TheBanyanTree: It's never too late

[Pat Martin]

It was Christmas Day 2005, my first Christmas as a single woman after 25 years of marriage.  It was also my first Christmas without my only child Michelle, now 21, who was currently traveling in Australia.  Although I was pleased she was expanding her horizons, I missed her. 

 

I had braved icy, isolated roads through three snowy mountain passes, hyperventilated through Vancouver's bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic and boarded two ferries to reach the small coastal town I had grown up in.  The trip had taken two days.  

 

Already I had enjoyed visiting my sister, Marion for six days.  Now, I was taking a very big risk.  I was going to join my mother for Christmas dinner and, even more daring, I planned to stay overnight.   

 

As I guided my purple RAV4 up the Wildwood hill, I thought back to the insanity of my childhood.   More than once, I believed I would die by Mom's hands.  Two frightening memories flashed through my mind.  I was about five and was lying on the counter top on my back, head tipped backward over the kitchen sink as she roughly lathered my hair with castille soap.  When soap bubbles sprayed into my eyes and I began to cry, she grabbed me by the hair and flung me across the room with such force that I crashed into the refrigerator on the other side of the room and fell to the floor, stunned and terrified.  

 

I wasn't much older when she grabbed my hair and slammed my head repeatedly against the metal edge of the kitchen table for forgetting to take my shoes off before stepping into her spotless house.  That day I knew with certainty I was going to die unless she stopped.  When I screamed, "You're killing me," she came to her senses and released me.  

 

My mother had been a monster who demanded I love her because that's what the bible said, but I was 21 before I gave up all hope of having a relationship with her.  By then, she and Dad had divorced and she was living with another man in a nearby city. I had taken a boyfriend with me to Christmas dinner at her home.  It hadn't gone well.  After dinner she verbally attacked me with such cruelty that I threw on my coat and fled, boyfriend in tow.  Outside the apartment building, I vomited on the lawn.  Until then, I hadn't known that emotions could make a person physically sick.

 

After that, I exiled her from my life.  I didn't approve of her lifestyle, and I didn't trust her.  She was a vicious woman who nearly destroyed me, and it took me many years to gain healthy self-esteem.  I had 'let go' of her as if she had died and had grieved for years.  

 

When I married, out of courtesy I phoned to tell her, but I hadn't invited her to the wedding.  She hadn't met my daughter until Michelle was five years old and had only seen her twice since then.  

 

Now, thirty years later, I was joining Mom for Christmas dinner again; I was giving her another chance.  

 

Two years earlier, she had moved back to her hometown to care for her wealthy, aging father, the man who made her early years a living hell with his alcoholic rages, beatings and cruel words.   When I first heard, it crossed my mind that she was after Papa's money, and he had, in fact, signed over all of his worldly possessions to her not long after her arrival.  His will, which had left his estate equally divided between Mom and her children, was nullified.

 

Since my return from Guatemala in August, she had begun emailing me (she recently bought a computer and is learning how to use it.)  In November when she heard I was sinking into depression, she had written, "I love you and I do hope that you will forgive me for the past mistakes that I made.  God has forgiven me. I was a very mixed up person due to my upbringing."

 

To my surprise, I realized I had forgiven her.  Without my conscious awareness, my bitterness had evaporated.  I had responded with, "Regarding the past, I have forgiven you.  I know you did the best you could at the time."  But forgiving didn't mean I trusted her.  I knew enough not to have any expectations of this visit.  

 

I arrived at her new modular home, located next door to her childhood home, and rang the doorbell.  Her partner Grant answered.

 

"Hello Pat.  You don't need to ring the bell.  Around here you can just walk in.  Your mom is next door," he said, gesturing toward my grandfather's ancient farmhouse.

 

Since Mom had arrived she had taken on the daunting task of cleaning up an accumulation of 40 years of filth and garbage both inside and outside my eccentric grandfather's home.  As I crossed the lawn, I marveled at how much Mom had accomplished.  All the refuse had been removed and the yard was nicely landscaped.

 

Nearing Papa's house, I heard the television blaring.  Papa was deaf and he needed the volume close to maximum in order to hear it.  I let myself in through the front door, wishing I had a pair of earplugs in my pocket.  The house was hot and smelled stuffy, but it didn't stink.  Before Mom cleaned it, the stench was close to unbearable.  I greeted my brother Greg, who was seated on the couch.  

 

Papa, now 93 was seated in a wheelchair close to the television.  His head lolled to one side and he seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.  He wore only a long Stanfield's nightshirt that just covered his genitals.  His bare, lily-white legs were patterned with purple spider veins. In his youth, he had been a muscled brute of a man with near-superhuman strength and dashing Irish good looks.  Now, he was as helpless as an infant and thin, with a long, snow-white beard, shoulder-length white hair and black claw-like fingernails.   

 

I greeted him, shouting in order to be heard over the television.  I could tell he didn't recognize me.  In the 16 months since I had last seen him, he had deteriorated drastically.  

 

Mom bustled out of the kitchen. "Hi Pat," she said and smiled. 

 

Mom had been a beautiful woman with an hourglass figure, raven black hair and flashing, brown eyes: a boiling volcano ready to erupt.  She had been a vain woman who used her sexuality to control men.  Now, she was 68 years old.  Her face was a patchwork of wrinkles; her dark-brown dyed hair was thinning.  She seemed to have shrunk. But it was her eyes that I looked to first to 'read' her, as I had learned to do when I was a child.  They seemed softer and less menacing than I remembered.

 

I smiled back.  "Hi," I said, as my inner voice whispered, 'be careful'.

 

"We need to get him back to bed.  Something happened to him in the past couple of days.  He has really gone downhill.  I think he had a stroke," she said.  "His mind has been affected."

 

I watched as she and Greg wheeled him into the bedroom and hooked him into an electric lift that whirred as it deftly raised him into the air and deposited him on the bed.  Mom tucked him in.

 

"He'll sleep for awhile now," she said.  "Then, I'll have to bring over his Christmas dinner and feed him.  We'll have dinner early so I can eat my dinner with everyone first."

 

Seeing my grandfather as limp as a rag doll and completely dependent made me realize how taxing Mom's role as caregiver had become.  She had no life aside from taking care of her father.  She was on duty 24/7; she fed, bathed, diapered and dressed him. She combed his hair, got him into and out of bed, gave him his medications and got up numerous times in the night to care for him.  She had a brand new home but couldn't even sleep there.  She was more than earning her inheritance.

 

Mom, Greg and I returned to her house.  Before long, Marion and her boyfriend, Mike joined us.  We sipped wine and visited, breathing in the delicious smell of roasting turkey.  I found myself relaxed and was enjoying myself.  We had all mellowed and matured.  Unlike family gatherings in the past, everyone wanted to get along. 

 

As dinnertime neared, I went into the kitchen to help put Christmas dinner on the table. Mom, I noticed, seemed to be struggling with her emotions.  As I walked past her, she reached out her hand as if she wanted to gently touch my face, a face she had smashed hundreds of times with a lightning-fast wallop.

 

"You're a good girl," she said.  Her lips trembled; her eyes filled with tears.  

 

I said nothing, gave her a hint of a smile.  At 52, for the first time in my life, I heard the words I had longed for while I was growing up.

 

Time heals.  People can let go of the past and move on.  There is always hope.

******