Smothered in rage and adoration

Education in the age of forgiveness

My mother was the most amazing human being I’ve ever known. And I wasn’t the only person who felt that way about her. The amount of people she influenced was astounding. My childhood was filled with folks who came in and out of our lives, pulled in by my mother’s magnetism and charisma. One priest friend thinks she might have been an actual saint and gifted her a travel kit with holy water, wine, and wafers so that she might give communion. And she did whenever given the chance.

Her faith was born from the people, animals, and nature around her. Even through hardships of family mental illness, alcoholism, and disease weighed her down, she never lost what Rachel Carson called her sense of wonder. She was an artist and a kind soul licensed to nurse orphaned wildlife and birds of prey. She opened the doors of her home and brought people under her wing with mental problems, money struggles, issues of faith, marital abuse, and drug addiction. She mentored several generations of young people in art and taught them how to live their art like their life depends on it. She was a true giant and often threw common sense to the wind in exchange for inspiration. I saw how the world reacted to her, both the good and the bad. And this influenced me as much as she did.

When my son was born, my mother and he had an immediate bond that grew into an unbreakable connection that she referred to as heart, mind, and soul. He inherited her love of animals, her creative spirit, and her tremendous sense of empathy, and sometimes, I see so much of her in him that it makes my heart ache with how much I miss her. My connection to my mother has always been otherworldly, and the fact that my son felt that with her is magic.

As much as I loved my mother, her codependence with me and my sisters was suffocating. Although she probably didn’t know it, my mother very much prescribed to French parenting techniques, dragging us along in her wake, allowing her influence to lay the groundwork for our lives. Everything centered around her, and when we all drifted away from home, the loss for her was too much to bear. I know she built a life without us, probably one that was more peaceful than the one with, but I know she never forgave us for not needing her. It took me years to unravel from the guilt she controlled over me. A lifetime to sort out the things I love from what she loved.

All those years ago, I pulled out of college because of her. In retrospect, I now realize I was in charge of my destiny, but at the time, she hadn’t given us the independent skills to advocate for ourselves. It came down to money, which most things do, but in our case, it didn’t have to because money was set aside for us to go to college. I’m unsure why she wasn’t organized enough to understand that or why I was naive enough not to question. And thirty years later, the reasons or blame hardly matter. Having to leave college when I did lead to my life now, which I wouldn’t exchange for anything.

I’ve worked very hard to extract the abundant amount of parenting gold my mother passed on to me while attempting—sometimes in vain—not to pass along any toxic traits when it comes to my own child. I’ve not always done the best job, but boy, have I tried. Battling with myself to not make the same mistakes she did. I read a review once of a David Sedaris book that referred to his mother as smothering him in adoration and rage, and the amount of relevance I saw in that phrase to my own parenting skills was deafening. Still, I know hope the adoration outweighed the rage. My mother held tight to never accepting blame for anything, preferring to view it as outside injustice rather than holding up a mirror to her own flawed upbringing and shortcomings. That’s most definitely where a good bit of my rage comes from, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned how to forgive her. I’ve tried to do the opposite and take full possession of who I am, the good and the bad.

In reaction to the mother my mother was, I opened myself up to allowing my son to influence me rather than the other way around. Sometimes too much, but still. From the time he was young, I sent him away during the summer to camps and other countries to pursue the things he loved. It was imperative for him to learn how to navigate the world without me. In exchange, I’ve learned so many things from him. So many things about myself. About the sort of student I am. The dependencies I carry. So many things about the world outside of my realm of focus. So many things about music and animals and life. The fact that we are college students at the same time is wonderful in that it has allowed me to get a peek into his generation and his world.

He is wise in ways that I never was at that age. Emotionally, he knows things now about human nature that I still struggle to understand. He’s never once allowed me to lie to myself about the sort of parent I am, for the good and the bad. He’s loved me and forgiven me despite my faults. And vice versa.

He might not have the extroversion that made my mother so irresistible to people, but he understands me better than she did—better than I do. And as he goes out into the world to find his own life, I’m happy he’s chosen to share so many of the things he loves with me. I’m thankful he’s safe.

Heart, mind, and soul.