Beech Tree News Network

Sometimes, I read back over journals I’ve written years ago.  Recently, I read an entry that said, “I was raised by the wrong mother.”  The entry was a reference to my stepmother.  It wasn’t written with resentment, it was simply an observation. 
    When I was a kid, I thought my stepmom didn’t like me, because she was angry a lot.  I know now that she was in a very difficult situation and she was mostly frustrated.  We didn’t have a lot in common.  She was a big woman, I was always small.  I was a dreamer, and she was pragmatic.  She worked at the sawmill with my dad then cooked and cleaned and took care of all us kids when she got home.  She didn’t have time to have dreams.
    I’ve always said I was able to stay for my kids, because my biological mother walked away from my sisters and me, and I never wanted to make another person go through that.  Granted, my mother was initially pushed out of the picture; but years later, when she had the chance to once again be part of our lives, she continued to run away.
    The last time I saw my mother, she was living in Norwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati.  The year was 1988, and I was on a sidewalk outside the apartment where she lived.  She was looking down on me from an upstairs window.  I couldn’t go in, because she had locked herself in and me out.
 My mother and I were separated from the time I was six years old until we reunited sixteen years later when I was twenty-two.  I always thought it ironic that she lived sixteen years after we found each other again.  It’s too bad that most of those years were wasted by her dropping in and out of my life.  She had her problems, like we all do, but I wish she had pushed them aside instead of pushing my sisters and me aside. 
That day with me on the sidewalk and her at an upstairs window looking down was the most painful day of my life.  She said, “Go home, little girl.  I’m not your mother and you’re not my daughter.  Go home and take care of your husband and children.  They are the most important things.” Five years later, she would be dead.  For years afterward, I had an annual melt-down on Mother’s Day.  I know it was hard on Garey and the girls, but it just took a while to pull myself together.  I think it was my daughter, Nikki’s, words that made me snap out of it.  She was a teenager at the time.  She said, “You know, Mom, you can’t play the victim forever and still have a life.”  She was right, of course.  I had to choose life for all our sakes.
      This year, was my stepmom’s first Mother’s Day without my dad.  Garey, Natalie, Sabria and I drove to Taylorsville for a gathering at my brother’s house.  Mom (I’ve called my stepmom that since I was a little girl) went straight to my granddaughter, Sabria, when she saw her.  Sabria took Mom by the hand and said, “Come on Mamaw, we have a surprise for you.”  She showed her the table full of presents and cards.  Mom threw her hands up in mock surprise and said, “Are all of these for me!”  Sabria was delighted by Mom’s delight.
    As I watched my granddaughter and my stepmom together, I thought, “There’s a lot to be said for just sticking around.”  Maybe, I was raised by the right mother after all.