With the grace of airborne excrement landing on freshly washed hair, unpleasantness plopped into my inbox with a deafening thud in the form of an accusatory note from my genitor.
My mother discovered the internet about 3 months ago.
After several false starts and some messages that randomly confused the enter key and the space bar, she has now mastered the art of email, complete with animated gifs of pink kittens, a curious choice for someone who cannot abide live felines on account of their – alleged – smell yet also keeps a
battery operated toy cat at home. Yes, my mother has an electronic heap of polyester fur that meows when someone walks past it, adding excitement to night time bathroom trips.
Right from the start, the relationship between my mother and I was always uncomfortable, perhaps because I came into the world as some kind of deal: after 5 years of marriage, my mother wanted a bigger house and my father longed for a child. Sadly, neither of them could foresee that trading womb for bricks would spell the end of coupledom and forever dismantle the concept of family for all three of us. My parents' divorce also left me at my mother's mercy, without anyone to stand between me and her hand.
I was 10 when my mother ran off with some bloke she knew as a teenager and whose wife had just died, plucking me out of a private school where I was the only kid without a double-barrelled surname or a weekend home in the country and neatly snipping off the few roots I had, condemning my father, relatives and school friends to the compost heap. On the positive side, from one day to the next, the concrete jungle of rancid suburban ugliness where I was born made way for alpine vistas and air so clean it made my ailing lungs and sinuses squeak.
In fact, it was those lungs and sinuses that got my mother an expeditious secondment courtesy of her employer who, sensitive to her maternal concern for the sickly kid with big eyes, despatched us to the mountains within weeks of my medical with the company doctor.
I missed my dad the human buffer though, my dad who would sandwich himself between me and whatever object my mother had in her hand, be it a ruler, a hair brush, a broom or the hoover. Even before we left the family home, I actually remember my hysterical mother chasing my father with the hoover and hitting him, to which he retaliated by throwing some cooked vegetables against the kitchen wall and I, suddenly gripped by the sheer absurdity of it all, burst out laughing. Most of the time though, my mother's weapon of choice was none other than her agile hand with long oval nails. She was so slap happy that she once managed to simultaneously smash my glasses and leave an ugly gash on my cheek. I went to school the next day sporting some odd art installation on my nose and probably came up with some excuse regarding the state of my face. I honestly can't remember, but chances are I hid behind my hair as usual.
Her own insecurities and the omnipresent burden of being a reluctant mother translated into an overbearing, smothering nature that had me repeat the mantra "Don't invite me to your birthday party because my mom won't let me go" to all my classmates pretty much as soon as I learnt to speak. She occasionally broke the rule though but would always arrange to pick me up way before the party was over. In a rare display of motherly love, she did throw me a birthday party of my very own when I could invite school friends. Once.
Life in the mountains was a shock to the system for an urban kid whose only experience of snow consisted of TV shows and a week's ski holiday culminating with my falling ass first into a brook, poles still attached to my wrists and skis sticking out. Thrown in at the deep end in a new state school slap bang in the middle of the academic year, I hid in the library reading everything I could lay my hands on instead of joining the ski club or go rock climbing so I could be out of my mother's way. Meanwhile, she came up with more cruel and twisted means that made home life as disagreeable as possible while openly despising everything I loved and was interested in, including my hapless father.
For years, he was not allowed to cross the threshold of our home and had to stay in a hotel whenever he traveled to visit. If I had 9 days off school, I would spend 4.5 days with him and 4.5 days with her, regardless of the fact that I lived with her all year round and hardly ever saw my father. For years, I was also expressly forbidden from using the house phone to call him and he wasn't welcome to call there – instead, my mother used to give me a couple of coins and I'd have to walk to the call box up the street, come rain, shine or as was often the case during the winter – snow. And yet, when I was allowed to go and visit my father, I would leave a trail of post-it notes and doodles around my mother's house telling her that I loved her, wishing her a good day etc... From her glasses case to the inside of cupboards, the fridge or the bathroom, no place was exempt.
Later, my mother made zero allowance for the teenager that I was, all gawky, shy, full of hormones and questions. She decided that I wouldn't have access to hot water if I failed to wake up on time for school and padlocked the cupboard where the hot water controls were. (Ours was an odd set up, with huge gas bottles we had to lug up three flights of stairs, bizarre plumbing and electrics). That's how I learnt how to pick a lock, using one of my mother's tapestry needles. I also hitchhiked to school – we lived in the valley, the local high school was up in one of the resorts and the school bus service was limited to one bus in the morning and another in the evening, regardless of the wildly varied schedules of the students. My mother knew what I was doing because she'd get reports from work colleagues who had spotted me with my thumb up – and occasionally given me a ride – but took no action other than the usual.
Truth is, I don't really remember much of my childhood or adolescence, only that was unpleasant enough to make me leave home at 17, on academic grounds. A straight A student, the only topic my mother never argued with me about was education so I made sure I chose a course that wasn't available at the local college. One year later, I changed to another course only available abroad and off I went, never to return. I was lucky – those were the days of free college and generous grants for kids from modest single parent families.
I have huge gaps in my memory where my early years should be. Whether they're gone for good or simply filed away, I don't know but I have no burning desire to revisit them. Although I am prone to
occasional intense bouts of sadness because I am often
too sensitive for my own good, I like to think that my start in life hasn't quite managed to dent my joy for life,
genuine interest in others or natural curiosity,
Although I keep in touch with my parents, we have never been close. After much initial soul searching, my father finally found happiness in the form of a wonderful woman with whom he has been living for the last 15 years. And yet, he flatly refuses to get married again, much to his partner's – and my – chagrin.
Meanwhile, after running away from the boyfriend who turned out to be an alcoholic psychopath with suicidal tendencies back when I was still in high school (cue another cross country move and another school change in the middle of the year) my mother has been living mainly on her own, stewing in resentment.
And, if the last 35 years are anything to go by, the reason her life has been marred by frustration and misery is none other than me.
To prove her point once more, her latest email lamented my silence and informed me that she had recently sought additional medical help, meaning she now rattles a little louder thanks to yet more pills. As my mother and I don't exactly have a tradition of keeping in touch regularly even though she has my contact numbers and generally knows where I am, I was baffled by her email.
Despite being obviously the world's worst daughter, I made peace with the past a long time ago. When I understood that she would never be able to love me simply because I am her daughter or be happy with anything I ever did, I left. Since then, I have chosen to keep a healthy distance between us as a way to shield myself from further pettiness. Although it still occasionally gets delivered by phone and now also by email, it has a far lesser impact than the humiliating hysterics of my younger years.
Soon however, I will go visit her and try to make that relationship work, or at least turn it into some workable human interaction that no longer causes any distress or pain to either of us because it's about time we learnt to live with the reality of each other's existence.
As a friend suggested to me last night, maybe my mother has been in pain for 35 years.
I suspect he might right.
