5. Mothers and Daughters and Castles in the Sky…
Note: This is the fifth installment of the serial publication of my memoirs,“What’s Left Behind.” To read previous chapters, go to https://medium.com/whats-left-behind.
Of all the dysfunction in my life growing up, the most confusing thing, by far, was my parents. Both in and of themselves and together as one, almost nothing about them made sense. It’s not to say my parents were the be-all and end-all of a healthy upbringing — that wouldn’t be fair. They were only part of the puzzle. Still, if truth be told, they were the corner pieces of that puzzle and, between them, not a single right angle could be found.
I never did understand how my parents managed to marry in the first place, let alone stay together for 17 years and bear three children. But, just as misery loves company, dysfunction accommodates ruthlessness, and so, while my parents’ marriage may have materialized in convenience and the antiquated expectations of what a “family” really should be, in the long run, it was their complementary faults that endured the war.
My father’s shortcomings were obvious, their repercussions readily discernible and impossible to overlook. My mother on the other hand is one of those people with a pretense of innocence whose most sinister shadows are often cloaked in naivety or buried in the absolution of time.
Not that my mother is a bad person. On the contrary, she is one of the kindest people you can know.
Unfortunately, though, she has spent her entire life looking for a love she will never find — a love owed to her but never received in time, a love she can only find in herself but incessantly seeks in others. As a result, she never developed the faculties required to find a suitable companion. Instead, she settles for people like my father who disrespect and abuse her but, in some distorted way, fulfill an emotional destitution that has forever had the upper hand in her life.
I have no doubt that my brothers and I provided the glue that held our parents — or at least our mother — together for so long.
I do not think it a coincidence that she became pregnant with Colin at the same time William started school, or that once I, definitively the last child since my father had a vasectomy after I was born, started school, my parents’ relationship approached its final decline.
My mother once told me how, after I started kindergarten, she became very depressed and sought help from a psychologist — then ceased going after just a few sessions.
“It was too much,” she said.
Further proof of my mother’s worst attribute: a ferocious grip on avoidance and denial that has caused her to hurt the people closest to her without even realizing it.
I remember, some time in early adolescence, my mother told me that the reason my parents had a third child was because she wanted a little girl — or, to use her words, “a doll to play with.”
And to the best of my knowledge, this is what she got.
In baby pictures, I am invariably outfitted in darling dresses, complete with lace-trimmed bonnets; in all of my earliest memories I was glued to my mother’s side. Inseparable.
A girl and her doll.
When she worked, I went with her. I helped itemize the inventory of greeting cards at Cheap John’s and clean the luxurious houses on Handsome Avenue. I was her sales apprentice for AVON, her companion for Tupperware parties, and her pillow-stuffer when she started selling craft projects from home.
When she wasn’t working, I sat on the sidelines of her aerobics class with my Barbie dolls or Colorforms, then walked to Friendly’s afterward for lunch and ice cream; other times, we would trek the distance to Betty Jean’s house, pounding the shoulder of Sunrise Highway, all the way past Nicolls Road to the outskirts of Patchogue.
When I started kindergarten, my mother would pick me up every day at noon and we’d sit in the living room eating tuna fish sandwiches and watching the mirthful weather forecasts of Lloyd Lindsay Young before tuning in to see the latest drama with Victor and Nikki on The Young and the Restless.
All things considered, my mother’s fairy tale had come true. She absconded to her castle in the sky and, despite her troubles, I remember her as generally cheerful and energetic. Playful. Loving.
After all, there is no better place to find the love my mother sought than in a helpless, unconditionally loving child. But the fact of the matter is, unlike dolls, kids grow up. In turn, what should be cherished milestones in a child’s life, like leaving for kindergarten, are, for people like my mother, devastating losses — harrowing validations that no one will ever love her.
At least not in the way she needed to be loved.
Once I began first grade, the school day no longer ended at noon. Like my brothers, I now left home in the morning for a full eight-hour day, abruptly stripping my mother of the buffer that had offered protection from the pain and suffering of her daily life.
I imagine I didn’t adjust well to the separation, either, as evidenced by one vivid, indelible memory: that day in the first grade when I left my project home — a construction paper illustration mounted in a Macy’s gift box of a young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree.
“Hello, Mrs. Reilly?” the class heard over the PA system.
