Reflections on My Mother’s Life

When I read or think of adoptees having issues, one of the things that I totally sympathizes with is what I call “losing one’s roadmap”. Like I am so very done having children, so naturally, I look towards the next stage in my uterus and ovarian life; menopause, but I have no idea what it might be like. Huge unknown territory for me and I have no one to ask about what “our” bodies in my family tend to do.
I lost my road map.
I lost my mother.
Eleven years ago, today, she finally gave in to the trials of defiantly colon, maybe ovarian, but let’s move into your liver and ruin it all cancer.
Her name was Geraldine.

She wasn’t perfect. She made mistakes. She was human and real and small and feisty. She was mostly Italian and held a grudge. She had a habit of repeating herself that drove me crazy and apparently is something that also annoys Garin about me. She adored having dogs in her life and I hear her voice everytime I speak to my Lillybel now. I open my mouth to speak to the dog and out pops a Geraldine. Phrases that I have not heard nor remembered in years..suddenly spring forth from my unconsciousness and are said with the same conviction and tone.

Dogs, Plates and a Mortal Fear of Dirt

My mother had a mortal fear of dirt. As a child she and my dad would be in a state of continuous household “projects”… new bathroom floor, new kitchen, wallpaper for the living room, whatever…it was always “brown or tan”. Granted it was the 70’s, but what I remember most hearing my mother look over samples, “It won’t show the dirt” And this was a woman who vacuumed almost every day!!! Because she “couldn’t stand the dog hair”. She judged my aunt a “bad housekeeper and slob” because she had dust bunnies under furniture. Gosh, she would be so offended by the look of my kitchen floor right now. I should go scrub my house down right now to honor her. ( I did..on my hands and knees like she taught me. She never even owned a mop)

She didn’t smoke and she didn’t drink, except an occasional wine or a yearly summer beer. I don’t think she ever touched an illegal drug. She didn’t go out like some of my friend’s parents did. I had babysitters when there was a wedding like once a year and my grandparents went too, otherwise I went to grandma’s house. No movies, no dinner’s with friends, no parties. She really didn’t have that many friends even. She was close to her own mother, had a love/hate with my grandfather and we went ever Sunday to their house for early pasta dinner. She didn’t work until I was 14 and my father left the first time and she had to become more independent. We didn’t go to Church much though my brother and I were confirmed Catholic. I think that the Church’s stance on divorce annoyed her, but we didn’t go regularly when I was a child either. She didn’t watch soaps, or read books, get her nails done, PTA, or really do anything, but she was 100% my mom.

My mom read Family Circle and Woman’s Day magazines religiously. She got a lot of catalogues and saved them. She did get her degree in social work when I was a child, going to school at night at the community college, but then worked for an insurance agency when I was older.

She did crafty things. Like for a while, she was into painting whitewear/plaster things and had her friends who did that. She also got into knitting of a time. She was a big fan of the islandic wool and sweaters. Very itchy. She had a home based chocolate business for a few years before my brother was born. Easter, Mother’s Day and Christmas was chocolate insanity, with bunnies in every nook of the fridge and constant chocolate on the double boiler on the stove. My father sold them at NYC police presents so she alos made chocolate boobie lollypops and penises.

My mother had a thing for decorative “plates”..the kind you hang on the walls. She had many many Norman Rockwell plates. Many many. Like more than she had walls for and they were all piled up in closets and the basement when she died. It was kind of OCD.

When My Mother Said “Pussy” and I Died

One of the best stories, we were in her kitchen, I was visiting..talking and having coffee. We were talking about how nice guys always marry real bitches and she was reiterating a conversation she had with a woman at work about her boss’s wife who fit in the bitch category.
So she says to me: “Well, as Susan says..she must have a golden one”
“A golden what, Ma?”
“You know..a golden one” giving me a weird look. This goes back and forth a few times.
I am getting fustrated. I have NO IDEA what she is talking about, so I am like “Ma, a golden what??!”
And she looks at me, and says very calmly and almost annoyed that I am so dense,
“A pussy, a golden pussy”
I had to struggle not to spit out my coffee all over the place and die laughing. But I remain calm and say,”oh”

She cleaned a mean house and laundry got done on schedule.
And oh, could that woman shop!!! Shopping with my mother was a religious experience. I grew up on Long Island..Land of Mall? I remember when the Sunrise Mall was being built. I was five. It was huge. Macy’s with my Mom on their “One Day Sales”…ah,the store would stay open till 11:00 and at quarter to we would run to the register laden with bargains. The cashier’s worst nightmare. She liked to buy things for people. She like to buy things for me. She would be spoiling my children terribly. I feel so sad that all of them, her and them, are denied that experience.

