You're Cuter Than An Intrauterine....

My birthday is just a few days away, so today I received a card and a letter from my Mom. And a small gift. And it annoys me. Is that wrong? So, you may not have the entire background on why I am annoyed. The 60 second backstory is that she took off on me and brother when we were 7 and 10, respectively. Left us with our dad (a good guy with bad taste in women) and an incredibly abusive step-mother. Went to Boston and got married to our step-dad. Called us with the news. And basically rarely ever called us for anything else except maybe birthdays and Christmas. Prior to that, she was divorced from my dad for a few years and basically passed us off to whichever of the cheapest babysitters in town would watch us while she both worked as a waitress and in her free time did whatever the hell she wanted with her friends. She picked up hitchhikers with us in the car, talked incessantly on the phone with her friends while she was around us, ignored us in every way possible including forgetting to bathe us and clothing us in dirty laundry...basically did everything but mother us. So we were not mothered from the time we were about (me) 3.5 and (my bro) 7.5. Very fucked up situation. She moved back from Boston after 3 years but was pretty hands off. We ended up both back to live with her for a couple of years as teens. She basically lorded over us constantly that the minute we turned 18 we were no longer her problem and we'd better be ready for it. That gives you an idea.

I wrote her off just over a year ago after she moved away for a second time 5 weeks after my son was born. She promised up and down that she would be calling so much it would drive me nuts. (A girl needs her mother after she has a baby...or a mother-figure of some sort.) She moved and never called, never communicated. It was very hard on me. More on that later. It didn't help the Baby Blues that I was fighting. Just in the last few months I have loosened up and told her she is free to email me and send letters if she desires. I do not want to speak to her by phone and she is clear on that so she doesn't call. Too hard to wait for calls that don't come. She's probably fine with that because calls cost money anyway.

So today she sent a letter telling me all about my birth 36 years ago. How happy she was to have "her girl" and how much I was loved and wanted and still am. Guess what? I'm not buying it. She detailed her contractions, the entire birthing process, the exact moment I was born, how she shit on the doctor with the first push. I don't frickin' care. In my eyes actions speak louder than words. Right? Am I wrong to have this reaction? I am just so done with her and she is so full of lies. So, I know I should just brush it off and move on but it does annoy me. And by the way, that $20 gift card for Bath & Body Works....if she knew me better she would know that I hate that store. But she doesn't.

Last Day of Summer

Today is the last day of summer and I'm feeling ponderous about the past again. Remembering the fall as a kid when life went back to crazy after my brother and I spent nice, semi-normal summers with our grandparents. Fall was back-to-school. I always had butterflies in my stomach on the first day of school. I would have a hard time eating or sleeping. I'm still the same way when I have something important going on at work. For example, I have to travel on Wednesday this week and all I can think about is getting it over with. Thankfully I only have to travel about 10% of the time....which is 10% too much for me. It's just not my thing.

But I digress. About this time of year, there would be parent-teacher conferences at school. I lived with my mom until I was almost 8 years old. She was never really into conferences or, I guess, never really into me. One year, she did try to be semi-interested. She had to work at the bar so she sent her boyfriend, Ed, in her place. Weird enough to send your boyfriend, but the best part was the way that he acted. Ed got me and my brother in his pickup truck and set out down the street to the school. Fortunately the school was less than half a mile away. Back in those days, seatbelts were optional, so I'm quite sure we were not strapped in. In fact, I can remember crawling around the truck cab so I am absolutely sure that we were not wearing seatbelts.

We arrived at the parent-teacher conferences with a very jovial Ed. They also had some sort of table set up and activities for kids at the school, presumably for those children who showed up with their parents. To give you a picture of what Ed looked like, imagine a guy in his early 20's (mom's "younger man") and a very carefree attitude, longish 70's hair and a scruffy moustache. Ed was very handsome and not terribly responsible. Definitely the kind of guy with some Ted Nugent 8-tracks in his pickup. I thought Ed was wonderful. He was in a great mood and greeted our teachers with enthusiasm. Some of them looked at him funny, but I thought he was lots of fun.

The rest of the evening is a little foggy or possibly just insignificant. We woke up the next morning (a Saturday) and something was off. Ed was in the hallway patching a hole in the wall. My mom was nowhere to be found....pretty typical for any day, really. I went to the living room to watch cartoons and my brother filled me in. He would have been about 9 or so at the time. I was about 6 years old.

"What's going on? What's Ed doing?"

"Oh, he punched a hole in the wall last night. Didn't you hear that?"

"No. Why would he do that?"

"Mom was mad at him for taking us to conferences drunk. They got in a fight and he got mad and punched a hole in the wall," my brother said calmly.

"Oh," I responded.

"So, I think Mom broke up with him but she's making him fix the wall."

"Well, yeah, I guess he should fix it," I was thoughtful for a moment, "What's drunk?"

"It's when someone drinks a lot of beers and they act silly."

....and that was the last time I saw Ed.