I am talking to my father in my kitchen. I am saying something. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be, I am saying. How difficult it would be to be the only parent, a single mother, all the time. This parenting alone? It’s hard work.
My father is looking at me in my kitchen. He is saying something. Well, yeah, he is saying. Not to mention the fact that you’ve got quite a few other things to deal with.
He is referring to the bipolar disorder, of course—to the medication problems, to the anxiety, the faces, the voices. He is looking at me with a mixture of concern and pride. He sees that I am working hard.
Suddenly, I am smiling. I am thinking to myself, suddenly, I forgot about that. For a moment or two, talking to my father in my kitchen, I had forgotten about the other things. For a moment or two, talking to my father in my kitchen, I had simply forgotten.
I am happy that he reminded me so that I could remember I had forgotten. It was merely a few moments of forgetting the bipolar bears, but in those few moments I remembered that, yes, still, first and forever, I am a mother.
*****
Now, I am lying on my bed in the dark, quiet house beside a whirring fan, purring like the cat I will someday have. I am thinking about Sophie. Today was a hard day for Sophie. Today was a hard day for me and for Sophie, together.
She raged. She pouted. She stomped. She ran. She howled.
I raged. I growled. I yelled. I chased. I threatened.
This is the way.
*****
In the end, as we usually do, we wind up sitting on her bed, working it out. It is never easy. We lurch, she and I. We interrupt each other. We raise our voices, and hiss at each other in blame—always! The blame! Bouncing off pink walls!
But: I have been a daughter before; she has not. I know that mothers and daughters, even the most loving, hiss more than snakes. There is always hissing, posturing, growling. It’s an animal relationship. The first step to surviving it is to entering the deal knowing there will be battles. This is how I see it.
Sophie is still deciding how to see it, this mother-daughter relationship of ours. I hate that occasionally it must come to this, but somehow, I am sure it must. There is something to this cycle of love-hate-love-hate-love that makes me sure I am doing something right.
I tell her I am sorry we had one of our rough days, but that it’s my job to teach her responsibility, to show her that the sun does not revolve around her and the moon will not pick up her laundry.
I tell her it is my job, as her mother, to teach her rules and limits, and to expect—no, demand—more of her, when it comes to her role as citizen of the world.
“You don’t think Daddy is teaching us the rules?” she asks, pointedly. She will excel in debate class someday.
I do not fall for that one. I tell her I don’t care much what the rules are at Daddy’s house, because I know he is a very good daddy. I tell her I know the rules are different at his house, but I know he is teaching her what he feels is important in life.
And I tell her that I will not stray from my course as her mother, and at my house Mommy’s rules are in effect, and tough noogies if she doesn’t like it, because that’s how it works. Must work.
She regards me balefully. I don’t think this divorce is good for any of us, she says. Why did you and Daddy have to divorce? She begins crying. Again.
I tell her she is right to cry, that divorce is CRAP.
She mouths the word: CRAP.
“Yes,” I tell her. “You can always use the word ‘crap’ for divorce. Divorce is CRAP. It is CRAP CRAP CRAP and you can HATE HATE HATE it and you will never be in trouble for using those words if you are talking about dumb stupid crap divorce. Because I hate it. And Daddy would probably tell you he hates it too.”
“So why did you do it?” she wants to know, calmer now.
I tell her that we couldn’t decide on some very important stuff. That money made things complicated, as it always does.
“Why does there have to be money anyway?”
“I asked my father the same thing when I was eight,” I tell her. “He told me something about raccoons and monkeys and pineapples becoming too burdensome. I still don’t understand.”
“Everything would be better with no money.”
“I completely agree.”
“We could all just give what we could and take what we needed.”
“I completely agree.”
She sighs.
At bedtime, I smush my face against her cheek in an exaggerated mushy kiss. I freeze like this. She first ignores me, then sets her book down.
“You’re giving me a bruise,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“I’m giving you love. So you can’t miss it. So you can’t say your mother didn’t love you.”
Grudgingly, she smiles.
I like to think that I am giving her a safe place to duke it out. I like to think that our squawking has a purpose. That our fighting teaches her that love can endure fighting, a good scrap now and then.
So I will take grudging smiles, the eye rolls, the heavy sighs, the “everybody elses” and the “nobody elses” that plague her already ruined existence (if you listen to her).
I can take grudging. I can bear grudging, if the conclusion—eventually—is a grudging, “My mom was nuts, but she loved me. She does love me.” I don’t know that that is what the conclusion will be, but my gut tells me—in spite of everything, the “other things” of which my father spoke—my gut still tells me that something of my intuition, my instinct, has remained intact.
So I wait. I watch. I holler my head off. I am mother. Hear me roar, then hear me soothe. Watch me screw up, marvelously. Then watch me try, try, always try, to make it better.
Take it from the top, Maestra Mama. Again. Again. Again.
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