You didn’t push around my mother. Once she made up her mind on something that was it. She got a village parking ticket once and decided that it was unfair. She wouldn’t pay it “on principal” and the judge got annoyed and sent her to jail. The cops were all nice to her since my father had been a cop and my mom could be charming. We went in the rain at night to pick up my mom from jail.

One of our greatest Mother/Daughter coups was “The Time We Stole the Truck”. She was always mad at my father after the divorce because he was the biggest asshole who ever lived. He was a dead beat and she held the title and registration to the truck he was driving and she had a PO box address to a small town in rural Vermont. So we drove into Vermont to take the truck. We snuck around and found where he lived, but he wasn’t home. A luck would have it, I had made her call the police to escort us in confronting my father. I knew from the past that it could get ugly fast. The police arrived at the B&B we were staying at just as my father drove up to the local liquor store. The last time I saw my father was when I was sitting on the front fender of the truck (Tan Nissan King Cab with little jump seats) and I said upon seeing him: “We have come to take the truck!”
With the police, it went smooth and I learned to drive a stick shift decently while following my mothers car home from Vermont.

There are still times now when I wish so fiercely that I could just pick up the phone and call her. There are those moments when only hearing that “it will be OK” from Mom would make it really be OK. I love my husband, I adore my kids, I have great friends..but moms..they are the ones who are there for us completely.
A year or two ago, we were out on Long Island and driving down the Southern State Parkway and I just started to cry. More then anything in the whole world..I just wanted to go home. I wanted my house..and I wanted my mom.

Right after she died, I had probably the biggest period of “baby lust” my entire life. But I knew that I just wanted a baby girl. It was so hard to lose that mother daughter connection, that I was willing to do almost anything to have that back. Even if it meant switching roles. I was able to analyze that and slap myself, but I really wanted it. There is something very fulfilling about having a daughter now. I see my maternal lineage, our connection, in my daughter is me, my mom, my grandmother….

It hurts so much that Garin is the only one who has any memory of her. He was 3 1/2 when she died. God, she loved being a Grandmother. Sometimes I think that maybe I had Max so early so that she could have 7 years of experiencing Grandmotherness instead of just 3 plus. He would have had real memories of her, a chance to know her soul. Poor Scarlett and Tristan only have stories and pictures to go by, but she would have adored them so.

I have a funny/weird habit now of yelling at the ceiling aka: talking to my mom. Usually this happens when the kids do something that I know is “payback” from what I did to her..and I can swear I hear her laughing her ass off.
God, we use to battle about my hair growing up. How dare I shave it off again, how dare I make it stand up like that and embarrass her..so as opposite to that..I totally allow Garin to do whatever. So he had this long shaggy mop and decided to shave it into a Mohawk. Cool..so I shaved his head and showed him how to make his hair stand up with Super Hold acquaint and a blow dryer. So it’s dinner, and I am arguing with him about how to take care of his ‘hawk. He insists on washing it everyday..which is a huge waste of hairspray..they just work better when dirty! So I am telling him that if he keeps washing his hair and not doing his Mohawk “right” I am gonna make him shave it off.
Yeah..I heard her laughing at me for being such a hypocrite.

I attribute my mom to my ease on finding Max. Before she died, she, the woman who made me hide from everyone during my pregnancy for fear that someone might “know”, told my Uncle about Max so that “someone else would know about him and be here to welcome him Home”. I like to think that if she was still alive she would be fighting with me on these boards, going to Lobby Day, stalking Adam Pertman, and yelling at other moms who sell their daughters down the adoption river. I know she has been watching over him, watching over us. I know she dropped him down in from of me to find him. She can’t make me win Lotto from the afterlife, but I bet she could do that. She probably drove the head of whatever afterlife committee nuts to get it done. But I don’t doubt she had some hand in it. She was a fighter.

I think I get that from her.

The cancer got her and took the fight out of her long before she died. I think it was just one too many bad deals in her life and she just gave up. Maybe even some relief that it was out of her hands and she could just stop. She wanted to live to see my brother graduate, and she wanted to see Max come home.

It would have been great to call her when I found him. To share that excitement with her, but I guess she knew already.

We had our issues, we had our pain. We drove each other crazy at times. But she was my mom and I am her daughter and we live though each other. I see her face when I quickly pass by a mirror. I hear her voice when I yell about a mess in the house. I see the good parts of my childhood when I hold my daughter in my arms and hear her tell me a crazy story and I imagine that my mom had the same feelings for my ever constant chatter and intense planes of thought. It is a connection that does live past time and death, but I wish I had had just a little bit more.
Somethings just need to be shared over the phone or at the kitchen table over coffee.
My hatred for Cancer is only superseded by my hatred for Adoption for both have destroyed years, left me wanting, and given me tears and loss.

So, Ma…thinking of you today, always, and missing you more than ever.

Hope the view is good from above. I am the one waving.
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