Her Own Wee Bairn
Seeing my mum as a deeply wounded person explains so much
It’s freeing — to learn about ourselves along life’s journey. Even if it’s not what we hope to learn. Even if the knowing is painful.
Knowing ourself is like having a clear image of who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going. We break the false illusion that we may have been given, like shattering an old mirror that reflects only warped images. In seeing ourself clearly, we are free.
When I was a child, all I knew of myself was that I was unseen and unwanted in my own home. All I knew of my mother was that the impoverishment of her childhood led to a deprivation of love in mine. I was called many ugly things. There was a cruelty aimed at me that I couldn’t understand as a child. My mum never apologized though I could sense, many times, that she felt she should. She’d vacillate for a moment, and just when I thought I might hear something I desperately needed to hear, instead she’d say, “Someday you’ll understand.”
It’s hard for a child to take that in.
But decades later, I do understand. I worked really hard to understand what was incomprehensible for the younger me. Now I realize that my mother was carrying the burden of abuse at the hands of her father. The death of my grandmother some years later left my mother orphaned, feeling alone and afraid. I think she always had been afraid — of a lot of things. So by the time she had me, my mother projected all her fears and pain, all her grief, onto me — her only daughter. Her own wee bairn.
A burden that I carried for years — until I realized it was not mine to carry. It was only weighing me down.
My mother, along with my grandmother and my uncles, emigrated from Scotland to Canada, to escape my drunken grandfather. Though I never knew my grandmother, Isabelle, she’s my personal hero for the strength she showed in boarding a cargo ship with four young children. An arduous journey in which she worked below deck while my mother, the middle child, was responsible for her brothers above deck. There were stories of my uncles balancing on the ship rails while my mum was too seasick to stop them. My uncles would chuckle when telling their stories. My mum never even broke a smile. My mother had always been responsible in caring for her brothers — even as her mother lay dying when she was only 18.
When her brothers were on their own, she left Canada to move to New York City, in search of a new life. At the time she had few possessions, owned only wornout clothes, and spoke with such a thick brogue that she was mocked and misunderstood. I can imagine, or maybe I can’t, how utterly out of place, alone and adrift, she must have felt. My mother reinvented herself, learned how to dress well, and took elocution classes to soften her charming Scot accent.
She began to dress and sound more like a New Yorker; that meant a lot to a lass from a coal mining town in Scotland. It seems that she couldn’t acknowledge who she was or where she came from. She didn’t want to — she didn’t like what she saw. So she erased and reinvented herself. Perhaps she carried not only the grief of losing her mum and the trauma of abuse by her father — but the shame of it all. A shame drilled into her through years of growing up in poverty. A shame that came from not knowing who she was, running from herself, trying to flee her past.
I look back and recognize all that my mother fled. I also see that my mum had my grandmother’s courage. Although everything she went through gave her an impenetrable shell — sadly that was the part of her that I knew growing up. But the woman I would finally come to see — I also came to admire.
It was freeing for me, to see her fully in her humanity. To love that impoverished little girl. A real scrapper, my mum. I have one old photo of her with her mother and brothers. In it, she’s wearing tattered shoes. My mother had a thing for shoes. She ended up collecting boxes of them, storing them in her closet until she died — a pair for every outfit.
As I thought of all my mother survived, how she came through and rose up, it was like a warm shower in and out. I felt, myself, cleansed. All that my mother did or didn’t do, I let wash away. I wasn’t going to carry it any further. It was time to put that burden down. Three generations of women had carried it far enough.
Seeing my mum as a deeply wounded person explains so much. I took charge of the direction of my life and forged my own compass. Rather than try to erase my past, I embrace who I am and where I come from. The drunken rages of my grandfather, the courage of my grandmother, the lonely ache of my orphaned mother. The poverty of a coal mining family carried from Scotland to Canada and on to New York.
In claiming all that I come from, being proud of the dreams the women in my family pursued, in giving everything to seek a better future — I set myself free to claim that heritage. I am amazed at their resilience — at our resilience. Now I know that I carry that strength in me — and so does my daughter.
When my mother became ill, I took time from work to care for her. During our last weeks together, I learned more about her past. Before she died, she called me her ‘bonnie wee bairn’ and told me that she loved me. That she always had and that she always would. I can hear her beautiful brogue still — rolling off her tongue.
I like to think that love healed a lonely orphan — who’d been running her whole life — from herself. Until finally running into my arms.
So I embrace us both. I embrace the imperfect perfection of love shared between a mother and daughter.
I am her ‘own wee bairn.’ I will always be. I am the descendant of courageous women. When my mum finally surrendered to my understanding, acceptance and love for her — no matter where she came from, how she spoke, what she wore — she found a resting place in me. She rests there still.
I believe that this life is about love.
Being. Sharing. Love.
Love that begins by knowing, accepting and loving who I am and where I come from. This knowing gives me an internal compass in forging my way in life. This acceptance and love fills a deep, clear well in me. From the depths of this well, everything flows.
