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.

Invisible in the Middle

 When you are stuck in the middle of something, oftentimes one feels as if there is nothing to do or change.  Maybe that's why I am an INTJ because from the middle you can watch, soak it in, learn and think.  You might not be able to act but there is certainly time to judge.

As a middle child, I still see and feel this primarily in reflective moments.  As an educator with more than 20 years experience, I can pinpoint birth order with some accuracy.  

Nineteen seventy-nine was a fairly pivotal year in our family.  In late August or September, my Mom was introduced to Bud.  Finances had been getting more challenging and Mom told me she had actually considered prostitution to help put groceries on the table.  She did a wonderful job of shielding us from that stress. Yes, I did wear second hand clothing but I didn't understand that money was tight.  I actually thought that everyone wore someone else's castoffs. Maybe this was where I first learned the value of thriftiness.  I was ever the saver child.  At one point in time (maybe early 1976 or 1975) my best friend Julie-Anne and her Mom (and her Mom's gay lover) took us to California for a vacation.  I remember Julie-Anne's mother telling me that I was told that I couldn't spend any of my savings on anyone other than myself.  That was hard for me and is still a challenge.  

Mom had been dating a man named Charles that took us fishing early one morning.  He seemed okay but there was something that made me uncomfortable.  One night, while asleep in our house on Sheridan, I woke to see him standing in my doorway staring at me.  He didn't touch me or walk in, he just stood and stared, making me quite uncomfortable.  It was about this time she met Bud and from my recollection of our conversations was that she had two marriage proposals: one from Charles and one from Bud.  She was so desperate to get out of this hole that she knew she had to consider.  She had only known Bud 3-4 months before they married.  God must have been truly guiding her because I shudder to think of what life would have been like with a man that stares at a 9 year old while she sleeps. She and Bud married in December of 1976 and remained married until her death in 2016, just shy of 40 years.

So we moved again, into Bud's suburban home in the the SugarLand area.  It was a four bedroom, 2 bath house in a neighborhood.  I made friends with a lot of kids.  There were Lisa and Craig across the street, Martha diagonally across, Kim down the street, and Monica a few streets over to name a few.  I started babysitting for $1 and hour and swam on the swim team in the summers.  It was good.  I started fourth grade at Meadows Elementary School and later graduated to SugarLand Junior High. I had unique friendships with the friends listed above.  Martha and her brother were an immigrant family from Columbia.  I think I was with her when we watch Prince Charles marry Lady Diana.  Craig was my first strong crush but he didn't reciprocate.  Craig was a year younger and his sister 2 years younger than Craig but I hung out and played with primarily Lisa.  Kim down the street was my first exposure to the Catholic Church and what I would later desire for my own family to look like.  Her mother was a stay at home mom who was an amazing cook and decorated beautiful cakes.  I still make a recipe I found in Lillian's (Kim's mother) collection of recipes.  Kim was also a year younger so when I started Sugar Land Junior High, things changed.  Monica and I became close friends throughout swim team and junior high.  

When Mom married Bud, timing was excellent for me and probably my younger brother Matt, too.  Our father had seen us perhaps 4 times since my parents separated then divorced.  It was good to have a strong male influence in our life and Bud was STRONG!  Bud insisted that we answer with "Yes, Ma'am, No, Ma'am, Yes, Sir and No, sir".  He was a former Marine who served in Korea. Bud had 3 older children of his own, we would see his two sons on the weekends. Their ages are wrapped around Rick's and my age. We were in sorry need of a male influence but Rick, as a 13 year old, wasn't so savvy to have some militant man telling him how to behave and live.  Things got touchy and Rick rebelled in a few different ways including some theft, running away, throwing parties behind my parents back, etc.  

Middle school, oh those years. How I would wish I could swallow them away!  There are always things about middle school.  I had some fun and made some friends but no friends I am still in touch with.  As a matter of fact, I don't have any friends from my youth.  That's another story for another day.  Monica and I did everything together, until we didn't.  We spent most weekends together.  I would travel with Monica and her Mom and sister and sleep in a tent at the Bluegrass Festival in Kerrville a few summers.  I learned how to French Braid with Monica and her sister.  She and I dressed the same, both had brown hair and brown eyes and roughly had the same intellect or perhaps she was smarter.  I struggled with Science and Bud tried to help me but I think that was the beginning of the end of my academic career in science. Ugh, I loathed it.  At SugarLand Junior High, there were crushes, Sadie Hawkins dances, roller skating, parties.  At the end of eighth grade, maybe seventh, Monica had a party and invited all the popular kids.  I wasn't invited.  I can't imagine how my mom felt seeing her child hurt by the actions of her best friend.  I wasn't popular enough.  When Monica's sister later figured out that I wasn't invited, I watched her slug her sister hard and yell, "you don't do that to your best friend."

I guess truly, like a lot of kids in Middle School I just didn't know where I fit in.  Here I was again, feeling alone. My mother was busy with work, my brothers were at an age where hitting on your sister seemed like something you should do.  I recall hopping off the junior high bus, the high school bus right behind us and hearing Rick and his best friends yelling out the window, "Missy's got big titties." I don't for the record but was sufficiently embarrassed in front of all the kids who rode my bus.  I began to feel more invisible.  Mom and Bud would get home from work and I would approach them to tell them something and the response I got was, "Traffic was terrible, I have had a rough day. Not until I have had a drink." Bud had a beautiful champion Labrador Retriever named Duke who on many occasions would come into the house and pee on my quilt and dust ruffle.  I think he was claiming me as his.  This meant, however, that I was washing my quilt and dust ruffle a lot with no help.  In the meantime I was sharing a bathroom with two brothers, one of who sleepwalked and peed all over the place and yes, I often clean it up.  In the summer to earn money, Mom would let me clean the house. She would then question the job I did by running her fingers over the shelves to see if there was still dust.  This was all, mind you, before I was even 13 years old.  There were loaded pistols on either side of my parents bed; I was expected to move those pistols to dust.  My mother kept her perfume bottles on a wicker paper plate holder. While trying to clean her bathroom, one of her perfumes feel over and dumped out more than half.  I got in trouble for that with a lot of yelling and shaming when she returned from work. I still hate the smell of that perfume.  

I was just invisible.