Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Dianna Doles Petry

Mothers Day Submissions Continued

May 18, 2006

Mothers and Daughters

Dianna Doles Petry

dianna59@charter.net

In my youth, I don’t recall thinking of my mother as a human being. I simply saw her as "mom," the person who was supposed to love me unconditionally, clean up my messes and help me to find my own independence. She was a strong-willed woman with a wicked sense of humor and a need to hold people’s attention that I never understood. She was full of life and yet she didn’t seem to do much real living. She was content to stay at home and cook meals, wash laundry and help us with homework, or so I thought. I never realized that she had been my age or that she had dreams of her own that she never saw come true.

Now, I am forty-seven years old and I spend my days fluffing my mother’s bed pillows, supplying her with tissues, helping her make trips to the bathroom and making sure that she is clean. She has lost her bladder control, some bowel function and a lot of her self-esteem. My house always has the scent of "outdoor fresh" or "vanilla musk" wafting through the air to mask the odors of aging and illness.

My mother has vascular dementia, a disease that leaves her mind confused a lot of the time. She has days when she does not remember her grandchildren and asks, "Why are those boys here all the time?" She has imaginary visitors that she talks to and sometimes scolds if they bother her while she is napping or trying to watch television. Most of the time she sleeps more than she is awake. Somewhere along the way, our roles have become reversed and I am now the adult and she is childlike in most ways.

My mother used to drive me crazy in many ways. I remember feeling so angry with her that I wanted to run away from home. I could never seem to make her understand what I felt in my heart. In my eyes, she was either overly critical or simply laughed off my thoughts. I learned to go to my father when I wanted a heart to heart talk with someone. He would listen to my pitiful tales of "everyone else is going to go," or "everyone else already has one," and if at all possible, he would do something to make me happy again. That usually meant giving me my way or buying me whatever I felt I needed in order to save face with the rest of the teenage population. It also meant that he would be in the dog house with my mother for quite a while. Like all teenagers, all I saw was that I was getting whatever it was that I felt that I needed at the time.

It never occurred to me that my mother had experienced things in her lifetime that made her want to shelter me to the point of smothering me. She feared the world outside of our front door and I never saw that. She had dealt with a bad first marriage, the loss of her children, the loss of loved ones and a bout with cancer. All I knew about my mother was what I saw each day. Sadly, in the days of our youth, we tend to see more of what we want to see than what is really there.

For the last few years, I have felt torn at times. I have felt guilty that while taking care of my mother, I’ve taken away from the time I should be giving my children. I have felt inadequate and helpless to make a real difference in her life. I have been forced to come to terms with the process of life from aging right along to death and the passing of the family torch. I have often found myself worrying that my daughter will go through this some day with me and I have prayed for God to take me before I become a burden to her. Sometimes it takes an unusual situation to for us to see things the way they really are.

A few weeks ago, I took my mother to the hospital to have a tumor removed from her bladder. It will not prolong her life but she will be more comfortable throughout her final days. Comfort, at this point, is all that I have to offer her. As we waited for her to be taken in for the surgery, she reached out for my hand and gripped it tightly. I could feel the fear in her grip. I could see the anxiety in her eyes. I wanted to comfort her, to ease her mind and reassure her that she would see me again. I also wanted to keep things light so I began to talk to her.

"Mother," I said in a whispered voice, "You can’t be chasing those young doctors down the hall now. You’ll get a bad reputation if you do that."

"Oh, poot! I wouldn’t chase those little boys," she replied, "They’re still wet behind the ears and I bet they don’t even pee hard against the ground yet."

I laughed and asked, "What in the world does how hard a man pees have to do with anything?"

Her face took on a serious expression as she answered, "I don’t know, my mother always said that about young people who was acting cocky." Her voice seemed to fade as she added, "I wish I could ask her what she meant when she said that. I still miss her."

She closed her eyes and I stayed quiet. I thought maybe the medication was taking effect and she would sleep until they came for her. Softly, she started to speak again. "I dream about mother and daddy sometimes. I always wanted them to love me the way they loved Gladys and Garnet. Daddy always thought that Gladys was smarter than any of us and he would pay her to cut his hair or help him with the ledgers he kept when people owed him money. Garnet had blonde hair and blue eyes and mom thought she was the most beautiful thing around. She wanted to be in the band in school and she got a uniform with brand-new boots that had red tassels on them. I never got anything like that." She stopped talking and opened her eyes to watch my expression.

"Mother," I said in a teasing voice, "That was sixty-five years ago. I’m sure that you had a lot of happy moments that made up for not getting those boots."

