Wednesday – The Runaway Mommy
Sep. 15th, 2010 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
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For all my fantasizing about running away from home sometimes, I know it would not be a good thing to do. When I was about my son's age, I had a best friend whose mother had done just that, or so she had been told.
When I was in the first grade, my best friend in the whole world was a little red-headed girl named Heather. When you asked about her family, Heather would look down at her feet and say quietly, "I only live with my daddy. My mommy ran away."
I remember looking at her with wide eyes when she told me this. My own mommy sometimes said she wanted to run away, and she often hid for what seemed like hours on end in the bath room reading novels where we kids could not bother her, but I was confident she wasn't going anywhere. It was news to me that mommies were even allowed to run away at all. I figured there was some sort of law in place that said that mommies must, under all circumstances, stick around and love their children.
Heather had no contact with her mother. In hindsight, I wonder if her mother running away was the whole story, or even the true story. There are some women who leave their children behind and don't look back, but they are the exception to the rule. I've heard of far more cases where the mother was legally denied access to her children (in the cases of an abusive parent) or was physically incapable of seeing them (as in the case of someone in an institution). I've even heard of cases where the parent was dead, and to save themselves the uncomfortable questions about what death is, the adults decided it would be "kinder" to tell the child that the parent had just abandoned them.
My experience with little Heather all those years ago makes me believe that children should always be told the truth in an age-appropriate way. Your mother loves you, but she has a lot of problems and can't be part of your life right now, is far kinder than, Your mother doesn't want you or love you. No matter how sweetly you phrase the latter, that is what the child will hear. As hard as it would be to say to a child, You mother loved you very much and would have given anything to be here to watch you grow up, but she is dead and cannot be, having the child believe that her mother did not love her at all is much, much harder on the child, no matter how much easier not having to say the word "dead" is for the adults. For whatever reason Heather's mother was not in her life, that is what Heather believed.
"It's my fault," she told me when we were in the second grade. "If I had been better, I don't think she would have left."
Even at the age of 7 I knew this didn't sound right. Moms are supposed to love you no matter what. I had asked my mother about Heather's mother, and she had told me it probably had something between Heather's father and mother, and had nothing to do with Heather at all. Sometimes I misbehaved and my mother got very mad at me, but she didn't leave. There is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you, she once told me, You might do things that make me not like you very much, but I promise I will always love you. As small as I was, this blew my mind.
"I don't think it's your fault," I told Heather, empowered by my own mother's lesson on how mother-love was supposed to work. "I think it was probably something else."
"But how do you know that?" Heather asked. We were in a classroom that was still settling down before the class started, and no teachers were paying attention to see that Heather had tears running down her freckled cheeks.
"I just do," I said. It had rained that morning, and I had my umbrella with me. I stood up and did a silly little dance and sang a silly little song, using the umbrella like a cane. The distraction worked: Heather stopped crying and began to laugh.
"Thank you," she told me, "I was sad, but you made me happy. You made me laugh."
I will never forget what happened when she said this: I felt a warmth, as if sunlight were suddenly radiating from inside of me, grow from the center of my chest and spread throughout my body and into my limbs. Of all the compliments I've ever received, none since has ever had this effect on me. Every time I've ever told a funny story to a crying person to cheer them up, every time I've attempted to used a one-liner to try to snap someone out of a funk, it has been in an effort to re-experience that feeling. It was amazing.
We were still standing there, two little girls with, one with hair of light copper and the other with hair of gold, smiling at each other, when the teacher called the class to order and told everyone to get into their seats. I don't remember what the lesson was after that; it was not the one that stuck with me that day.
Heather and her father moved away before the year was out, and I have no idea what became of her. I wonder if she still has abandonment issues, and hope she has moved on and found enough love in her life to make up for the void left by the mother who ran away from home and her daughter. I wonder if she remembers that moment as clearly as I do, on that day when sunshine grew inside of me and I understood for one instant what it felt like to be someone's joy. I hope she does.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
For all my fantasizing about running away from home sometimes, I know it would not be a good thing to do. When I was about my son's age, I had a best friend whose mother had done just that, or so she had been told.
When I was in the first grade, my best friend in the whole world was a little red-headed girl named Heather. When you asked about her family, Heather would look down at her feet and say quietly, "I only live with my daddy. My mommy ran away."
