Like Mother, Like Daughter
WD February Flash Fiction Challenge — Day 27
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This is my Day Eighteen entry to the Writer’s Digest February Flash Fiction Challenge. The prompt is to write about someone following in their parent’s footsteps.
I am the spitting image of my mother. It’s like we’re clones. I know you might think you’re just like your mother, but not like my mom and me. Nothing like my mom and me.
It sounds cute, and seemed that way, too, when I was younger, before I grew up into adulthood. People would always laugh and call me her Mini Me. My mom thoroughly enjoyed the attention and took to dressing us alike.
And it would have been cute, if my mother were normal, if she were someone that anyone would want to be like, like if she were a crazy good baker, or a great cook, maybe a runway model, or a brilliant scientist. She’s not any of those things.
My mother has no moral compass. Most people have a line that they would never cross. My mother has none. Or if she does, it hasn’t been discovered yet. So what does my mother do that’s so horrible? She is a serial bride. She plows through one marriage after another — she meets them, wows them, marries them, then tramples their hears, and takes them for everything they’ve got.
It’s easy for her, she’s dazzlingly beautiful, vibrant, playful, amazingly attentive, and so loving. It’s easy for people to fall in love with her.
I used to think my mother was just searching for the right relationship, the one that will work. Then I thought she was broken, that maybe she could be fixed, if only the right person would come along.
I finally settled on her being a con artists, a hardened criminal, and that judgement stuck. And as judgements tend to do, it came back and bit me.
My first marriage was when I had just turned 17. My mom gave her permission and I married my high school sweetheart, Brandon. He was nice looking and totally crazy about me. His parents had money and they were generous to a fault. With their help, we were set up for life. He had a great job working for his father. We had a big house, two luxury cars, and had just bought a vacation home in Florida.
He wanted children, or to be more accurate, his mother wanted grandchildren, and they began to apply pressure, subtly at first, but growing more and more overt over time.
I finally pulled the plug. I convinced him to sell the vacation home, on the excuse that we could use the money for fertility treatments and to get the house ready for a baby. Then I emptied the bank accounts, took out cash on all the credit cards, and sold my Lexus. After that, I left Omaha, and starting all over in Washington State.
If I had licked my wounds and taken time to heal, looked for a better, more balanced relationship, things might have been different. I didn’t. Within 3 weeks of arriving in Seattle, I found another young man, this one a programmer working for Amazon — lot’s of money, a great future ahead of him. He was handsome enough, and he loved me unconditionally.
Three years later, I cut and ran, taking as much as I could take him for, which was quite a bit. Then I landed in Indianapolis with a new identity and a sizable nest egg.
I am my mother’s daughter. I know that now. I also know that she’s not as ruthless as I have judged her to be. Like me, she falls in love every time. She is eternally hopeful. She feels everything deeply. When she is loved, it is stupendous! When she is wounded, it is torture.
Like mother, like daughter — I am addicted to love. I am addicted to courtship and romance. I love being loved, and building relationships. I am horribly dreadful with maintaining relationships.
I am claustrophobic. I can let you in, but only so far and only for a little while. Too close, too long, and I begin to suffocate. I find myself starving for air, for freedom, for the open road and living on my own terms.
Why do I take the money? I asked my mother that once and she told me she had earned it. She’d given her husband the best time of his life, made him feel like he could do anything, be anyone. While married, she gave 100% and then some, and never asked for anything in return. Until she couldn’t take it anymore. Then it was time to take her reward and cut him loose.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
There is one way in which I am not like my mother. She has a daughter. She had me when she was still a teen. I do not, nor will I ever have children. I took care of that. I will not have Mini Me following in my footsteps.
Whatever this is that we are, my mom and I, it ends with me.
You can all thank me for it, if you’d like, but I didn’t do it for you or anyone else. I did it because if I never do another right thing my entire life, at least I did that.
I’ve got to go now. I think that gentleman at the bar looks quite lonely. I can tell by his clothes, he’s no slacker. Let me see if he needs company.
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