67

 

Every year the creeping starts up slow.

Not the kind that will eventually shock you and pop up around a corner, but the kind that looms loudly from a distance that you can not help but notice. Like taxes. Like the inevitable last gust of winter blowing through the Bible Belt after we’ve packed away our Sunday sweaters and the grocery bag of mismatched mittens and neon polyester hats we’ve been collecting for generations for that maybe someday snow.

You wanted to love birthdays. You wanted them to be the days where everyone looked at you and loved you exactly the way you felt entitled. You wanted someone to remember your favorite kind of cake and pour adoration over your head  like Mary and her perfume on Jesus’s feet.

But you didn’t ask for that. You asked for a clean house and obedient children. You asked as though we usually spent our days plotting how to ruin yours. 

You said you didn’t want gifts, but they were expected. That year I cleaned the house top to bottom because I couldn’t afford a gift was maybe the worst. I gave you exactly what you said you wanted and your face fell when there was no package to unwrap.

You wanted to love birthdays but by dusk we were all well aware how much you truly hated them. We wondered if you hated us. I don’t wonder anymore.

So every year the irises bloom and the day comes and I am sad and I am angry. 

I’m sad that the people who should have loved and protected you failed. 

I’m angry that you never chose to heal from it so that you could love and protect us. 

I’m sad that you are so fragmented by your pain. 

I’m angry that at least some part of you knows that and you choose not to acknowledge it. 

I’m sad that a string of choices made by a child set in motion decades of trauma for seven people (and their partners and their children).

I’m angry that over 67 years that child never grew up despite having so many opportunities.

I’m sad that one of those opportunities had to be the day I told you I needed you to finally do the thing or you couldn’t be in my life or my children’s.

I’m mad that you didn’t take that one. I’m mad you haven’t taken any of them from any of your children (or grandchildren).

I wish it was just a day. I sometimes wish it wasn’t a day at all. 

But the irises by the mailbox still grow. Irises mean compassion. They mean optimism for the future. They mean wisdom and change.

So I’ll be sad and I’ll remember that you were a little girl with a crap dad and a distracted mother born into a terrible system of subjugation and backwards thinking. And I’ll be mad and think about lavender and ask my siblings if I imagined you loving that scent back then to try and pinpoint why a gifted scented lotion could make a mother so mad at her own child. 

I’ll let the wave of grief wash over me and all the colors of its bruising fade a little more. 

I’ll talk about Adorable with my daughter and tell her she’s got a Sunshine Smile. 

I’ll drench my words in gentleness while I tell my son that that word is one we don’t ever use no matter what because it only serves to hurt people and no it doesn’t matter what context it’s in. 

I’ll listen to his brother chatter happily about all the different possible ways he could feel loved on his birthday next month. 

I’ll make the littlest whatever the hell he wants for lunch.

I’ll look at them all and know that they know how deeply I love them and how interesting and wonderful I think they are. I’ll breathe easy knowing that they know a healing version of me, that they’re acquainted with the sound of a genuine apology from their imperfect mother, that they aren’t afraid to make mistakes around me, that they are comfortable being their entire selves. 

And probably some day there will be another day on the calendar that will make me sad and angry because you never did take those opportunities.

But my kids won’t feel the way I feel in March when each June comes around. Not if I can help it.