I never think of my mother on Mother's Day. I only think of myself and my four children. I think of my mother the day after Mother's Day with only sadness and regret and disappointment. I refuse to ruin Mother's Day with thoughts of the woman who raised me, and did a pretty poor job of it at that. I'm sure I need to forgive her for the things she did to me and maybe one day I will. Today, though, is not that day. Today I think back in sadness and anger.
My mother said she couldn't nurse me because her milk was no good. I know lots of good mothers don't nurse their children and they turn out fine, though I did nurse all my children and have a hard time believing mother's milk is no good. They tell me my mother propped my bottle in my crib and they also say I hated milk and kept throwing the bottle out of the bed. And I still to this day hate milk. Went to a local dairy in Girl Scouts and as soon as I smelled the odor in there, I threw up all over the lobby floor. I hate milk.
Supposedly I was a pretty little girl with blonde hair and blue-green eyes. But, I sucked my thumb, which caused the family to be afraid I would grow up with buck teeth and not be the typical young southern beauty queen. Therefore, my mother had casts made for my arms and when I lay down for a nap and at night, mama would put those hated casts on my arms. I couldn't bend my arms to suck my thumbs, but I couldn't move the heavy casts either. In the summer flies would land on my face and I couldn't flick them off. I remember being deathly afraid the house would catch on fire and everyone would run out and forget me and I would burn to death. I couldn't get out of my crib with the casts on. I could barely move at all with them. And I didn't get buck teeth, but even as a young child I resented my mother and was afraid of her.
I'm ADHD. I'm also sixty-eight and the best diagnosis I ever had was before anyone had ever heard of ADHD. Our family doctor told my mother when I was four that the only way to explain my behavior, was that if I had been a horse, I would have been a race horse. I never walked anywhere. I trotted and ran. I never shut up, so I'm trying to rationalize and say my mother raised me the way she did because I provoked her. I'm sure I was not an easy child to raise. All the eight millimeter videos we have of my birthday parties have my mother holding my arm and jerking me away from the revelers, my feet not even touching the ground.
My mother and her sister used to go off and leave me with my uncle to babysit. He was not only a babysitter, he was also a child molester. Lester, his name was, so I called him Lester the Molester when I was old enough to realize what was going on. He molested me in all kinds of ways in every room in the house. Mother used to go away and say I had to have a bath by the time she came back. If I took a bath, Lester was in there doing his evil deeds. If I ran and hid, I got punished for not having taken a bath. I tried not to blame my mother, but many years later I heard my mother and her other sister talking about how Lester had tried things on them. My mother said once he came in her bedroom naked and said, "Let me feel your leg, just let me feel your leg." Now I ask you, what kind of mother leaves this kind of person to babysit with a baby and then a young child. I didn't even know it was wrong until I was eight and he told me it was just between the two of us and to never tell anyone or many bad and evil things would happen to me.
My mother named me Kathryn and used to tell people that not only did Kathryn mean chaste and pure, but that I was also born under Virgo the Virgin. What a message to give a little girl. I took that message and ran the other way and became a not virgin when I was seventeen. I also changed my name to Rachel. Right after I became not a virgin, I became pregnant. When we told my mother she went into hysterics and we had to call the family doctor to come give her a shot and he said she may never come out of it, time would tell. She came out of it all right and refused to speak to me for three weeks. She could not even stand to be in the same room with me. One day after three weeks I came home from school and she was in the living room, so I figured she was ready to call a truce. Only her truce was this, said in a gravely voice with pursed lips: "I never thought a daughter of mine would lift her skirts for any man." And I knew I had sunk further than any person could. I begged her forgiveness, and it was not forthcoming.
When my first child was four, I worked in Atlanta at Atlas Van Lines where one day I was robbed and raped by a Black man with a gun. This was in 1966 and in Marietta, Georgia, racism was rampant. I lost all my friends who said their husbands had told them they should have been killed after a Black man had touched them. I think I lost my mother for good too, at that time, for what I had to do. She was in my living room talking to my sisters a few hours after the rape and she said she could never look at her baby again after she had been touched by a Black man. One of my sisters came into my room and told me to pretend to be asleep so mama could come in and look at me. I did. I laid there hoping my eyelids weren't fluttering, lying there wanting to die after having a gun at my head for what seemed like ages, lying there wanting my mama to hold me and tell me it would be all right and I just lay there praying she thought I was asleep. Later my therapist would ask me not to have contact with my natural family for a while as when I needed my mother the most I had to take care of her instead of the other way around. And I didn't, not for many years, did I have contact with her and nothing ever changed when I did.
I used to think I only wanted my mother to love me. That if one's own mother doesn't love them, then no-one can. All my life I tried desperately to please my mother and I don't think I ever once did. That same therapist also told me they never think if people love them they only think how people treat them and that helped. I stopped wanting my mama to love me and paid more attention to how she treated me. It helped me stop hating myself and learning I was okay. My okayness did not depend on whether my mama loved me or not.
And you know what? I'm sure she did at some level. It just was certainly inadequate for my needs. And I'll tell you what. I watched my own kids like hawks and I'm sure they were never molested as they're quite grown now and I believe would tell me if they had been. There are no videos of them being dragged out of birthday parties. When my oldest daughter got pregnant and wasn't married, I was there for her. I'm hoping and thinking I didn't make the mistakes my mother did. And that's the thing to be grateful for with a mother like mine. I knew exactly what not to do when I had my own children. I still wish I had a mother who had been different. But I have become my own mother and I do a pretty good job of loving myself and taking care of me. And to all you out there who didn't have great mothers, I hope you can come to terms with the one you had. I don't think there is any mother who first looks at her newborn and says "I am going to do everything I can to fuck up this child." But often it seems that way. I know mothers try their best and that's all really we can ask.