Category Archives: Childhood

When Mom Is the Problem

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Dear Daughter,

The other day I realized something I guess I had been trying to ignore. As we drove to school, you were more withdrawn and serious than usual. We had argued about you not wearing a coat that morning, but I thought you were quiet because you were tired and dreading another long day at school. When you stepped out of the car, however, your entire demeanor changed. You smiled, you chatted with your best friend, you were happy. It was then that I knew exactly what the problem was: me.

It’s OK and normal for you to feel that way. When you are 12 years old, everything your mother does is a) annoying, b) embarrassing or c) both. I felt the same way at your age. Whatever my stepmother said or did made me cringe, and I did my best to keep my distance from her. I spent my free time alone in my room or with my friends, and always as far away from her as possible.

Intellectually, as a woman, I understand and empathize with you. Emotionally, as your mother, it breaks my heart. I hated my stepmother at your age, and my girlfriends all had issues with their moms. Somehow, though, I was under the impression things would be different with my own daughter. It turns out I was wrong. The little girl who clung to my leg for dear life as a toddler now can’t seem to wait to get away from me. It kills me to admit this, but I know it’s true.

We’ve been arguing more and more lately, and I know some of it is my fault. Your attitude toward me makes me angry and tense. I’m on edge whenever I ask you to do something because I’m not sure what your reaction will be. I know that sometimes I lash out too quickly and respond more severely than I should. For that I am sorry. But I am not sorry about calling you out when you treat me with disrespect. I want to be your friend, but I am your mother first. As I have told you many times before, you can think whatever you want about me. How you treat me, however, is not negotiable.

These next few years are going to be challenging for us. I am feeling the full weight of that after watching you walk into school with your friend the other day. I know you are growing up and that part of the process is to separate from your parents and form your own identity. But please don’t think I’m going to let you pull away completely. I’m not ready to give up my position in your world even though I do accept that I am no longer the center of it. I’m still going to ask about your day. I’m still going to coax you out of your room to watch TV or go for a run with me. I’m still going to take you to lunch or the mall once in a while, even though I know you’d prefer to go with your friends. When we’re out I’m going to put down my phone and talk to you and tell you to do the same. I’m going to ask questions, I’m going to embarrass you, I’m going to annoy you.

I’m going to do all those things because I am your mother, and you will always be the center of my world. Get used to it, kiddo. I’m not going anywhere. And someday, I hope, you’ll be happy about that.

Love,

Mom

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May I Have This Dance?

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Homecoming 2013 (corsage by Bella Fiora)

Homecoming 2013 (last-minute corsage by the talented and helpful folks at Bella Fiora in New Lenox, IL)

My son is going to homecoming tonight. He’s a high school freshman, and it’s his first dance. The corsage is in the fridge. The clothes are ironed. The post-dance party plans have been made. Everything is in order, and I’m thrilled for him. But I have to admit, there’s a little melancholy mixed in there too.

For one thing, my husband is in China on business. It’s our son’s first dance, a milestone in a teenager’s social life. I am upset for my husband because I know how much he wants to be here and how bad he feels that he will miss it. I am also sad because I won’t have my rock here beside me to squeeze my hand so I don’t cry and embarrass our son in front of his date and friends.

For another thing, my little boy is taking one more step away from me. I know this is normal, healthy. I am happy he found a girl he wanted to ask to the dance. I loved taking him shopping for a new shirt and a tie to match her dress. I bugged him for days to let me help him choose a corsage. I want him to enjoy high school, to be involved, to have friends and girlfriends, to do all the things teenagers should do.

I just don’t want to become irrelevant in the process.

Is that so wrong for a mother to admit? We spend every waking — and sleeping — hour with our children when they are infants, nurturing and soothing them. When they are toddlers and preschoolers, we help them learn to talk, to walk, to ride a bike, to spell their names. When they are school-age, we pitch in with their homework, attend their soccer games, host their playdates. And through it all, we’re there to cheer them on and kiss away the bumps and bruises. Until one day, when they don’t want us there anymore, or at least won’t admit that they do.

No one tells us when our children are young and want our constant attention how much it will hurt someday when they don’t.

