Happy Belated Birthday, Mom.

Mom, you would have been 79 years old if you were still alive.  Happy birthday, Mom.  The very best gift I could offer you is my forgiveness.  I wasn't the perfect daughter.  There was only one perfect human but that is saved for another day.  Today I offer my gift of forgiveness.

Mom, I forgive you for a lot of transgressions.  I am certain that through my remaining days there will be more things that pop up into my mind, both positive and negative memories.  I ask your forgiveness for falling short of the daughter you wanted.

I forgive you that you forced me to grow up and take responsibility for Matt for much of our young lives.  Even after you married Bud, I was still a primary parenting figure to Matt. That hurt him and it burdened me more than any 8 to 18 year old deserves.  I feel that the beginning was out of necessity because you were trying to keep us afloat with Dick not in the picture in any way.  After that, though is where the hurt is most profound.  You used me.  You neglected your duty as a parent to me and to Matt when you dropped us in Moulton so that you and Bud could live in Houston.  You tried to justify it that you were keeping us our of trouble after what Rick had done and been through.  I wasn't Rick, neither was Matt.  We were all in different developmental stages and dealing with a major shift when you married Bud.

I forgive you of all of the jabs about my weight and appearance.  I was doing my best to fill a hole that you created in me when you didn't fulfill your duties.  It started early and with increased pressure of adolescence, living in a rickety unreliable farmhouse in pretty harsh conditions, it got worse.  I forgive you of the jabs about recommending to the show, "What Not to Wear", telling me how to dress as an adult. So many instances, that I just can't count.  The strange thing was, you forgot that when you started to make more money that I needed to stop looking like I was wearing hand-me-downs.  You had forgotten the importance of positive body and self-confidence that you needed to foster and instill in me as your daughter.  I think this is what made me a "hard-ass", I always felt I was on my own.

I forgive you for the ugly things you have said about my home through the years, even my sons' artwork as children.   Nothing was ever good enough so you lived a life that wasn't full.  You tried to force that on to me.  You tried over and over to push me where to live and how to live and after forcing me to be independent, I wouldn't have it.  It bothered you that you were losing control of me.  I forgive you because, you shouldn't have controlled me ever.  I am sorry I gave that power to you, I cared too much.  

I forgive your shallowness about appearances.  You were insecure in who you were at the time and historically because of your own issues with your parents so you put on a mantle of everything beautiful and perfect.  Life isn't perfect and it is beautiful in the imperfections.  

I forgive you for failing to ever put me first.  I think you made a really good attempt with our wedding but for the rest of my life, it was all about you, you, you.  I pray that God is using my experiences to be a better parent and one day grandparent, to see and capture the beauty in togetherness.

I forgive you for treating me so differently than my brothers, holding me to a higher standard morally and behaviorally.  You seemed to have a real hands-off approach to my education through the years, I forgive you for that, too.  When I needed a car, you bought a sports car for yourself. I wasn't expecting something super nice, just something that would actually be mine.  I think Grandma and Grandpa gave Rick a car, Matt bought a car.  I didn't buy a car but I put my self through college paying for well over 1/2 of it, working while in high school and college and not accruing any debt in doing so.  I resented the way you would say, "Bud's put three through college right now." It was a lie.  You knew he wasn't paying for mine but you wanted to give laud and praise to him.  I resented that I was expected to be tough and work outside and do housework when on the farm but my brothers just had to work outside.  I forgive you for that and for all the little ways that Matt, my junior by only 18 months was coddled even through high school when I wasn't cherished.  You took advantage of my good nature and I forgive you.

Lastly, I forgive you for the role you played in your own death.  I think your borderline personality disorder grew and grew from late 1976 onward.  You would travel from doctor to doctor until you could get the medications you wanted to drug you and numb you from the pain you were feeling.  You were addicted to surgery and the need to be the center of everyones world.  Even the plaque on your desk stated, "Everyone is entitled to my opinion." You lacked humility, you didn't know how to ask forgiveness.  You certainly didn't know how to give it. Your drug addiction, your BPD, your insecurities make me overly cautious because I don't want my husband or children to have the relationship you had with me.  I forgive you for that conditioning. 

I think from heaven you are crying tears for me, hopefully looking out for me and helping me heal these gaping wounds.  I just think you didn't know.  

I forgive you Mom.

Fresh Air?

 If you can't tell by what you have read so far.  We moved a lot and I still move a lot.  I think somewhere in my mother's mind, it was what was supposed to happen.  She was an air force brat and that was what she had to do as she grew up. My father was an officer in the air force so it just continued into her adult life. Honestly, it never went away.  It wasn't until I was an adult myself into my 30s that I understood that Mom was moving to search.  She was always looking for something better to make her happy.  

My dad, Bud (not to be confused with my father-Dick) was an only child who loved the outdoors.  He had spent most of his adult life living in Houston but wanted more.  More space, more views, more time,.... just more. So while I was in the thick of invisible in the middle school years, my parents bought acreage about half way between Houston and San Antonio.  I think they were "bitten" when our neighbors who had acreage and a weekend home outside of Moulton, TX invited us.  The amount of time we spent there was not insignificant.  We would walk, explore, swim in "tanks", catch grasshoppers and appreciate beautiful sunrises and sunsets.  I think there were poker games, card games and fireflies.

So during those years, we too would traverse on the weekends.  It was about a two hours drive each way and we would work to clear land, make an abandoned farm house habitable, work work work, eat really good food, listen to country music, work some more.  When people meet me, they are usually surprised to know that I lived on a farm for four years and took weekend residence for a couple of years before that.  The house was primitive at best with one working spigot stuck out of a wall, inches of dust and dirt in the attic, absolutely nothing close to air conditioning (not even ceiling fans), complete with an outhouse. While my dad was away one weekend, my mom thought she would surprise my dad and have us kids (aka slave labor) clean out the house.  So here we were, 4 brothers and me, shoveling (literally) dirt out of an old farm house and sweeping and spraying a garden hose and sweeping and shoveling and spraying water all weekend. Maybe it was even a holiday weekend because I felt like the "fun" never ended.  When we blew our nose in the evening it came out black.  Farm house had no bathroom (yet) and maybe two bedrooms? Who could tell what was supposed to be a bedroom, etc. We later learned that my dad had intended on burning it to the ground.  Even though it wasn't fun work, I am glad we did it.  That experience and living in that house is part of me.  

Fast forward a few years complete with a bathroom and a kitchen sink and Mom and Bud decide that we will move out there.  "We" is actually my younger brother Matt, and myself.  My parents would commute back and forth over the weekends and "we" would live in this house built the beginning of the 1900s with a stranger and attend a new school where were knew ONE person.  Matt would start 7th grade and I would start 9th.  This was moving from a suburban neighborhood where I graduated from eighth grade with a class of 300+ students to attending a high school where the class size was perhaps 25 and everyone there had known each other since birth.  The counselor was also the principal.  We had to argue with him that there was no need for me to take Homemaking as all the girls did because I had already taken two years of Homemaking.  So, here I am in a town where I know no one and immediately placed into a situation where I am only with boys and not making friends that way.  I was the first girl in Moulton High School to ever take Agriculture and I know I wasn't the last. 

Let's just stop here and let that sink in.  New small town (population about 1000), new micro small high school, no friends, living with my younger brother (let's keep in mind my role when he was in kindergarten) and a stranger, not even taking all my classes with the other girls almost all of whom had been together since kindergarten or sooner.  There was also the prevalence of the Catholic Church across the street; most of the town's inhabitants were of German or Czech descent and Roman Catholic.  I was none of these things.