Mother’s Day
The man I’m seeing stepped outside to call his mother this morning. I’m sure he said “happy mothers day”, I’m sure “I love yous” were exchanged. The old Russian family that lives in the main house on my property is having a huge brunch, twin 3 year old girls in pink dresses hugging their mother and grandmother, a large spread of food on their kitchen table as their eyes fill with the warmth of love. Twenty minutes spent on the phone with my best friend just now, crying my eyes out while simultaneously trying to suppress the nausea. I don’t drink during the day, but today there is a chilled glass of cheap wine on my nightstand, sweating in rhythm with my slowing tears. My brothers sit 3,000 miles away at a table with a mother I will never know, she was theirs, but she was never mine. The burden of a little redheaded girl was always too much for her, and in never taking responsibility, I was never really “hers”.
I don’t often speak with emotion when I speak about my mother, the wound is too deep, the scar tissue still fresh and delicate. Today the flames lick too closely, the pain grabs hold of me too tight. The bleeding may have stopped, but there is still much left to heal. We are raised with the notion that mother’s are the one person in the world who will love us unconditionally, bring us comfort, stay by our sides when we’re sick. So where was my mother when I was sick? Where was the love I craved so deeply that I almost let it kill me? It was certainly nowhere to be found in my mother. She has problems, her mother was not a saint, and as an adult, my brain tries to analyze my relationship with my mother as if it were an algebra equation. But as a child, I do not understand algebra, I do not understand a mother abandoning her child, I do not understand any of it. There is no excuse, there have been no apologies, responsibility has yet to be taken.
The last time I saw my mother was in court. I was 17, I had been homeless for a while at that point, scraping by on completing my senior year. My mother’s lawyer tried to convince the court that my anxiety attack on the stand was merely the result of my years of acting classes. My mother told the courts she didn’t want any custodial rights, “I don’t want Amalia.” she said, but that she would fight for my brothers. I almost fainted stepping down from the stand that day, my body so exhausted, my heart empty. The bailiff guided me out of the courtroom, an arm around my shoulders, a hand in mine. He sat me down next to my little brother, the light of my life, the little boy I would do anything for. He was 12 at the time, but in that moment he was an adult. He held me tight in his clammy arms as my sobs racked through me. I shook violently for ten minutes, swollen-eyed, numb to almost everything. Finally he whispered that we should go get a candy bar and a soda out of the vending machine and I blindly took his hand. I remember looking up for a brief moment, catching the horror in my grandfather’s eyes, he had been planning on testifying on my mothers behalf, despite the fact that he was my fathers father. I remember losing my grandfather John that day. I remember losing my mother. I remember losing faith in my elders. And I remember the taste of that snickers bar as I washed it down with Dr. Pepper, and the courage of my little brother, and the total end of any innocence that had remained.
I moved to Hollywood two years later, started from scratch, and made a vow to never be afraid of the responsibilities that love could bestow. It has been five years since I have seen my mother, a few emails have been exchanged over the past year, each one requiring an excruciating amount of patience on my part. After all of that, she still feels as if she is the victim. My mother, a 51 year old poor tortured being, she will die waiting for the world to apologize to her.
And she will die waiting for me to apologize to her, and what she will never understand, is that I almost died trying to apologize for the world. The biggest mistake I ever made was trying to parent my parents, but how was I to know that at the time. It was all love… everything that happened, everything I did was for love.
I will never know my mother’s love. Luckily for me it is not the only love that exists. And let me tell you, I am loved, and my mother can never take away from that.
So I will sit here and listen to a sad song on repeat for a few more minutes, and I will drink my cheap wine. Then I will take a deep breath and let the world’s love sink into me, and I will be okay.
