Chemistry Set and Christmas

One year, my dad got me one of those Gilbert Chemistry Sets for Christmas. My mother threw it out with all of the other presents from my dad as usual.

Dad was given visitation on Sundays, a two week summer vacation option, and holidays.
Sometimes the holidays didn't happen. My mother would go to the front door and mutter "sick" to my disappointed Dad and then he would leave. I wasn't sick. My mother was a fairly rude woman when it came to my dad. The idea of calling him to say don't come today because spike is supposedly sick was not an option ever.

I left my mother's house when I was 17 to go live with my dad after a particularly vicious public beating (which led to her being banned for life from a nearby town) and that Christmas my dad had insisted that I buy Christmas gifts for my mother and deliver them. "She's still your mother," he told me, demonstrating a courtesy that he held for her in spite of her spitefulness throughout the years. I was still fairly traumatized from the events which had preceded my leaving. I snuck into the house with my key and left a bunch of presents on the radiator in the hallway. I didn't call my mother until almost a year later.

I called my dad today to wish him a Happy Christmas. He in turn questioned me as to my intentions regarding my mother and extracted a promise from me that I would call her today. I grumbled to myself a bit. This is my elderly dad who has been divorced from my mother for many years, who endured things at the hands of my mother that no living being had to endure. He wanted me to call her.

Yes, I called my mother today. I wished her a Happy Christmas and inquired as to the well-being of my half-sister (who does not pick up the phone when I call there) and her growing family. Two strangers talking at a bus stop. Some things don't change.

My mother is a very sick woman. She has always been spiteful, always played head games, always had a serious mean streak. My mother is a woman of violence. Only in my own journey leading to adulthood have I been able to protect my self from her abusiveness. I am sorry that she may be a product of her environment, sorry that she may be active still in her addictions, sorry that she is getting old now and that our relationship cannot heal. I no longer have to sacrifice my well-being for an adult whose own deficiencies demand such a sacrifice. Nor will I. This is not about forgiveness. My mother is not asking my forgiveness. This is about my life and my disengagement from that which threatens to kill me.

sapphoq on life