This morning, as my son sat silently in the car on the way home from ordering his date’s corsage (yes, he waited until the day of the dance despite my prodding), I made an important realization. I can either let him push me away, or I can push back. I decided that whether he likes it or not, I am going to do my damnedest to remain firmly rooted in his life. As he distances himself from me emotionally, I am going to force myself to keep trying, to ask questions, to be understanding and offer help. He may shut me down, act surly or even withdraw completely. But I was a teenager once. I know he doesn’t want me to stop asking, to stop trying to understand even when he thinks I don’t.

Tonight when he sighs after I ask to take yet another picture of him and his date, when he mocks the music I play on the radio as we drive to the dance, I’m going to do my best not to take it personally. I know my little boy, the guy who used to worship and adore me, is still in there somewhere.

I hope he has the time of his life tonight.

The Key to the Lock

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I had been seeing her for a few weeks, and today’s session was no different from any of the others. I sat in her Chicago office nervously spewing my life’s stories, some from the present but most from the past, all the while hoping desperately for answers to the questions I was too afraid to ask. Why couldn’t I feel happiness? Why couldn’t I maintain a relationship? What was wrong with me?

As usual, she nodded occasionally, took random notes and said nothing. There were no comforting words. No supportive smiles. Does she think I’m crazy? Should I keep talking? How is this helping me?

Fifteen minutes into the session, I knew I couldn’t tolerate her stoic expression anymore. I couldn’t bear to regurgitate another story from my string of failed romances or my troubled relationship with my father and stepmother. If she wasn’t going to offer a diagnosis, I would have to ask for one. I wanted a label, something to which I could attach the pain, the fear, the emptiness. If I gave it a name, perhaps it would finally go away.

So I did it. I asked her the question I was most afraid to ask. I asked her what was wrong with me.

And she gave me the label I thought I wanted to hear: post-traumatic stress disorder.

But how could that be? I was a 26-year-old magazine editor. I had never served in the military or held a dangerous job. I had never been the victim or witness of a violent crime. How could I have PTSD?

She explained that children who lose a parent at a young age often experience PTSD symptoms, even into adulthood. My mother had died when I was a toddler. I had no memory of her death or any effect it might have had on me. But there it was: the reason I couldn’t visualize my own future, the reason I felt perpetually detached from others, the reason happiness seemed constantly out of reach, the reason change terrified me.

I had lived with my mother’s death all my life, yet I had no idea, until that moment, how much it had haunted me.

* * *

Several friends back home had told me about the “Love Lock” bridge in Paris, where couples attach locks to symbolize their undying love, and I had hoped to visit it during our family’s trip there earlier this month. But when you cram London, Paris and Amsterdam into a seven-day visit, some things just don’t make the cut on your itinerary. When we stumbled upon the bridge during our walk to Notre Dame, I was thrilled at the chance to squeeze it into our adventure.

Our visit to the bridge was unplanned, so we had to buy a lock and borrow a marker from a street vendor. I wrote our last name and the year on it, while my husband and children searched for a vacant spot on the lock-laden bridge. Apparently there is a lot of undying love in the City of Light. When we finally settled on a location and affixed the lock, I was overwhelmed with emotion. This trip had been both an ending and a beginning for us. Summer was over and my oldest child was about to start high school. I had spent much of the past few months struggling with my own fears about the changes in his life and ours. I had been worrying so much about all the bad things that could happen that I hadn’t been able to see the good.

As we stood there on that bridge in Paris — my husband of almost 18 years, my 14-year-old son, my 12-year-old daughter and 45-year-old me — I imagined my kids returning to it as adults. I saw them married with children of their own. I pictured my husband and me coming back as silver-haired grandparents. I knew we would be holding hands, and I knew we would still be in love.

On that bridge with my family, I saw the future for the first time in my life. And it was happy.

757

Love Lock Bridge, Paris, 2013

These Boots Are Made for Walking

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I bought my first pair of cowboy boots in the seventh grade. It was 1980, the year “Urban Cowboy” was released, and western boots were a must for any budding fashionista. I saved for weeks to buy those boots, hoarding my allowance and babysitting, which I hated, to earn extra cash. My stepmother said I had champagne taste and a beer budget. Being only 12, I didn’t understand what that meant. All I knew was that the fawn-colored pigskin suede boots with white leather flowers cost $75, and I had to have them.

