It’s a Love-Hate Relationship
Three little words can mean so much between a parent and child.
Three little words.
“I hate you,” she screamed in anger, a mere foot from my face.
I took a deep breath and counted to ten for both of our sakes. Truthfully, I could have counted to ten thousand and I’m not sure it would have made a difference.
My blood was boiling at her blatant disrespect. My heart was crushed under the weight of her words. Her hateful stare full of malice had me equally ready to slap it off her face or run crying to my room. I was struggling to control my own volatile emotions lest she saw just how well her button-pushing intentions had worked.
Just three little words had made the sky fall, the earth split open, and my blood pressure rocket up to Mars.
“I hate you,” my teenage daughter said again quietly, this time under her breath, as I wordlessly ordered her to her room with a shaking finger.
Three tiny words wielded all the power in the universe. I suspected she knew their cutting strength when she uttered them, but not the extent to which they could emotionally eviscerate me. Though the delivery and the words themselves were different, I already knew how such a small burst of speech could change the world.
As a teenager madly in love, those other three little words lifted me up to play among the clouds with visions of happily ever after dancing in my head. When the father of the angry teenager in the other room had said them to me, my life had begun anew and they had led to marriage, motherhood, and unequaled joy. He also said quite a few other words later that led to a hell of a lot of pain. Both that and this little nuclear bomb were of my own making.
From behind the closed door, I heard her repeat the mantra to herself, though probably more for my benefit. “I hate you, Mom. I hate you. I HATE you.”
Despite the heavy wooden door, the pounding heavy metal music, and half a dozen layers of sheetrock between us, her words echoed in my brain as if she’d shouted them from a rooftop with a bullhorn. I wanted to scream, “I hate you right now, too,” but I was the parent and one of us needed a modicum of control. I was the fall-out girl.
“Shit,” I whispered as my face crumbled and I lost the war with the barrage of unshed tears. I slammed the back door and stumbled down the steps into the cloaked shadows of the backyard just as the dam broke. I dug the pack of smokes from my son’s high school stash out from behind a loose brick and lit a stale Marlboro.
Where divorce, sending my oldest off to college, the house falling down around us, the limited finances, and my shitty boss never served as the straw that broke the camel’s back — raising a teenage girl alone had broken me and cut me off at the knees.
I mentally reminded myself between frenzied puffs of soggy nicotine that she was not the Anti-Christ, just a teenager. Most teenagers were assholes, or so my other parent friends assured me. Even I was a teenage asshole once, and in comparison made my daughter look like Mother Theresa. I yelled at my mother, called her dirty words, and even told her I hated her on more than one occasion. Once, because she’d been doing her job and had forbidden me to do something stupid, I’d even told her I hoped she’d die.
It was just what teenage girls did — run their mouths and hate their parents. And yet, in that moment, it felt as if I was the first mother in history to ever fail so tragically that their child hated them.
Only yesterday, my little girl had been this tiny bundle of loving energy, anxious for a seat in my lap, ready to shower me with hugs and kisses. How had, “I love you, Mommy,” my favorite sound in the world, become, “I hate you, Mother,” as if I was some reviled third-world prison warden?
The door to the garage opened and I swiped at my damp eyes with the back of my sleeve.
“Really, Ma?” asked a deep voice behind me.
My son, home on a visit from college, plucked his ancient smokes from my hand. “Know how long ago I stashed these?” He laughed and then saw the tracks of my tears in the light from the open garage.
“This have something to do with her?” he questioned knowingly, jerking his head towards the house.
“How’d you guess?”
“I’m pretty sure the whole county guessed, Ma.”
I winced. “Do you guys know how hard it is… no, of course, you don’t. You have no idea how hard being a parent is. How hard being your mother is,” I gestured with the lit cigarette, “and especially how hard being her mother is. One day, I hope you’ll know when you have kids of your own. Every one of their triumphs, failures, and heartbreaks — it’s so much bigger than your own. Every one of their dreams is bigger and brighter than anything you ever wanted for yourself. I’ve poured my heart and soul into you guys, these little people looking to me for everything, until I’m all used up and then I look at you and all I see reflected in your eyes is hatred.”
“Dammit.” A sob escaped noisily, and I wiped again at my wet face. I hadn’t meant to unload on him. No wonder they hated me.
He reached out and gave me a half-assed hug before leaning back against the faded siding, lighting a cigarette of his own. Even now, even on his own for the first time, how could he possibly know what I had given up to be their mom — first a teenage mom, then a single working mom, and always a barely-survive-by-the-seat-of-her-pants mom?
“She doesn’t hate you, Ma,” he said finally, stubbing out the nasty cigarette with a look of disgust. “I didn’t either.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Don’t you remember those last few years of high school?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Not the best, but you never told me you hated me.”
“Maybe not, but I did… or I thought I did. I thought you were mean. Hell, sometimes I still think you’re mean. I thought you didn’t understand what it was like for me, couldn’t understand, the same way you’re standing here telling me I don’t understand what it’s like to be a parent. But, I get it now, you were doing your best, and one day she will too. No parent does it perfect, and if they say they do, then they’re full of shit.”
He grinned. “And she’s doing her best, too. Being a kid today ain’t easy.”
I nodded, a smile breaking through. “I know, son, and I’m so proud of you for saying all that. Hard to believe that was you just a few short years ago. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less in the moment when you thought it or just now when she said it.”
“But,” he said, slipping an arm around my shoulders, “as my mother once told me, the hurt never lasts forever. And neither will this.”
I hugged him back tightly, so thankful for a reminder that there was light at the end of the teenage tunnel.
He turned back towards the garage and took a couple of steps before looking back. “And Ma, for what it’s worth, I love you. Did then and do now. She does, too. It’ll be okay.”
The garage door swung shut and I stubbed out the butt on the broken concrete. Three little words from him had put the whole mess into perspective. If that 16-year-old asshole I’d once been had managed to raise the amazing man in the garage, and the once angry teenager in the garage had become the same man who today had reminded me that this wouldn’t last forever — not the hurt and not these painful transition years — then maybe there was hope for us all.
As a parent, all I had ever wanted for my kids was to raise them with the tools and confidence to make good decisions, to make a good life, a better life than the one I’d had. And maybe, to try and raise kids that one day wouldn’t hate me for the mistakes we all inevitably make or the stupid things I’d said in anger or the ways I’d made their young lives so unbearable. I stared at the sky, praying for the strength to go back inside and deal with the nuclear fallout when I heard a noise behind me.
A door banged on the hinges and I sensed someone standing there. I turned, expecting to see my son re-emerging from the garage. Instead, I found myself face to face with a teary-eyed teenager, the same teenager who only an hour ago had promised to hate me forever. I opened my arms and she flung herself against me, features contorting as tears soaked my sleeve.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I don’t hate you.”
I wrapped her in my embrace and held her close, my little girl again, even if only for a few moments. “I know, baby. I know.”
I told her that I loved her no matter what she did or said because that’s my job as her mother. I told her it was okay if she hated me because I would always love her. I told her I was just trying to do my best to raise her the only way I knew how. She cried a little more. I cried a little more. And for a minute, all was right with the world again.
“Mom?” came a tiny muffled voice against my shoulder.
“Yes, sweetheart?” I asked.
“I love you.”
Three little words.
