The Daughter Also Rises

I was four when my mother brought me face-to-face with the ocean. We were visiting my grandfather, who lived across from the beach in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. It wasn’t my first encounter with swimming by any means, but it was my maiden voyage with the saline enormity of the Atlantic.

After my mother set up her lounge chair near the other sunbathers, she motioned me toward the waves. I took a few steps forward, and looked back in apprehension, hoping she might walk with me. She responded by motioning me onward with a wave of her hand.

The squishy warmth of the Florida sand was a welcome departure from the cold, impacted grit of the Adirondack beaches back home. I took that as a good omen, but was alternately afraid of and fascinated by the roar of the giant waves as I ventured closer. I took a few more hesitant steps. Suddenly, a rogue wave pushed me backwards. This gave way to an involuntary log roll in the opposite direction towards an angry and inhospitable type of water that I found to be quite rude.

Stunned, I lay on the wet beach, choking on saltwater and sand. Instinct kicked in, and I quickly rose to my feet before the next crashing wave could have its way with me. Regaining my bearings, I became cognizant of the growing volume of outrage erupting: WHERE IS MY MOTHER?

I looked in her direction, and my heart sank. Not having moved from her perch, she sat on the lounge chair laughing as I spit sand out of my mouth. Her reaction angered me; it also revealed a pattern of indifference that was repeated many a time during our relationship.

When your mother won’t rise to the occasion for you, it doesn’t cement a foundation of feeling especially wanted or of value. My first therapist declared it boldly out loud – in our first session - that my shame and lack of self-worth stemmed from my mother’s absence of demonstrating love. Barely out of my teens, I wasn’t yet ready to process the grage (a word I’ve coined that means an amalgamation of grief and rage).

My ability to trust my mother was ruptured that winter day in 1969 on a Fort Lauderdale beach. It was the first of many incursions over the years, and it’s a tragically common dynamic, especially amongst the mother-daughter and father-son crowds. Just as people die every day, so do bonds of trust – only they don’t get obituaries - the fallout is too. hideous to dwell on. If only we’d wake up to the realization of the enormous power we hold over others – especially to those close to us.

And when trust breaks, insecurity abounds.

My mother tended to treat my friends better than she did me – especially the neighborhood super star – whom she gushed over for vapid reasons, such as her beauty, poise, and family’s social standing. My mother would blithely ignore that this vacuous child-demon practiced mean-spiritedness with unquenchable abandon. Each time I came home from an emotional dust-up smarting and humiliated, my mother just shrugged and turned her attention back to what she’d been doing. If I caught her in a bad mood, she’d seethe at me for being too sensitive.

Low self-esteem emits in subtle ways, like a dog whistle that attracts dart-throwers in droves from all directions. Sticks and stones, you say? That’s an ineffectual and intellectually hollow rationale for shitty, unacceptable behavior. Firing squads positioned themselves from all sides: family, false friends, and strangers. I can count on three fingers those who never picked up an arrow: Bruce, Linda, and my German Shepherd. For even the most downtrodden soul, there’s always the possibility of providence, and Bruce and Linda were my manna from heaven: top-notch playmates who brought only joy and adventure to my life. In a cruel irony, though, I only experienced the glow of their kindness for 2 ½ months of the year, when they visited Lake George for the summer. But believe me when I say with deep gratitude, a little bliss is better than none at all.

Aside from the short reprieves, the rest of my formative years were spent in survival mode, and when I reached adulthood, the reproductive years were spent recovering from survival mode.

Now firmly in the phase of my golden years, I’ve concluded that when trust is destroyed at a tender age and it’s followed by an immersion in an unsupportive environment, full restoration of it is out of the question. Actions are consequential. Rather than skirt this reality, as I have for years, I’ve come to realize it’s necessary to acknowledge it.

What am I going to do…keep pretending? Admission is not as unpleasant as you might think, and is far better than being in active denial, which social media encourages nowadays with the never-ending-cavalcade of ‘what a great life I have’ photo collages. And I admit to falling into that trap for a while, until the charade wore itself out.

We don’t win every lottery in life, and after all the rage-writing in journals and honking my nose into therapist-dispensed tissues, I’ve come to a place of acceptance and equilibrium.

Much like degrees of grief following death, the grage from emotional neglect doesn’t disappear. Take yesterday’s phone conversation with my mother: She interrupted me mid-sentence to point out my improper use of grammar. Predictably, she ceremoniously delivered the news as it were life-changing wisdom from the holy grail.

We’ve come a long way in mitigating her criticizing-as-sport fetish. My mother no longer (at my request) critiques my weight. She also agreed to lay off her unforgiving judgement regarding table manners, my posture, food portions, and the flamboyant lipstick shades I’m fond of wearing. The grammar police is a membership she still won’t relinquish. It’s a small, yet still poisonous infraction that sends seismic waves of disruption down to my well-hidden, subterranean grage.

Some days it rolls off, other days it festers. Yesterday was a difficult one emotionally, due to a personal conflict I was ironing out, coupled with receiving upsetting news from a loved one. Translation: I already pre-triggered. Still, I managed to compose myself and pause, while maintaining objective awareness that I wanted to scream at her – and maybe even slide her up a wall by the throat. Taking a breath, I continued with the sentence she’d interrupted and let my primal impulse die – as it usually does when I take a beat.

And that’s about as good as it gets because sometimes, behavioral attachments don’t change. My repeat trips to the well for maternal acceptance have run their course. And I’ve disposed of the whimsical hope for the invention of a vaccine for parents born without proper instinct that thwarts them from committing malpractice. And by that I’m referring to longstanding patterns and repeat choices…not the human mistakes and missteps we all commit.

I continue to manage the multiple sources of the maternal grage so they no longer run me: The day my mother (with a peculiar smile on her face) told me she was unhappy to learn she was pregnant with me. Or her Tourettes-like tendency to abruptly blurt out cruel declarations – such as wishing aloud that a famous 70’s TV star was her daughter instead of me. I’m sure the picture’s clear by now.

And yes – in spite of our battles, I’m fully aware of and grateful for her upsides: The thoughtful reverence my mother always showed for special occasions like Christmases and birthdays. How she sat at my bedside every evening before saying goodnight to pray with me. The night she took me to see The Sound of Music – a experience that changed my life forever. She’s 88 now and in excellent health. Yet logic dictates that the window of our time together is closing.

I’ve worked hard to accept her for who she is and for what can’t be changed…as I have with every abuser in my life. When I realized that the transgressor (whoever it may be) is, in fact, laden with unseen psychological burdens, then I can connect the dots properly and be free from the misinformation that it all occurred because I’m fundamentally flawed or unlovable.

I know there are kids who have gone through far worse. But we’re each handed a particular ball of wax by destiny, and this is mine: The innocent, open-hearted ability to trust a human being 100% may never be restored, but I’m still here. There are many good days, even wonderful ones. And they coexist with the grage, which never has the courtesy to give advanced notice. It always barges in uninvited, badgering me with the reminder that I live life with a prosthetic heart. The innocent one I was born with was damaged by five or six incursions too many - it is altered.

But I honor what remains.