Thirty some years later, I still remember how proud I was when I plucked those boots off the shelf at the Scott Colburn western store in Livonia, Michigan, and handed my money to the cashier. They were a symbol of my individuality and confidence, and I wore the hell out of them. I wore them with leg warmers and prairie skirts; I tucked my jeans into them. I wore them till they needed new soles and were beyond out of style. And then one day I packed them away on a closet shelf and forgot them.

The Southern road trip my family took last week made me remember those long-lost boots and the strong, self-assured girl who wore them. After a lengthy monologue in which I ruminated over situations I cannot control, my husband set me straight in the lobby bar of the Peabody Hotel. “It’s a big world,” he said. “If you don’t like who’s in that corner of it, move to a different one.” What we don’t want to hear is often what needs to be said most. He was right: It was time to dust off my self-confidence and stop being a victim.

As we wandered down Broadway in Nashville a few afternoons later, I found myself as drawn to the western stores as the honky-tonks. I tried on boot after boot, but the perfect pair eluded me. The next day, an hour before we left town, I headed back to the first store we had visited to try on the boots I liked most. The fit wasn’t right, and the toes were too square. Disappointed, I looked for a larger size and noticed a pair I hadn’t seen the day before. They were exactly what I wanted: black, distressed leather with low heels and sharply pointed toes. They fit perfectly.

I wore my new boots out of the store and on the drive home from Nashville, and I have been wearing them ever since — to a party, to the grocery store, even in the carpool line at school. When I look down at them, I feel a wave of pleasure and pride. Like the flowered pair I bought in seventh grade, my new boots are a symbol of my individuality and confidence. But more important, they remind me of the much-needed earful I got in Memphis and my decision to leave my blues there, where they belong.

Red Lipstick

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My older sister said our mother never left the house without lipstick. Before she carried the garbage to the curb or hung the laundry out to dry in the backyard, she painted her lips a glamorous red and wound her blond curls into a tidy upsweep. My father said when she walked into a room, everyone stopped to look at her. She was a talented seamstress who could spot a dress in a department store and recreate it at home without a pattern. My aunt said she kept an immaculate house and dressed herself and her children impeccably. She was a homebody who had few friends, and she seemed to prefer it that way.

I don’t remember my mother, but from other people’s stories and memories, I have woven together an image of her, and it has profoundly affected the way I navigate my life and relationships. I compare myself against the image. I decide which parts of her I wish to embrace and imitate: the confidence, the independence, the self-assuredness. I recognize the ways I am like her and accept the ways I am not.

The part of the picture that puzzles and intrigues me most is that she didn’t have a lot of friends. Was that by choice or default? I wonder who taught my mother how to read the subtleties of female behavior, to avoid being sucked into the vacuum of cliques, to spot real friendship in the sea of selfishness and phoniness. Did her mother teach her those lessons, or was their relationship the reason she didn’t like or trust other women?

My relationships with my stepmother and the aunt who raised me had a major impact on the type of women I choose to befriend. From my charming, popular stepmother, I learned that those who follow the crowd often do so because they neither know nor love themselves. From my aunt, I learned that strong, confident women make the best friends because they don’t want or need anything other than your companionship. Neither of them ever told me how to interact with other women; they showed me.

I think of my own daughter as I watch her unravel the inner workings of middle school friendships. I wonder what effect I have on which girls she chooses to befriend. Like my mother, I don’t have lots of female friends, but the ones I do have are loyal and true. Like my aunt, I speak my mind and do as I please. Unlike my stepmother, I will never be popular and am fine with that.

I hope my daughter will learn to be herself and not succumb to the bullying and peer pressure that happen even in adulthood. I hope she will ignore the static and forge her own path. I hope she will wear red lipstick when she takes out the garbage and not give a damn what the neighbors think. I hope she will be a little like the grandmother she never knew.

