Things My Mother Told Me

fi.m - 15 Jul 17

On October 13^th 2010, 33 Chilean miners were released, one by one, from 69 days trapped in a mine in the Atacama Desert via a small capsule. My family and I watched as each one was reunited with their loved ones, a mass media covered each story and background to celebrate each individual’s life. We watched for hours and hours, blank and emotionless as that day was the day we had found out my mother had died.

I’ve often thought about if, as a daughter, I could have done anything differently and changed the outcome of what happened; if I had sought help for her, against her protestations and anger or if I had locked her in a room and demanded that we try and figure someway through her thoughts and dark clouds. Maybe if I had moved back in with her, left my husband to be with her through the night so that she could talk to someone if she couldn’t sleep or helped her out more with money. The thoughts haunted me for such a long time. She was a perfect mother, loving, attentive, wise and protective and when she died I felt I had failed her. She always put us before herself, even if that meant she was unpopular in her choices. She stayed up late helping us research our essays and then sat with us for hours explaining theories and texts in a way we could understand. She would buy us little gifts if only to let us know that she had thought of us when she was out shopping and be the first to stand up for us when we were upset. But mum had demons and over time, her logic became incomprehensible and her lucid moments, less and less. We adored her but we couldn’t help her and time can be cruel as space opened up between us. We spoke often but it was detached and fraught with worry about saying the wrong thing or speaking out of turn. She was always the mum she had been but the qualities that stood her apart were muddied with anger and sadness and over time, she isolated herself from everyone eventually becoming the only one who understood her contemplation’s.

I had years of denial and anger and anxiety but it was guilt that ate away at me. I felt I should have done more, been more, said more and it affected every facet of my life. I saw my friends relationships with their mothers and it destroyed me inside. I once watched a mother and daughter dress shopping in a high-street store, and silently wept in the changing rooms for the everyday that would never happen again. I felt angry that my friends would return home for a weekend and sit around the dinner table, catching up about lives and loves and never truly appreciate how mundane yet comforting laying the table or loading the dishwasher together can be. It was the small things, the picking of fluff from cardigans or rolling the eyes at a probing question that had gone with an overwhelming emptiness taking its place.

Time passed, as it always does and I gradually let my friends back in, sought the professional help that I needed (but hadn’t admitted I needed), re-built my life in a different town with my husband, finished my degree that I had previously abandoned, bought a house together and tried to move on. And mostly, I did well to understand and accept the past, I was honest about my feelings when talking to a therapist (for her, I’m not sure I’d be where I am now), my siblings and I grew stronger and closer together and my husband remained the pillar of strength he always has been as I cried over Mother’s Day adverts and missed birthdays. I visited church every year on her anniversary and framed favourite pictures of us together to remind me of better, happier times.

Then I got pregnant. We’ve been together a long time so it was of no great surprise to our friends and family but nevertheless, we were all very excited. My sister did what my sister does best and cared for me, gave me thoughtful presents and articles to help with my horrible morning sickness. My husband ran me baths after particularly long days, cooked me dinner and dutifully attended all the Hypnobirthing and active birth workshops that I wanted to go on, with me. Our wonderfully kind family and friends gave us beautiful presents and took us out for dinner and we talked about names and stages and plans but I lay awake at night thinking about all the things that I wanted to know about but didn’t have the answers to.

Did she have morning sickness? How did she find out she was pregnant? How did they tell their friends and family? How was her labour? Did she have drugs? How did she feel when we were born? I love my dad unconditionally but he regularly struggles to remember what he had for lunch – he didn’t have the answers to my questions (apart from that his single role in the birthing process was to ensure she had an epidural, that he remembers vividly I’m sure, seared into his memory for a lifetime). My parents were long separated and then divorced before she died so I was entirely used to stories being forgotten and moments lost but this struck me differently. I had no reference or guidance at all. My brother and sister and I combed through items in storage and found a few nods to our infancy but they were mainly cards from people we didn’t know and presents (like metal spoons, we have many of these) that bore no relevance to the questions we wanted answered. I desperately wanted to know if I had been breastfed and found a health visitor card stating that ‘mum still breastfeeding baby at 6 weeks’ but nothing after that. I struggled with breastfeeding in the early days and not having my own mother to talk that through with was probably the hardest stage.

I would remember snippets of ridiculous advice that mum gave me whilst I was waiting in line at the supermarket or holding on a call to H.M.R.C. like ‘you should never clean the house too much before the health visitor comes because they’ll think you’re neglecting the baby’. These were interspersed with more sensible assurances such as ‘I felt guilty at the prospect of going back to work but do you know what Fi, I felt guilty if I didn’t and guilty if I did, so I did what I wanted to do and knew that I would feel guilty either way.’

Gradually as the weeks passed in a haze of newborn nappy changes and two am feeds, I felt strangely comforted that I knew what I was doing. I lamented the loss of the not knowings or not understandings and tried to replace them with the loving moments I remembered as a child; the cuddles when I was upset and the straight talking when I was rude. I remember once being so consumed with embarrassment because she interrupted a headmasters meeting to demand what he was planning on doing to the boys that were bullying my brother. Like something out of a Monty Python sketch she steadfastly stood outside his office for two hours sarcastically telling anyone that walked past that the headmaster apparently ‘welcomed bullies, apply within’ until he adjourned his meeting and let her in. The boys were all subsequently suspended, but that, she said, ‘wasn’t the point’.

She once let me date a man a few years older than me (she knew she couldn’t stop me) when I was 16 because, like the Yoda she was, she predicted what would happen. I would have my heartbroken and she would still be there to pick up the pieces and stroke my hair without having to say ‘I told you so’: examples like these are countless. It didn’t matter as much anymore that I didn’t know the exactness of her pregnancy or my childhood, what I did know was how she made me feel and how much I loved her. In a note left to us, she told us that a few days after each of us was born, she took us outside, held us up to the sky and promised to protect us for as long as she lived. Those words have never left me.

I write this, not because of any other reason than that I miss her. The mere act of simply writing this reminds me of how she always reprimanded me for not re-reading my work for errors as ‘that is your biggest let-down’. (I once answered every question on my mock English G.C.S.E. paper, instead of the two instructed. She just laughed and said she was surprised that my paper hadn’t caught fire with the speed of which I must have been writing).

I do not profess her to be the ultimate mother and knower of all things maternal. She had a big part of me and always will. She understood me like no other being and I will always remember how furious that made me. My daughter will grow up knowing all about her, the happy, wise and loving mother as well as the darker demons that she couldn’t conquer. I am a better, stronger and more loving person because of her and I hope, a more honest mother as a consequence. She has taught me that no mother is perfect and that is all I need to know.

fi.m

New mum that loves all things food related. Recently discovered that sleep deprivation goes nicely hand in hand with salt-based snacks and stale biscuits (mostly found fallen behind the cupboard at times of desperation).

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