A darling friend of mine noted that I didn’t paste any warm and fuzzalicious words in honor of my mommy dearest this week on our social network. I love(d) my mother, but I used to have the hardest time finding a Mothers' Day card because nothing quite said "Fuck you, bitch" the way I wanted it to.
Here’s the scoop: Sometimes moms are not Clair Huxtable or Carol Brady or June Cleaver. Sometimes moms have babies out of allegiance to some antiquated decree proclaiming a woman “not a real woman” if she doesn’t get married, get spermed, get swollen, get contractions and then get her insides expelled out of her nether regions while LOVING the whole process AND the tiny tadpole who caused that nuclear pain.
My mom pledged that allegiance. She really would have rather birthed some stardom. Instead she despised most of her existence, most everything about me from my pre-adolescence to my own motherhood, and most of the attention NOT being on her. I jumped through all the flaming hoops I could to get her attention, pissed her off as often as possible, disappointed her in scandalous ways. We made up after she turned into a lonely and delusional grandmother who still passed for my sister. And then she fucking died.
I miss her laugh (of which I ADORED being the cause), her closets of enchanting evening wear and scrumptious shoes. And her cooking. Her better-than-Paula-Deen-in-her-dreams cooking. Her Oh, my GOD cooking; everything she created was pure gold, Southern-git-yer-diabeeteez-here, lick-the-plate, unbutton-your-waistband-until-the-misery-of-overstuffing-passed, gourmet grand. I’m sometimes morose with the realization that I’ll never experience her culinary creations again. I think about how it would be if she came back for just one dinner. Maybe a Mothers’ Day. But then she’d bring her drama with her. And she’d have to go away again. And I still wouldn’t have just the right card.
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