Dear Mother

“Dear Mother. I’m reaching out to you to see if it’s possible for us to have email conversations. This is a big step for me. I request that you be gentle in your conversation with me. I will do the same. 

“The two of us will not continue to be on this earth together forever. This email is an invitation to communicate a bit at a time.”

I write these words and I’m filled with the impossibility of the task. It’s been 50 years since I ran away. I don’t believe my mother can maintain any sustained level of communication without ranting about the ways she has been wronged. It’s not possible for me to believe. 

I’m making myself wait until after May 7th when she gets the card for her birthday and the delivery of tulip bulbs in a woven planter. I’ll see if and how she responds. I don’t trust her. I have nothing to base any trust on. 

I remember my year 14. I remember her picking me up from Western State Hospital to deliver me to my grandparents. I remember my year 15 when she told me my beloved school counselor was jealous of my relationship with my mom and wanted to come between us because she didn’t have that kind of relationship with her own daughter. (Oh for god’s sake.) It was the moment I knew she would do anything to manipulate me and could never be trusted. It was the moment I saw her as a difficult, troubled human in addition to being my mother. 

I remember living with my grandparents and her getting a job in the donut shop across the street from the service station where they lived. It meant she was watching every day after school when I got out of the car and walked inside the station. Every damn day I had to decide if I was going to cross the street to see her. Every damn day. God, I felt tormented. (I’m sure it was no picnic for my grandpa while he worked at the station all day. They weren’t speaking at the time.)

Kindness and justice was not in her behavior arsenal. I was hers and I’d been stolen from her by my grandparents and others through no fault of her own. Her only alternative was to woo me back. She was relentless in this “see, I’m not doing anything wrong” way.

I was a troubled kid trying to navigate my way through mental illness. She didn’t believe that my condition was valid. My situation was all manipulation on the part of my counselors, my grandparents, or me depending on the day. Someone had to be at fault besides her or my father. Someone did this to our family but it couldn’t be the two adults in the house. It had to be an outside force, a diabolical conspiracy to separate me from my parents. “Oh. It was, Mom.” It was a conspiracy of generations of parents and other adults abusing kids in the secrecy of home, school, and church without penalty or accountability. 

I still fantasize about making more meaningful contact with my mother as we approach her 87th birthday. Eighty-seven!  I haven’t seen her since she was 54. I could bow my head and pray to the god of grief.  The pain of disconnecting to a person that was so crucial in my child life feels like too much to bear until I remember the treatment when I’ve tried to re-engage. I am painfully aware that time is fleeting. But I can’t believe she’ll respond to me any differently than she did when I was a five foot ten inch tall, 14 year old girl weighing 112 pounds. A stiff, restrained girl trying her best to avoid the traps of generational illness and find a way to thrive in a life that looked bleak. 

Fifty years later, I’m here to say that it can be done but not without determination, persistence, and a shitload of luck. I’m sorry, mom. I don’t believe you’ll be on the other end of the line without more of the same. I can’t fool or trick myself into believing you’ll be there with what a loving person would find as gentleness and acceptance. 

Since the conspiracy of the day and an ex-president has been a massive disappointment to you, mom, I can’t imagine I’ll do any better than I have in the past. If death provides any relief at all, I hope you find it. I hope your god shows up in unexpected ways for you. I can’t give either of us relief in this corner of the world. 

Sending my love, virtually. 

Joceile 

4.30.22

[Picture reflecting clouds on the lake and houses on opposite shore in the waning light of evening.]