Jeanne Marie (RIP 3/26/27 - 4/28/70)

Jeanne Marie (RIP 3/26/27 – 4/28/70)

The Ride

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Source: WPClipart

Source: WPClipart

We planned to spend the afternoon studying, but the warm spring sunshine lured us outside. My friend and her boyfriend searched for a Frisbee, while I foraged for beer in the fridge. We were college kids enjoying a Saturday, and the hours passed easily. Unfortunately for me, the unwitting third wheel, the more we drank, the cozier my friend and her boyfriend became.

“I’m outta here,” I finally said, trying to seem casual as I made my hasty exit. My friend mumbled goodbye, barely noticing as I wandered into her house and out the front door. It was then that I realized a slight problem: I had no car. My friend had driven me to her house, but I had no way home.

Shit, I thought. Now what? There was no way I was going back inside to interrupt their love fest. Another friend and I were supposed to meet up a few hours later at our favorite Irish bar, which was only a couple of miles away. If I walked there, he would drive me home.

Walking might have made sense in a college town where it was safe and practical, but we were commuter students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The bar was just off the Southfield Freeway in Detroit, across from a drug- and crime-plagued housing project. My dad, a retired Detroit cop, constantly warned me about how dangerous the Herman Gardens area was, but I shrugged it off.

What did he know anyway? Nothing bad ever happened to me.

I headed toward the expressway, counting the blocks as I walked. I tried to remember how many blocks were in a mile. Was it eight or 12? I knew the sun set in the west. Was the bar west or east of here? My sense of direction wasn’t too keen, even without alcohol.

I didn’t notice the car pull up to the curb next to me until I heard the driver call out, “Are you lost?” Startled, I looked up and saw a man with graying hair and glasses smiling at me. “You really shouldn’t be walking alone around here. It’s getting dark. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“OK,” I said. He seemed harmless, fatherly in fact, and my book bag was getting heavy. I got in the car, and he asked where I was going. “The Tipperary Pub,” I said. “Do you know where it is?”

“It’s that Irish bar off the Southfield, right?” he asked. I nodded, and we drove the mile or so to the pub in silence. When he pulled into the parking lot, I reached for the car door handle. “Hang on a second,” he said. “Do you know why I picked you up tonight?” His tone was stern, and the smile from before was gone.

“Umm…no.”

“I have a daughter about your age, and the thought of her walking around in a bad neighborhood after dark…Do you know how lucky you are that I am the one who picked you up? Do you know what could have happened to you?”

“Yeah…ummm…thanks for the ride,” I said, unable to make eye contact. “I gotta go.” I grabbed my book bag and climbed out of the car, my face flushed with the shame only a father’s scolding can elicit. I opened the door of the loud, smoky barroom and didn’t glance back as I escaped inside.

When my friend showed up an hour or so later, I was on my third beer. I laughed carelessly as I recounted my hitchhiking adventure. The lesson somebody else’s dad had tried to teach me was already just another story to tell.

What did he know anyway? Nothing bad ever happened to me.

The Evil Queen

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Evil Queen

She made me go with her to the mall that day. I didn’t want to go shopping. I didn’t want to go anywhere with her. She acted like my best friend when we were in public, and it made me cringe. I may have only been 11 years old, but I knew she was a big phony and I hated her more than anything.

I never wanted a stepmother. She wasn’t part of the happily ever after I envisioned with the father I barely knew but adored. When he visited my aunt’s house, where I lived after my mom died when I was a toddler, he talked about the home he would buy for us someday. He said we would live there together as a family. He never mentioned a new wife.

When he started dating my stepmother, she and I enjoyed a brief honeymoon phase. She was attractive, fun and vivacious, charming me with shopping trips, movie dates and sleepovers. My aunt and older cousin had concerns. She was too young. She had no children. What did she know about being a mother? But I couldn’t wait to move in with her and my dad after their wedding.

Everything changed once we were living in the same house. It started with her wanting me to call her mom. I couldn’t. I already had two mothers, my real mom and my aunt. She tried to appear understanding, but I felt her resentment. My dad didn’t want any more kids. She was stuck with me and my 21-year-old brother, who was rarely home and wanted nothing to do with her.

As the months passed, the distance between us grew. When my father was around, we managed to be civil. But on the days he worked afternoons, she and I sat silently at the dinner table. Afterward, she shut herself off in their bedroom, leaving me to fend for myself. I escaped to my room, seeking comfort in books or music but feeling as if I had nothing and no one. The longer I lived in that house, the lonelier I became and the more I hated her.

