but not necessarily, necessary.
:“No crotch is worth that much,” my mother would say, shaking her head at some
:cousin or aunt, who had taken up with a man who was shiftless, an adulterer,
an
:alcoholic, a woman beater.
:And yet, most of my childhood was taken up observing my mother trying to
secure
:love for herself and financial security for my brother and me. There was my
:stepfather, a cowboy hat wearing, dark skinned, pot bellied construction
:worker. He brought some stability to our lives, made my mother happy. Except
:when she became terribly ill, he didn’t pitch in. She had to have family from
:outside come in to take care of us. She divorced him soon after, refusing
:alimony, temporary child support, anything. We whined about it for years
:later. Especially my brother who looked so much like him, who needed a father
:so much. It was 11 or so years after that, that my mother, in one of my
:delinquent brother’s many family therapy sessions, that she revealed the whys
:and wherefores of the divorce. At 11 years of age, he wanted me to quit
:school, to stay home and cook and clean while and he and my mother worked. He
:wanted to take my 9 year old brother to the construction sites, “That’s the
age
:I started working at,” he reportedly said. Our education was everything to my
:mother. The thought that ‘some man’ would prevent her children from attending
:school was beyond her, beyond her need for security, for love, for physical
:warmth.
:There was the white man, who loved baseball, and whom I absolutely detested.
:Understand, I was 13 or 14, assuming the pose of a tough ghetto gang girl.
:What part of “Brown and Proud” would a white man understand? My brother
:readily accepted him, since he freely gave my brother money, while any such
:offers made my stomach turn. He was a needy man, telling my mom, how his
birth
:mother had abandoned him, disrupted his life, visiting at late night hours,
:until a kind childless couple adopted him. He forget to mention that he was
:manic-depressive and a paranoid schizophrenic. I firmly believe that he once
:assaulted my mother, while I was away. I was, I am, a big girl and have a big
:mouth. He would never have attempted such a thing when I was around. She
made
:him move out soon after. He came around, late at night, whispering at the
:windows. Except he didn’t know my mother had given me her room and I was the
:one who heard him. So, one night, when I had had enough, I calmly went and
got
:the biggest knife I could find in our kitchen and kneeled near the partly open
:window. I hoped he would lean in a bit, so I could lop off his ear and his
:ridiculously long hair that curled at his shoulders from underneath his
:baseball cap. I don’t know if my mother heard him or me, or my brother told,
:but the next thing I knew, she pulled the knife from my hand, cranked the
:window closed and sent me to bed. He would never be back. As it turned out,
:my brother hated him too, and only liked the money that he so freely gave.
:Several years later, my mother, in her Mother Theresa mode, was volunteering
at
:a homeless shelter.
:When she informed my brother that the white boy was coming around there (his
:parents had kicked him out of their home, too), he insisted my mother quit.
:Which she did.
:There were others. I just watched, and listened, and learned. Her best
:friend’s husband, who came around late at night, like some he-cat yowling
:during mating season. I’ll never forget, have never forgotten, her comment as
:she slammed the door in his face: “Some men, because they see you alone,
:think you will take up the offer of any man, for a roll in the sack.” She was
:right.
:But there were some too, with good intentions, that she pushed away, at the
:slightest sign of anything untoward. She must have had some vision of what
her
:ideal mate should look like and act like. What it was, I’ll never know.
:Imagined slights, minor personality flaws, were held up to the light,
:scrutinized, criticized, dissected, before he was so quickly, triumphantly
cast
:away.
:My mother was no beauty. But she had a rounded, hour-glass figure that made
:her the envy of her friends, an easy manner coupled with a shyness born of
:poverty, early orphan hood, low self-esteem. She did not lack for offers, but
:was always scared.
:I am no beauty. Sometimes, my weight is up, sometimes down, but I only lacked
:male attention when I doubted that I had any redeeming qualities. I am
:outspoken and shy, angry and so sad, all at once. I have not, in the past
:three or so years, lacked for offers, of any kind. Marriage, mistress,
airline
:tickets, gold, anything. But I am always scared. You cannot let a person, a
:man most especially, into your life and walk away unscathed. I think of my
:friend, a male, and such a flirt, that I was surprised at him, when he
:said, “You can’t sleep with someone and not give a piece, not a physical part,
:but the most intimate, emotional part of you, away.” “The choice is, “he went
:on,” who deserves that much value?”
:Unlike my mother, I married well. At least at first. Now divorced, with one
:child and another on the way, I wonder if she knows how much my life has
:mirrored hers, that I, too, wander aimlessly looking for love for me and
:security for my children.
MARIA, ARE MEN REALLY THIS CRUEL??? ALL OF THEM?