“Yes?” my teacher responded.
“Can you send Aisling up to the main office? Her mother is here with her project.”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Reilly replied.
I walked down the corridor, which, as a child, seemed infinitely long to me.
“Mommy, I wanna go home,” I griped when I saw her standing in the sun-drenched lobby. “I don’t wanna stay here.”
“No, sweetheart, you have to stay. You’ll be home in a few hours.”
“But I wanna go now!” I demanded.
“Aisling, you have to go back to your classroom.”
“NO! I wanna go HOME!”
I began to cry frantically, dropping to the floor, slapping the cold vinyl tiling, then grasped my little hands around my mother’s ankle so she couldn’t leave.
“TAKE ME HOME!” I wailed. “I don’t wanna stay here. I wanna go home. PLEASE!!!”
Maybe I had learned from the fire drill in kindergarten if I carried on enough, my mother would be obligated to take me home; perhaps I was legitimately distressed to be separated from her. Either way, the line can be easily blurred between such fabricated frenzy and genuine emotion — until that charade actually morphs into authenticity.
I cried and begged as the school nurse, having wrenched my hands from my mother’s leg, picked me up, took my project from the floor, and carried me kicking and screaming to the nurse’s office. I shrieked as I watched my mother walk out the front door.
“Mommy, come BACK!! Don’t leave me here!!!”
There seems to be a clear demarcation in the dynamic of my memories surrounding my mother before and after I started school.
The mother I was so attached to in my earliest years was suddenly gone, drawn so deeply inside herself that she was unavailable for any person or thing that couldn’t satisfy the unyielding emptiness in her heart. There are stretches of time where, despite knowing my mother never abandoned us, I retain no memory of her whatsoever. Any memories I do have are marred by her sadness and languor.
If she wasn’t lying in bed, she was stagnant on the couch, staring at the television; if she wasn’t brawling with my father, she was fraught with despair, struggling to keep Colin in school and out of trouble. I frequently found her crying, looking for a new job, or searching for ways to feed and keep us warm.
I know my mother did the best with what she had. The problem was, she didn’t have very much. And over time, she grew increasingly withdrawn, perpetually melancholy, and — most memorably — short-tempered.
“Let me in!” I cried, furiously banging my little fists on the door. “I have to go to the bathroom!”
It was among Colin’s favorite methods of torment: impeding my path, wherever I tried to go. Locking me out of the bathroom, out of my bedroom, out of the house altogether, every chance he got.
To fan the flames, he made sure to always be on the other side, laughing at me with that distinctive, wicked cackle.
“I’m telling mom when she gets home!” I cried.
But my brother paid this no mind. He knew it didn’t make much of a difference anyway, and my cries were only met with mounting delight.
When Colin stuck his head out to laugh at me, I threw my weight against the door, pushing with all my might. I had just about gotten inside when—
SLAM!
My fingers got crushed.
I screamed, clenching my throbbing hand, the skin on my fingers grated by the doorframe, a single bead of blood rising to the surface.
I distinctly remember the sadness I felt as I sat on the front steps that afternoon, waiting for my mother to return home — the anger, the hurt, the hopelessness I felt that no one was ever around to protect me from my brother; I remember my assuredness that this time, once my mother saw my visibly injured hand, Colin would be in for it!
As soon as I saw my mother approaching the house, I ran to her, crying, showing her my still-throbbing hand.
“Colin wouldn’t let me in the bathroom and then he slammed my — ”
“Not NOW, Aisling!” my mother snapped at me, not even looking at my hand. “Why do you always have to fight with your brother?”
It might have been my first realization that the mother I knew, at one time so devoted to me, had gone. No longer did I have anyone in my corner.
Of course, there were times when my mother was cheerful — her joy of a simplistic, lighthearted nature that she possesses even today. And, despite a certain wisdom gained from her experience of a challenging life, it is her irreproachable guilelessness — intermingled with a profusion of denial — which greatly prevails.
To some degree, I know this has served to shield her from the verities of a world she may otherwise find difficult to contend with. On the other hand, it is this same nescience that allowed Colin and I to live a life almost entirely devoid of parental guidance and protection.
Continue on to Chapter 6: The Bee’s Knees, Weiner Dogs, and First Felonies…