Despite the tension between us, my stepmother showed off a happy mother-daughter relationship whenever other people were around. At the mall that day, while I skimmed racks of neon-colored tops, she engaged in giggly, bubbly chatter with the saleswoman.

“Are you two sisters?” I heard the saleswoman ask.

“No, she’s my daughter,” my stepmother said, laughing and shaking her head with false modesty.

“Oh, you look way too young to be her mom,” the saleswoman fawned. I seethed with anger as I watched my stepmom bask in the compliment.

We walked out of the store together, neither of us speaking. “You’re not my mother,” I said under my breath, as we entered the noisy mall.

“What did you say?” she asked, oozing venom through clenched teeth.

“I said,” speaking louder this time, so she would hear me, “You’re not my mother. I hate you!”

This time her fury trumped any concern about appearances, and she backhanded me across the mouth. I stood there in the middle of the mall, stunned by the taste of blood in my mouth and the sting of her hand on my face. I looked around and saw a few people watching us. I wasn’t sure what to do or where to go, so I turned and ran. I knew I was in trouble, I knew running would make it worse, but I didn’t care.

I found the nearest payphone and called my brother for a ride home.

Happy Birthday to You, Mom

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Today I am remembering my beautiful Aunt Thelma, the woman who raised me, on what would have been her 93rd birthday. She was a loving daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother and great grandmother who touched so many lives. To me, she was a mother, a hero, a role model and a dear friend.

Thelma was 51 and had already raised her own two children and multiple foster kids when she and my Uncle Lincoln welcomed me into their home. At that point in life, some women would not have been so giving and selfless, but that wasn’t how Thelma rolled. Her brother’s wife was dying, and he needed her help. All he had to do was ask, and she and my uncle were setting up a crib for me in their house.

My aunt said it was a seamless transition, me moving in with her and Uncle Lincoln. She said I slept peacefully in my new home on the very first night. I was only 2½, but I believe I sensed the love in that house and felt safe. I was exactly where I belonged.

No one was a stranger in Thelma’s house. She welcomed everyone. In fact, her kitchen was kind of like a 24-hour diner: You never knew who would show up. From my dad, to his friends, to all my “aunts” and “uncles” (which was how children respectfully referred to their parents’ friends back in the 1970s), there always seemed to be someone different sitting at her table. My aunt was a great cook, for sure, but she was an even better friend.

Happy birthday, Mom. Thank you for everything you gave me, for your love and friendship. Thank you for showing me what it takes to make a happy home and marriage. I would not be the person, wife or mother I am today if it had not been for you. I was, and continue to be, blessed, and you are the reason.

Thelma, my beautiful aunt, mother and friend. RIP 12/14/1919 - 12/21/2011

What Happens in Vegas

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As a little girl, I didn’t dream of walking down the aisle in a white satin dress while Prince Charming waited worshipfully for me at the altar. I didn’t imagine him carrying me off into the sunset on his white steed to a castle where we would live happily ever after. While my Barbie dolls sometimes wore the wedding gown my mother made from her own dress, they preferred the stewardess uniform. My favorite Barbie, a brunette like me, traveled the world with Pilot Ken. They went on dates during layovers in exotic places, but they never discussed marriage. Brunette Barbie had other plans.

When I was a preteen, my plan was to leave Michigan once I turned 18 and relocate to California or maybe New York. Next I would travel to Europe and possibly settle in London. My roadmap grew sketchy after Europe, but I was certain I’d stay single wherever I landed. I didn’t want kids, so there was no point in getting married. I wouldn’t even think about settling down until I was old, like 40 or something, and had seen the world.

At 18, my plan went decidedly south. I wound up living at home with my dad and his wife while I went to the University of Michigan-Dearborn and then moved out and took a job in nearby Birmingham when I graduated. I promised myself I’d only extend the deadline for leaving Detroit by a few years and that I’d be on my way by age 25. Two months before my 26th birthday, I quit my second post-college job, sold my car and moved to Chicago. Six weeks later, I met my future husband.

