My Stupid Mother

May 6, 2010 at 8:25 pm (Lanscape of Loss, My Bonnie)
Tags: affair, alcoholic mother, alcoholism, cancer, death, divorce, mother dead, mother's mistakes, mothering siblings, motherless mothers day, mothers day without a mother, physician father, stepfather, stepmother, unplanned pregnancy

I always forget that the fact that my mother is dead might upset me on Mothers Day.  At first, I have this guilty pleasure that I don’t have any responsibilities.  No cards to buy, no flowers to send, no calls to make.

Then I remember I have a stepmom and a mother-in-law, and the weight begins to shape.   I also start to worry about my own Mother’s Day.  How do I want to celebrate myself?  What if no one else does?  Should I plan something?  Should I give tips?  Hints?  Should I just skip it?

I get pissed off when I click on a Facebook article, entitled, The Best Mothers Day Gift is a Mother, when I discover that it’s written by someone like me–without a mother–who makes everyone else feel bad because they don’t appreciate their moms who are alive and kicking.

With tears stinging my eyes, I decide to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction and encourage people to bash their mothers if it makes them feel better.

So even though my mother is dead and this is terribly taboo, I’ll jump first~

Vallotton, visipix.com

My mother was stupid.

She was also the kind of person that people told their problems to.  Her unique perspective could soften any pain and open up all kinds of possibilities.

“Wise counsel” was Bonnie’s gift of spirit–besides being a prolific child-bearer–8 girls and one boy when all was said and done.

How was it then that she could be so stupid when it came to living her own life?

At 19, she got pregnant by a relative stranger and painfully gave up her first born to adoption, only to get pregnant again in less than a year–with me–this time marrying the guy who was still in college.

Bonnie continued having children with Bob while he made his way through medical school so that by the time he began his residency, I had three younger sisters.  We survived on cases of hospital Similac.  My mother chose something stronger.

I was in the fifth grade when the fighting began, and a year later, I learned that my mom was an alcoholic.  Another year and another move, and Bonnie rebounded–giving up the bottle for two more children.

Her drinking returned around the time I went off to college.  One of my highschool buddies stayed behind and they fell in love and got pregnant while she was still married to my father.  This was perhaps the climax of Bonnie’s stupidity.

My parents divorced and my mother gave birth to my only brother and then my youngest sister.  Her drinking picked up again when her 22 year old husband began cheating.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” never had a better example than Bonnie.  She saw the irony of leaving an impossibly demanding man who was never around for a man who cheated on her.

Bonnie watched our lifestyles diminish year after year, while my surgeon father’s dramatically expanded. “I should have just stayed with him so that you girls would have what you deserve,” she’d say apologetically, never caring much for material things herself.

I could never accept Bonnie’s apologies–doing so would mean opening up to all that was hurt and angry and sad inside me.   I knew that she was too fragile for that.

When my mother’s drinking became a threat to the safety of the children, the family was torn apart.  Our newest siblings stayed behind with my mom and “stepfather” while the rest went to live with my dad and his fiance.  More stupidity.

My mother sent her own children to live with a man who she couldn’t stand who was about to marry a 27 year old woman who didn’t want to be mother to his cheating ex-wife’s 6 daughters.

My stepmother had wanted her “own” children, but my father had finally gotten that vasectomy just a couple years earlier.   He reminded us again and again that our very existence was a slap in the face to our stepmother–evidence of the children that she would never have with him.

Later my mom died of cancer at a very young age. 57. That was stupid too.  Now there are all these wounded children who are also orphaned.  Many of them claim that I raised them which makes me sad because I was hardly enough. They, like all children, deserve so much more.

Macke/detail visipix.com

Now that my Bonnie has been dead for 8 years, I can tell her to her face that she was stupid.  As one of my greatest muses, she sits beside my writing desk.

“You were stupid, Mom!”   I  yell through tears of grief and loss. “What were you thinking!”

Whenever  Bonnie would complain about all the demands on her with a handful of us closing in around her tiny frame, I’d always quip, “Well, why did you have all these children!”

But Bonnie rarely complained.  She simply trudged along, offering her wise counsel to anyone who needed it and making the most of the life she created–faults and all.  She finally stopped drinking for good and spent the last ten years of her life–mostly alone as she had always been–but sober and present.

Menzel (visipix.com)

Despite the ravages of life around me, it was my mother’s steady heart and soft spirit that sustained me and still sustains me through my own mistakes and stupidity. She is and will always be, one of my greatest loves, stupidity and all.

Happy Mothers Day again, Mom.  I know that you always said that once I had children of my own, it was “my” Mothers Day, but I can’t restrain from celebrating the gift of you!

Kelly Salasin, 2008