"Wasn’t about the boots," she said in a short tone of voice, "It was about me not ever getting to do what I wanted to do or be what I wanted to be but the others did."

"Okay," I said at that point, "What did you what to do with your life?"

She looked at me for a few seconds almost as though she was afraid to say the words and then, in a very low voice, stated, "Dance."

Nothing could have surprised me more than that answer. My mother had always loved music and I knew that she always looked forward to the New Year’s Eve dance at the F.O. E. Club with my father. I just had no idea in the world that she had ever dreamed of becoming a professional dancer.

She went on to explain that she danced in the attic every chance she got. Once her father had bought her a record player and one record for her birthday. She had worn the record out, she told me, and kept it until she left home to be married. "Mom thought I was foolish for dancing," she added in a sad voice, "So I didn’t try to do anything with it but I dreamed about it all the time."

Right there, right then, I realized that my mother had gone through disappointing moments, times of sorrow and only a few real pleasures in her lifetime. She became human to me in a way that I had never seen before. I felt of a wave of appreciation flow through me and I felt an overpowering need to thank this woman for her love. I also felt angry with myself for the times I wanted to get away from her. Like a lightening bolt from the sky, reality hit me with a forceful blow. I had mistaken my mother’s concern for criticism for most of my life.

When she didn’t want me to date in high school, it was out of love and concern. When she seemed to hate the friends I chose it was because she wanted me to feel appreciated instead of competitive. She didn’t want me to know the pain of being rejected or abandoned. There is no perfect way to be a mother, you simply do the best you can and hope that it is enough for your children to feel loved and capable. That is what she had given us, the best that she had to give.

When the nurses showed up to wheel my mother into the surgical hall, I held her hand until I had to let her go through the double stainless steel doors that would separate us until the surgeon had done his job. The nurse stopped just in front of the doors and my mother looked up to say, "I love you more than you could ever know. Please forgive me if I’ve done anything to hurt your heart. I never meant to do anything bad." I knew that she was worried about dying during the surgery just the way my father had died sixteen years earlier.

Through tear filled eyes, I replied, "You’ve been a wonderful mother. There is nothing to forgive." She closed her eyes and they pushed her bed through the doors and she was on her way to surgery. I started back to the waiting area as thoughts of my own children filled my mind.

I’m sure that my children know what my dreams for them have been as well as what my passions for life are now. I wondered though, if I had ever mentioned to them that one of my goals for my life had been to run an orphanage. I wondered if I had ever told them about my first date, my first rock concert or my first real love. I remembered the words my daughter had said to me only a few days before, "You’re not just my mother, you’re my best friend."

My boys communicate with me while pushing toward entirely distinct identities. They ask about my thoughts on issues that are important to them but they also tend to plot a course and then inform me of the direction they plan to take.

My daughter, on the other hand, seems to watch me and my interaction with my own mother as she tries to figure out her own place in the world. She ties her sense of self-worth to my actions and communicating with her can be frustrating at times since our personalities are so different. I try to be loving and supportive with her but I also feel the need to be honest about my thoughts and feelings. I want to respect her and I demand respect from her. I know now that these are probably the same feelings my mother had for her children.

My mother was once this age. She walked in my shoes and she traveled a very long distance. She taught me to learn from my mistakes while she prayed that I didn’t make many of them. She taught me to untangle my own messes while she cried that I was in a mess to begin with. She had moments in her life that broke her heart and filled her soul just as I have had in my life and my daughter is having in her life.

We are three women, mothers and daughters, learning what it means to be alive and to follow the journey to death. My mother has lived, loved and experienced pleasure and pain. I have watched her and learned from her. Now my own daughter is watching me take care of her. The list of things that we all have to be grateful for is very long. Someday, my daughter will become a mother herself and her child will watch her relationship with me. It’s a never-ending cycle. In our case, the cycle has filled me with a sense of peace and comfort, finally.

I am a lifelong resident of the state of West Virginia, and the author of Memories...Stories of real life in the mountains.

I am a member of the West Virginia Writers and the West Virginia Poetry Society.

I very much enjoy sharing my short stories and poetry with others. My work tends to tell you the way it was, or is, or should be. I can sometimes be brutally honest and embarrassingly funny but it is the only way that I know how to share this journey through life with my readers.

I appreciate any and all feedback on my work.

http://diannapetry.tripod.com
http://members.tripod.com/~poemsbydianna/PoetryofLife.html
www.womenwithauniquesoul.com