The prince of Lincoln Park (and later Bucktown) and I lived together for two-and-a-half years before he proposed. I was fine with that, happily focusing on my career and enjoying our big-city lifestyle. Marriage remained the “m” word for me, and the idea of planning a wedding held no appeal. Still, I knew that if I were going to embark on the journey down the aisle and into the unknown, he was the one I wanted beside me.

During a visit to Michigan to celebrate our engagement, my father and his wife tried to sell us on getting married in Livonia. We politely agreed to check out some locations with them, but we never made it past the first generic reception hall or the talk of which of their friends should be on the guest list. The prince wanted a church wedding, but suddenly my crazy idea of eloping to Las Vegas looked good to him. Or at least it looked better than a bunch of my parents’ friends doing the chicken dance under a disco ball.

The prince and I were married in a gazebo at the Island Wedding Chapel of the Tropicana Casino by a minister named “Hap,” which, as he explained, is three-fifths of happy. I had wanted a drive-through wedding performed by an Elvis impersonator, but we compromised. Twenty friends and family members celebrated with us, and a handful of us partied well into the night. I think we rode the rollercoaster at the top of the Stratosphere at 3 o’clock in the morning, but I can’t be sure.

Sometimes what happens in Vegas is only the beginning of the adventure. The prince and I have been to both coasts multiple times in our 16 years of marriage, but we decided the Midwest is where we belong for now. This summer we took the two kids I swore I would never have to Europe for the first time. It seems the plans I made when I was a little girl didn’t change, although the order of them did.

I guess Brunette Barbie just needed to find the right copilot.

The prince and I celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary in November 2011 where our adventure (or at least the marriage part) began: Viva Las Vegas!

Creatures of Habit

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My father and me in 2005 at his 80th birthday party

My dad ate poached eggs and toast for breakfast every day when I was a teenager living with him in Livonia, Michigan. He woke up at 5 a.m., put on a pot of coffee, read the paper and made his simple but satisfying morning meal. He didn’t say much as he sat at the kitchen table, methodically planning his morning. His shift as security director at Mount Sinai Hospital in Detroit didn’t start until 3 p.m., but he had things he needed to accomplish beforehand. Each moment would have a purpose; no task would go undone.

As a World War II veteran and retired Detroit police officer, my father experienced turbulence and loss throughout most of his life. At 18 he was on board a U.S. Navy ship bombed by a Japanese suicide plane in the Sulu Sea. A torpedo from a nearby destroyer sunk the U.S.S. Ommaney Bay, and 95 of his fellow Navy men were lost.

Whatever remained of my father’s innocence sank to the bottom of the sea with his ship. He returned to the states suffering from what would now be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. He was haunted by what he had seen and needed to re-establish order in his life. He went from the Navy to the police department, finding comfort in the structure of enforcing the law.

But the chaos followed him, professionally and personally.

It traveled with him through the streets of Detroit as a beat cop, and as he climbed the department ranks to become an inspector. In 1967 it took shape in the Detroit riots, the violence and destruction of which left the city he fought to protect in ruins.

That same year he and my mother faced the personal upheaval of an unexpected pregnancy. They were relieved and pleased that what my 40-year-old mother thought might be a tumor turned out to be a baby. Two-and-a-half years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia and died within six weeks. My older siblings stayed with my father in Detroit, and I went to live with my aunt and uncle in nearby Southfield. Two teenagers were enough; a toddler was more than a devastated widower could handle.

At 11, I returned to live with my father, a man I barely knew, and his new wife. I didn’t understand him or his rituals. I didn’t know about the things that had happened to him or what he had seen. I couldn’t possibly comprehend the significance of his morning routine, the structure he imposed on his life. I wouldn’t realize who my father was and why until I heard his stories years later and then experienced firsthand some of the chaos and loss that come with adulthood, including his death six years ago.

Now, as a wife and mother of two, I find comfort in morning rituals of my own. I pop out of bed at 6 a.m., rouse my bleary-eyed children and head downstairs to prepare their lunches. I make myself a cup of coffee, turn on the television for the local weather report, and silently and methodically plan my day. Each moment will have a purpose; no task will go undone.

I am my father’s daughter.

Five Star Friday