Love, Mom

Journals Left By My Mother

M y mother died from complications due to brain cancer on September 25, 2010. She was seventy eight. What I didn’t know, was that during her illness she had composed a number of journals to be read by my father and I after her death. They were, and are, priceless memories. Insights into my life, my past, and most importantly, my mother. This is one of the last entries from the journal that was left to me.

I am publishing this to demonstrate that people are more than their histories. My mother was an example of someone who did not let a painful childhood completely define who she was and how she would parent. She overcame her history to be a mother that, in my estimation, defined the term. I miss her everyday.

July22 / 2010
Dear Allan,
Over the past year, as I realized in bits and spurts that I would not win this battle with health and time, I returned more and more to the journals I have created for you and your father. My goal was to document thoughts, stories, ideas, and hopes for you both. However in the process what became my overriding concern, was what I inevitably got wrong in my life as a wife and mother.
In my journey of writing these memories I have attempted to be as honest and transparent as I could be, even where it was difficult. After all, what good is a mother’s voice if it is not her own? Besides, you are smart enough to see through me, and you always have been. Which is why, when you come across the entry that refers to August 17, 1973, the day your grandfather died, I need you to know that your mother is telling you a complete fabrication, a very well executed and intentional lie.
I told you that your grandfather, a wonderful, fine man passed away quietly in his sleep. I wrote wonderful things about a grandfather you should have had, and about the father I should have had. I am sorry for that, which is why I am telling you now. But one thing I am not sorry for is the feeling of complete relief I had when I received that phone call.
Please understand there was no way I was going to break the spirit of a child, nor complicate our mother son relationship by telling you, thus sentencing you at such a young age, to my very complicated and unhealthy perceptions of your grandfather. That is why the journal speaks of a wonderful man who provided well for his children, and was always supportive of me, his second youngest daughter. It tells you of a man who made special arrangements for her to travel by rail to Kingston, where she began her education at Queens. It doesn’t speak of the pure relief I felt, knowing that by leaving home and leaving him, I was finally free.
I’m sure you were aware that over the years I’ve explained away the numerous reasons you never had the opportunity to meet your grandfather. I told you he had a fear of flying, and that’s why he never came to see us in Tokyo. I offered several weak and questionable excuses why we never saw him when we would return home. Nor did I explain why you only saw your grandmother at your aunts or uncles home. You may have been too young to remember the day I had to telephone your grandmother from a pay phone on the corner. Telling her to “just walk out the door, and get in the blue car that was parked at the end of the block”. Because, I promised her, she would never have to look back. My biggest regret is that I was unable to persuade her to leave or offer what she needed to take that step.
Allan, I never told you these things, not because I was trying to deceive you, but because I was determined not to let my only child know the heartache and shame that envelops and darkens your soul when raised by a very evil man. I realize now, with time and hindsight being what it is, the unfair expectation I set for myself and the burden it unwittingly placed on you, a child who had nothing to do with any of it.
I hope you can understand. I tell you now, so as to offer some insight into a dynamic that would have been very difficult to see for what it was.
Or, maybe not.
I have often underestimated your exceptional ability to read the multitude of things happening just below the surface of a person or situation. So whether you knew or not, I think you realized it just would have caused more pain and more denial if I had complicated your life with the truth of my childhood, or lack thereof. For myself, for my sisters, for Bill and Roger, we had the right of childhood taken from us at a very young age. I was determined no one would ever take yours.
I hope you are able to see that by not burdening you with the toxic drama that defined your grandfather, I felt I was protecting you. But the more difficult truth, is that I was also protecting me. I hope you can forgive me. Though if you knew, well then I need to say thank you, Allan. Thank you for having the courage to be a man, way before you ever finished being a boy.
Beyond that, please continue to write. I realize that as your mother I may be biased, but you truly have a gift. Don’t you dare waste it over this temporary setback that in no way defines you. A few words about your father. When he infuriates you, as we both know he can, try to choose restraint and deference over the final word. Try to consider that just because he can’t express, does not mean he can’t feel. In his own oddly quiet way, your father loves you very much. You are just going to have to trust me on that. Finally my dear, when you find “the one” (who I know you will), he will be unlike any other man you have known. So lean in, love large, and in laughter or tears, always be the soft place for each other to fall.
Please know that I am fine. You will be too. Be happy, my child.
All my love,
Mom

You may be wondering, did I know? The specifics, no. And I still don’t. Did I think her childhood was not as I had been lead to believe? Yes, of course I did, from a very early age. Children always know more than we think they do.

Allan G Rae, known online as alto, is a researcher, educator, and writer who left a career as a flight paramedic to obtain his MFA in creative writing. Stray dogs, Starbucks, and satire do not displease him.