This Mother’s Day, Celebrate Somebody Else
http://www.brainchildmag.com/2013/05/this-mothers-day-celebrate-somebody-else/
May 12, 2013
By Janelle Hanchett
I
am the mother who missed your kindergarten graduation. I am the mother
who was drunk the morning of the first birthday party you were invited
to, when you were four years old, the one who made you wrap up a toy
from your own room (apologizing and promising another, though I never
did a thing), because we had nothing. I dropped you off wearing my
sunglasses so nobody would see the red in my eyes as I watched you walk
away, with a gift that wasn’t a gift and blond ringlets and fear.
I am the mother who let you go on a February morning, with
your brother, into the arms of your grandmother, who was taking you “to
the park,” but for good and I knew it, because it was cold and raining
and February.
I let you go because I wanted to go back to bed. You were
five. Your brother was 18 months and still nursing and you were older
and still small.
I am the mother who spent two more years “finding myself,”
so deep in self-obsession, sure this pill and this doctor and this drink
would be the next thing to fix it, the thing to set me right, to make
me whole. Back and forth, in and out of centers and hospitals and your
house and no house, I stopped by occasionally as “mama,” felt sorry for
myself, blamed everybody else and wrote letters.
You kept them in a box by your bed. A wooden box stuffed
with all I had written, on napkins and notes and cards I bought in
thrift stores.
Every single one.
With the little pictures I’d draw from wherever I was of
trees and flowers and houses, and love notes to you, my daughter, “I’ll
be home soon” and “I miss you so much” and “How’s kindergarten?” and
“You’re the best daughter in the world.”
I meant it.
You kept them all.
Each one with its hope of life and family and all the things
I couldn’t make but could draw, the few pathetic things I could draw, a
little house with windows and grass and sunshine, what I wanted for
you, for me, somewhere, drawn on the table in the “art room” of whatever
hospital I was in, with the crayons for “art therapy,” before I went
outside to have a cigarette and miss my kids and wonder.
One day in March four years ago I woke up and was dead,
having been killed by alcohol I knew there was nothing left and it
should be so, because all I was and all I had failed, was me. So I left
myself in bed and walked on with nothing to lose, with something I
couldn’t see or feel but knew must exist, because others were living
freely with the same disease, and they told me how to do it. And I did
it.
And I found their freedom and my own, within.
So with no fight left, I found a way to live, to come back
to you and life, and for four years I’ve been born, having not had a
drink since that day. A family again, you and me and daddy and your
brother and new sister – even though families like ours don’t end this
way, having been torn apart by alcoholism. They fade into nothing like
the ends of tiny streams in a dry land. Like broken branches of nothing
scattered on a park green.
Or they become us, something else, experiencing some miracle
that reduced it all to a box on your bedside table – to a piercing in
my gut that comes sometimes, like Mother’s Day, when you hand me a card
written in your hand, with the little pictures drawn and the words you
want to say: “You are the best mama in the world.”
There’s a part of me that wants to give it back and it
crawls down deep into me and begs you to give it to some other woman,
some other mother, who didn’t leave and isn’t me, but why?
When I’m here and I am your mother.
I couldn’t possibly ask.
And so I just hold it and look at you and remember, the
house and flowers and sunshine, the messages sent with the dying blood
of a mother, now pulsing through my veins and yours, giving new life to
the drawings that once lay dead on the page.
On our page, to be lived, now, my daughter.
On Mother’s Day.
And tomorrow.
Author’s note: I didn’t write the story of my alcoholism
for a long time, not because I was ashamed, but because I didn’t feel
like I should be congratulated for taking on responsibilities that were
always mine. I write about it now because it’s the truth, and it isn’t
just a story of alcohol addiction, it’s a story of life and family and
truth after failure, after obliteration. It’s the happiest story in the
world. I found a giant, bursting life as I emerged from the darkest spot
imaginable, and it just doesn’t get any better than that.
About the Author: Janelle is a mother of questionable
disposition to three children aged 11, 7, and 2. She lives in northern
California with her kids and a husband who thinks “getting dressed up”
means shaving his forearm tattoo. If you want, you can join her in the
fight against helpful parenting advice at her blog, Renegade Mothering
(www.renegademothering.com).
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