My Mother

This replicates the previous entry to an extent, but it's different enough to be worth including.

I never knew my mother although we lived in the same house, ate at the same table, went on the same family vacations.

She, a young widow with a baby, needs love and security.

This I cannot provide.

As she cries and questions me—“You love me, don’t you?”—

I begin the descent into emotional numbness.

Who is this stranger? And how can my small shoulders carry her burdens?

I recall things she did for me:

The homemade éclairs for my confirmation party (the cream filling turning rancid because she forgot to refrigerate them).

The night she walked for hours in a pelting rainstorm, drawing a neighborhood map for a school assignment.

But the dark moments seem to predominate, turning my memories into accusations.

There was the time we went to buy my first bra, although my body did not correspond to my chronological age and I didn’t really need one.

In the middle of the sales floor, she took one and tried to fit it on me over my clothes to check on the size.

Seeing a man walk by with his daughter in tow, I begged to go into a fitting room.

Her response? “Who could possibly be interested in looking at you?”

My childish fears—when I attempted to confide them to her--were usually met with the refrain, “Carole, don’t be so ridiculous.”

That came to be the mantra of my childhood. That and, “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” when she was scolding me for some childish prank.

But I come from a long line of motherless daughters.

We survive by playacting the perfect family.

Still, I wish it had been different.