A Mother's Day Postscript: My Mother, The Layers Beneath |
It's hard to look beneath a mother's own sense of herself.
You need your mother so much you want to believe she's as strong as she thinks she is.
Looking into your mother's deeper self may allow you to see into your own hidden self.
Knowing who your mother truly is inside can nourish your heart even as it breaks it.
The Serenity Prayer makes it sound easy: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” It’s not. Particularly when you can’t change your own mother’s deadly choices.
My brother and I always wished our mother didn’t smoke. Sunday rides in our stepfather’s lumbering Pontiac meant nauseating fumes of Phillip Morris hardly softened by wafts of Shalimar perfume. Her good-night kiss reeked, as did the overflowing ashtrays left smoldering by the telephone. The kitchen was engulfed in a nimbus cloud from the day’s pack.
I hated the angry snap of those lighters that shot flame too close to her nose for me to watch. I hated the grinding sound of her stub against the saucer, its hot sizzle as the puddle of coffee snuffed it out. In summer, on the beach, the cigarette dangling from her mouth seemed like torture in the baking sun. Yet, by 15, I joined her in the kitchen where I lit her cigarettes and mine.
From my point of view, her smoking had an upside. She was tough, my mom. In her Mafia-striped suit, her slouch hat, and the cigarette between her lips, nobody messed with her.........