Motherhood

“I think it’s weird that you don’t have your mom’s phone number,” my nine-
year-old daughter said to me as we drove in the car to her volleyball practice. “If you were to ever talk to her, what would you say?”
I hesitated.
These out of the blue questions always caught me a little off guard.
“What made you think about that?” I asked.
My daughter shrugged, looked out the window. “Mother’s Day is coming. I just
think it’s weird you never talk about yours.”
It was a big question with complicated answers. The older my daughter was
getting, the more questions she had about life… and my life. I struggled to give age
appropriate answers that were also truthful. The short answer was that I hadn’t seen
my mom since I was her age. My parents had a difficult marriage. I didn’t have many
happy memories of them together. Their arguments drowned out any love that existed
between them. Both suffered from depression and were constantly stressed, working to
make ends meet for a family of five. It was a relentless, vicious cycle. I was nine when I witnessed my parents’ last argument. I don’t remember what it
was about or what was said— only what happened. It escalated to my father grabbing a
bible and baiting my mother to swear on it that she hated him. She refused at first but
my dad insisted to the point that she finally did, practically screaming it in his face as
her hand shook. My two sisters and I watched the whole thing. I will never forget the
pit in my stomach that day… the way loneliness wrapped me in its arms and held me
so tight I couldn’t breathe.
That same day, I watched my mother pack up a suitcase and leave. I didn’t
realize then that it would be the last time I would live with her. I didn’t realize then that
it would be the last time I would call her mom. I didn’t realize then that I was becoming
motherless that day. As I watched her little red Toyota hatchback disappear down the
street, I didn’t realize that it would be the end.
How was I suppose to explain this to my nine-year-old daughter without
planting a seed of fear that one day her mother might leave, too? I had spent the last
nine years trying to create a life for her that was the opposite of mine during childhood
— a life nested in safety, predictability, and stability. I purposely didn’t talk often about
my childhood and yet, watching my daughter grow up, always brought up memories of
my own.
I spent the second half of childhood without a mom around. My introduction to
womanhood was messy and painful. I clumsily fumbled my way through training bras, leg shaving, and tampons. Being motherless and navigating the pitfalls of puberty made
me feel like an abandoned bear cub trying to survive the wilderness on its own, without
its guide, its protector. I always felt a little bit lost.
I was just as graceless stepping into motherhood. It was something that I had
always longed for yet didn’t feel qualified for. There was no crash course on how to be
a mother, let alone a good one. I learned the ropes with a million trials and errors. Some
days were good and others were off-the-charts BAD. On days when my baby girl cried
and wailed, I cried right along with her, out of desperation and confusion as to know
what to do. Feeling inept was an understatement. I envied friends who could call up
their moms on a whim for advice or tricks of the trade. Being a “motherless mother”
was (and oftentimes still is) very lonely. But as time passed and years went by, I also
found an unexpected healing in motherhood to the childhood wounds that I thought
would always be left open. I looked at my daughter, her big brown eyes staring back at me, trying to find
honest words to answer her question. Finally, I said, “I would tell my mom thank you.”
My daughter turned to look at me, her eyes questioning. “She left you. Why
would you thank her?”
I kept my eyes on the road ahead so my daughter couldn’t see the emotion
threatening my eyes. “Because my mother taught me resilience. Life can be really hard sometimes but I know I’m strong enough to get through it. Whatever it is, I’ll figure it
out. Nothing will ever be perfect and I make a lot of mistakes, but I keep trying. And
maybe, through her absence, I learned to be a better mother because of the things I
didn’t have.”
My daughter looked at me for a second, then turned to look out the window.
My words hung in the silence between us.
Then quietly, she said, “And I wouldn’t trade you for anybody.”