I remember looking at her with wide eyes when she told me this. My own mommy sometimes said she wanted to run away, and she often hid for what seemed like hours on end in the bath room reading novels where we kids could not bother her, but I was confident she wasn't going anywhere. It was news to me that mommies were even allowed to run away at all. I figured there was some sort of law in place that said that mommies must, under all circumstances, stick around and love their children.
Heather had no contact with her mother. In hindsight, I wonder if her mother running away was the whole story, or even the true story. There are some women who leave their children behind and don't look back, but they are the exception to the rule. I've heard of far more cases where the mother was legally denied access to her children (in the cases of an abusive parent) or was physically incapable of seeing them (as in the case of someone in an institution). I've even heard of cases where the parent was dead, and to save themselves the uncomfortable questions about what death is, the adults decided it would be "kinder" to tell the child that the parent had just abandoned them.
My experience with little Heather all those years ago makes me believe that children should always be told the truth in an age-appropriate way. Your mother loves you, but she has a lot of problems and can't be part of your life right now, is far kinder than, Your mother doesn't want you or love you. No matter how sweetly you phrase the latter, that is what the child will hear. As hard as it would be to say to a child, You mother loved you very much and would have given anything to be here to watch you grow up, but she is dead and cannot be, having the child believe that her mother did not love her at all is much, much harder on the child, no matter how much easier not having to say the word "dead" is for the adults. For whatever reason Heather's mother was not in her life, that is what Heather believed.
"It's my fault," she told me when we were in the second grade. "If I had been better, I don't think she would have left."
Even at the age of 7 I knew this didn't sound right. Moms are supposed to love you no matter what. I had asked my mother about Heather's mother, and she had told me it probably had something between Heather's father and mother, and had nothing to do with Heather at all. Sometimes I misbehaved and my mother got very mad at me, but she didn't leave. There is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you, she once told me, You might do things that make me not like you very much, but I promise I will always love you. As small as I was, this blew my mind.
"I don't think it's your fault," I told Heather, empowered by my own mother's lesson on how mother-love was supposed to work. "I think it was probably something else."
"But how do you know that?" Heather asked. We were in a classroom that was still settling down before the class started, and no teachers were paying attention to see that Heather had tears running down her freckled cheeks.
"I just do," I said. It had rained that morning, and I had my umbrella with me. I stood up and did a silly little dance and sang a silly little song, using the umbrella like a cane. The distraction worked: Heather stopped crying and began to laugh.
"Thank you," she told me, "I was sad, but you made me happy. You made me laugh."
I will never forget what happened when she said this: I felt a warmth, as if sunlight were suddenly radiating from inside of me, grow from the center of my chest and spread throughout my body and into my limbs. Of all the compliments I've ever received, none since has ever had this effect on me. Every time I've ever told a funny story to a crying person to cheer them up, every time I've attempted to used a one-liner to try to snap someone out of a funk, it has been in an effort to re-experience that feeling. It was amazing.
We were still standing there, two little girls with, one with hair of light copper and the other with hair of gold, smiling at each other, when the teacher called the class to order and told everyone to get into their seats. I don't remember what the lesson was after that; it was not the one that stuck with me that day.
Heather and her father moved away before the year was out, and I have no idea what became of her. I wonder if she still has abandonment issues, and hope she has moved on and found enough love in her life to make up for the void left by the mother who ran away from home and her daughter. I wonder if she remembers that moment as clearly as I do, on that day when sunshine grew inside of me and I understood for one instant what it felt like to be someone's joy. I hope she does.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 06:30 pm (UTC)Too bad you can't recall her last name. I'll bet she's on Facebook -- just about EVERYBODY is, these days. :D
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 06:42 pm (UTC)I hope she is, too.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 08:53 pm (UTC)That is beautiful that you were able to reach down and raise someone else up. I think those times are when we experience..what. Grace maybe. Peace. True love.
My favorite Eve Ensler quote:
"When you give what you need the most, you heal whatever is broken. What we are waiting for has always lived inside us."
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 02:05 am (UTC)It was a revelation to me that I could touch someone like that; that my just being there could somehow help. It's still pretty amazing. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 11:27 pm (UTC)If I had not had his father's rights removed, he wouldn't have been around anyway. He eventually got married, ended up more stable and raised three daughters, but there were seven kids before those girls that didn't have a father. It only "bothered" him when he met a new woman and was trying to explain away how he didn't take care of seven children.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 02:10 am (UTC)