I think in order to really understand my relationship with
Melinda you kind of have to understand my relationship with my mom. My relationship with my mother has always
been complex. My first memories are not
of her, they are of Oma. Since Oma died
I have continued to look for that unconditional loving mother figure in my
life. I had it for a while in Momma
Muriel and I thought in Melinda as well. I would ultimately find in it in my
relationship with Holda.
As a small child I believed my mother to be my big sister,
and my Oma to be my real mother. My
mother is not right, whether she was born that way or as a result of the
surgery I don’t know. Read about that here in HelloIlsa, Goodbye Beau. She is very
narcissistic, everything must be about her.
I remember one time being in the fertility Dr’s office for a
vaginal ultrasound, my mom is there for support, holding my hand, because with
IC it is quite painful. The lights go
off and suddenly she starts telling the Dr and nurses, about how her husband
left, when she was in the hospital with brain surgery, when I was two. I had to tell her to, “Shut the fuck up!” I
said “Nobody wants to hear that now!”
She could not stand, for just a few moments the attention was on
me.
When I call to talk to her, she immediately launches into
her day. I had to train her to ask me how my day was. She does it about 50% of the time now. Most days she still forgets.
I am fiercely protective of my mother, always have
been. I would end up being the same way
with Melinda. In many ways I feel I
raised my mother. My father and I became
her emotional care takers after Oma died.
Mom started in college when I was 13.
I helped out and did a lot of the
housework, and then sat down at night to help her with her homework. My father wrote all of her college
papers. Her successes felt like my
successes.
Since Oma’s death I have had to walk on eggshells around Mom. Her love always comes with strings
attached. “I love you, but you’d be so
pretty if you just lost weight,” was the main way I remember her telling me she
loved me as a child.
Despite cleaning my home before she came, I was always told
how dirty my house was. I remember one
day when I was living in Apartment C in college, Mom came to visit and helped
me clean. She took a q-tip to the seal
of my refrigerator door and found mold.
She held it up in my face and said, “See! Your fucking nasty just like Beau!” If she does that shit now, I just hold the
door open and tell her to leave. No one
will insult me in my own home! My Mother
always did everything she could, to always make me feel inferior.
Love was always conditional with her, and I never knew when
she would throw me out of the family, like I had seen her do to so many
others. I have always said, “My mother
loves me, but she does not like me.” No
matter what I did, I could never please her.
It was just never enough. I
wonder if sometimes she looks at me, and sees Beau.
After my mother robbed me on March 31st of 2012,
Melinda very much became my mother. She
allowed me to do things that at 36, my mother still forbade me from doing. Stupid me was still wanting to please my mom
at that age. Small things like to dye my
hair red and get double holes in my ears.
Simple things of self expression, that my mom assured me, would not look
good on me. It took me a long time to
understand, that control and
manipulation does not equal love.
You’re sitting there shaking your head, rereading the above
paragraph. Yes you read it right. My mother did rob me. Now let me explain to you why, and that’s
going to take a moment. So get another
glass of iced tea and I will tell you the story. Told you this was going to be a long, but
good story. I’ll wait. Back now.
Okay so lets continue.
My biological father, Beau, left when I was two. I have seen him once more and that’s when I
was 6. He came to pick me up for my
birthday. I was taken to a huge, what I
guess was family reunion. I was put in a
play pen with a baby. Her name was
Elisha and I was told she was my sister.
Beau took me fishing, and we dug for worms. I had a great time. I came home and I was so excited! I was jumping up and down and screaming,
“Momma I have a sister! I have a
sister!” She whirled around from washing
dishes and said, “If it didn’t come out of me, it ain’t no relation to
you.” I was devastated. For one afternoon I had family and in one
breath she took it from me, again.
Questions about Beau were met with hostility and some
disgust, both at him for who he was, and what he did, but also at me for
asking. In college I had to do an eye
color chart for biology. I had to track eye
color in the family and find out what was dominate and what was recessive. I contacted Bobby Joe, one of Beau’s
cousins. One of the few of his family
members I had been allowed to speak to all these years.
I sat with Bobby Joe and his wife for several hours one
day, looking at old pictures and trying
to put together this chart. It was to Bobby Joe that I began to ask those long
held questions. He gave me a beautiful
picture of Beau, my mom, and me. I had
only seen the cut out version before. Bobby Joe was also able to confirm that
Beau’s father was in question. So In the
end I had to guess, about the eye chart.
I worked really hard to get the C in Biology and graduate that
year.
It had taken me tremendous courage to go behind my mother’s
back and ask Bobby Joe those questions. To see pictures of my ancestors, to find out
things about who I was genetically, also felt like I was betraying both Jef, my
step father, and my mother. I did not
try again for many, many years.
There were attempts to find Beau over the years, especially
once the Internet came about. But it is
kind of hard to find the right James Smith.
There are millions of them. Finally
in the Summer of 2009 I told Jay that I wanted to contact Beau. I had hoped that speaking to him, might clear
up the blockage in my 1st and 2nd chakras. It has not, to my knowledge.
I rang Bobby Joe, who said he did not have Beau’s number,
but another cousin might. I called the
cousin, who said, “I have an old number for him. I have no idea if it will still work. I have not had contact with him in some
time.” The phone number worked. In the space of less than a half an hour I
had found my biological father. He was
living in Northern Pennsylvania. With a
new wife, who was not Sandy. Jay sat
beside me, holding the gumbo pot should my nerves fail and I needed to vomit. He told me he always knew one day I would
find him, when the time was right. We
had both been trying to find each other on Ancestry.com, but had not yet made
the connection. Questions I had had for
many years were asked, some accusations were made, some truth was told and I am
sure some lies as well. I hung up after
2 hours, and promptly vomited from all the pent up nerves. That was the first time I ever remember him
telling me he loved me.
Ilsa
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