A few months ago, my therapist had the gall to ask me if I'd ever considered how difficult my mother's childhood had been.
There are moments that test me. That was one of them.
My God, did my therapist forget who she was talking to? Was I supposed to give a fuck how difficult my mother's childhood was at this point in my conflicted emotional hell? According to the ancient and mumbling words of mammy dearest, hers was the finest of experiences. Sure, she once snuck into the garden with a salt shaker and ate the tomatoes off the vine and was punished by having to admit it to her mother.
Of course, that would be punishment for the salty bitch. Admitting she'd done anything was entirely out of character. It must have been excruciating. Dear God, it was my punishment just listening to her talk about eating fresh tomatoes off the vine. I despise fresh tomatoes. I grow an abundance of them in my garden for a sauce. Period. What you do in the privacy of your own home with raw tomatoes is none of my business. Just lie to me. We'll be fine.
My mother was a liar. Hands down, one of the best. She taught me how to survive by showing me how effective a properly placed lie can be. She was such a good liar, that I didn't recognize the biggest lie of all until a few days ago. My mother was an alcoholic.
It never, not once, occurred to me that she would have a problem with booze as a disabled senior citizen living in her gated, limited income, desert community. Somehow, she had always been a disabled senior citizen to me. Even when she wasn't. Did we have a drink or two during Traditional Family Holidaze? Absolutely. Did we have a glass of wine with dinner while traveling? Sure! But not once did it ever cross my mind that some of the time when I was a child she was in rehab. It certainly explains more about the times she dumped me on my Uncles doorstep, the neighbor's doorstep, or shipped me off to live with distant relatives. I have a vague memory of her explaining to someone that she had a "weak heart" and needed to rest.
The last time I ever recalled her having anything to do with too much booze was when she called me and asked me to pick her up from a bar. I was ten.
"I don't drive, mom. I can't come to get you."
"Get a taxi, I'm at [whatever that place was, I sat in the car for so many hours while she was in there, it's got to be some kind of record] and they won't help me, and I said that you would. They're laughing at me, so you better get your behind here now. There's food." ||click||
Back in the day, there were these massive things called "phone books" and the equivalent of Google for Businesses lived in the yellow section. Those were the yellow pages. You could find what you were searching for if you knew the alphabet. T is for Taxi.
I had them come get me first, because A) I was hungry and B) no one knew how to get my mother out of a jam like I did.
Looping my mother's arm around my shoulders and dragging her to the taxi from the barstool is a blur. I was mostly angry because the promised food wasn't there. Oddly enough, I remember that more than anything, because the taxi driver stopped and provided me with a nosh while mammy snored. A piece of pizza and a soda. God bless the taxi drivers of the world.
That was the last time I recall any issue with booze and mi madre. To be honest, it was also around that time I began living elsewhere permanently. There was a foster home, and then my cousins in Utah. I digress, though. In fact, that is the dilemma I'm facing at the moment. Just HOW MUCH I have digressed is becoming apparent. I was so good at lying that I lied myself right out of my own truth. My mother was an alcoholic.
When my brother's wife explained it to me, in plain English a few days ago while we were discussing the funeral arrangements, I had such a moment of clarity it almost made me laugh.
Almost.
There it was, in glaring technicolor truth. She couldn't stay with me because there wasn't any booze. She couldn't spend any time with anyone for too long, because there wasn't any booze.
She was constantly falling and forgetting things because there was booze when she was at home. Alone.
I understood in criminally bright accents with all the bullet points just where her insanity began. This explanation for her cruelty, why she said and did many of the horrible deeds she perpetrated on me... right up to the moment she ran out of my house four years ago. In a taxi she managed to call on her own. She was jonesing for the bottle. For the escape.
When I saw my therapist earlier this week, I relayed the information to her. We looked at each other, blinking away the tears some revelations deserve.
My mother had a horrible childhood. Well, so did I. We are joined, then, my mother and I, in the wasteland of abuse and traumatic memories. I was going to title my book, "My mother is an Orange" because someone once said that it's ridiculous to try and get apple juice from an orange. But now? My mother is a tomato.
She can have as many tomatoes in heaven as she wants. I have decreed it is so. Amen.
