I have not always been a good daughter to my mother. Now I’m as best as I can be. I’m probably not as affectionate as she’d like. I shy away from too much physical contact with her. But I can’t help that. I try very hard to be respectful of the biblical precept of honoring her. I have a bedroom just for her in my house. As much as I can I am generous to her. I probably could provide a bit more, but it would be a hardship on our household.
All in all she is doing fine in spite of the eight decades she’s walked this earth. She’s feisty and always keeps her spirits up. She can still walk on her own. She still comes and goes between Mexico, Texas and California.
What else? She’s a chronic smoker. Her diet consists basically of corn tortillas, Monterrey Jack cheese, wieners, Habanero peppers and Cokes.
Mind you, she’s diabetic, hypertensive and has glaucoma. But healthy eating has never been a concern of people from her generation and her peasant background.
When I give in and drive her to buy her cigarettes, I make it a point to ask her, “You know that this is what’s going to kill you, right?” She admits to it. “Well, as long as you know what you’re doing…”
She still scolds me as if I were a little girl and not this middle aged lady that I am. And it doesn’t help that I remind her of my age (as if she didn’t know). She will still tell me I spend too much, I never save enough, my tastes are too expensive, I buy too much stuff and I should curtail my preference for chocolate.
My mother is now hospitalized and I’ve been an extreme cry-baby, with bouts of prayers and tears that worry not only my husband, but me too.
I overanalyze everything, trying to find the possible reasons as to why I’m so emotional. Of course I worry about her leg wound and her pneumonia. But I know that these bursts of tearfulness have to do more with my story than with hers.
It might also have to do with the fact that since my stroke in 2008, I hadn’t been in a hospital and this just stirred all the painful experiences I had to go through. It might just be that.
But I then think of the shared history between my mother and I. I was born five years into her marriage and a miscarriage later. She was overprotective and probably overdid the “loving me to death” thing (I describe her love as a “sticky” love).
She now says she had no idea what she was doing; she was young and uneducated, with no one to guide her as she walked into the tangled grounds of motherhood. And I was not easy to handle. I’m told I cried all night and slept all day. As I came into toddlehood, I went into my Tantrums Phase no holds barred. A fellow merchant told her to spank me every time I through myself to the floor kicking and screaming. She obliged.
It seems I was also a witness to another of her four miscarriages. She was on her own with two little girls and no idea what was happening to her. It seems I asked about the blood and she didn’t know how to respond to my curiosity.
Then my sister and I had to go through our “Abandonment Issue.” Of course, we were not abandoned by our parents. We were left with relatives for some months while we waited for the green cards to come to the States and reunite with them. But what kid can process that information? All we knew is that Mami had left us, abandoned us.
And this is only the beginning of a complex relationship between two women, mother and daughter, both strong, tough and proud (me probably too much). A scarlet thread binds us irreparably. This wiry unbreakable material is made up of her “sticky love,” my deep need of her, her blood, my wails, the hardship she suffered and my joy of finally being able to acknowledge that I love her too.
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