Hey, Ma -- where'd you go?

I think the most revelatory moment I ever had in terms of my mother came at the end of the reception at my first wedding.

“Aren’t you going to kiss your mother?” asked my pretty new bride.

“Why?” was my response, because I was a bit dumbfounded by her suggestion. I didn’t remember having ever kissed my mother, and the idea sort of grossed me out. Oh, I don’t mean in an oedipal way, it was just that it wasn’t an experience I had any recall of having, so why start now?

When I wrote a few weeks ago about my father, I said that I would gird my loins and write something about the materfamilias. However, in so doing, I didn’t want it to be one of those ‘poor me,’ kind of things. I hate that stuff, where people whine about something that happened in the past and how hard-done-by they were, when in current context, there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it. So, they can continue to wallow, or they can move on. I chose many years ago to move on.

That I had moved on came to me when she died (far too many quarts of Smirnoff to the bad) in 1992. When I was notified, I couldn’t really think of what to say. “Hey, that’s the way it goes.” Seemed a bit too callous. But, seriously, my problem when I heard the news was, I just did not know how I was supposed to feel. I knew I was ‘supposed’ to mourn, but I couldn’t really find the right emotions.

When my mother-in-law had died about five years earlier, I was quite devastated and certainly filled with grief. When my grandmother died when I was 14, I was blown away, and I still miss her. But, with Mom it wasn’t there.

And, you know, finally, and it has taken me a few years, I think I’ve come to grips with that. What I have done is to try to sort out who she was, and maybe why I responded in such a manner.

I’ve concluded that some women are ‘meant’ to be mothers. The adoration for their children that emanates from a lot of women I know in real time certainly shows that, as does similar adoration by some of my female blogger friends. My aforementioned mother-in-law was a walking maternal instinct. Not that she didn’t have a life of her own, because she assuredly did, but her two daughters were vital to her. My second wife was a Mom from the top of her pretty head to her toenails, and still is to her now grown only child. Mom never was. Mom should have stayed single, traveled the world, written books and painted pictures. She should have lived in a London garret or a SoHo loft, but not mired in domesticity, and especially not with children. Ultimately it was both her loss and her children's loss that she chose the conventional route.

So, she never had the Mom thing within her. Not a lot of cuddling going on, and not a great deal of discussion about how my brothers or I might be ‘feeling’ at any given time. Her sisters (my aunts) had it, and I was crazy about them. My Mom just didn’t seem to issue forth emotionally. She didn’t abuse us, and she didn’t neglect us in any material sense. We weren’t beaten and we weren’t starved. We were just there.

In my teens I developed a certain intellectual attachment to my mother. She was a smart cookie and she and I would discuss books and movies as we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee or if she slipped me the odd glass of sherry when I was in my late teens. It was obvious even then that she preferred the sherry or anything else spirituous to coffee. But, we were kind of pals, I guess. Not much more.

Ironically, she was obviously jealous of girlfriends I acquired and would always find something wrong with them. In fact, she didn’t even like most of my male friends and weirdly, she was resentful of time I would spend with them.

Eventually, her drinking got worse and worse (as alcoholism always does) and she, a former fashion-plate became sloppy and neglectful of her appearance. She and my father battled more, and she also got into contretemps with old friends, and siblings, and everybody else all of whom, wisely, drifted away, and left her alone with her vodka and her bitterness.

And then she died.

I had always wanted to do something about her drinking, and even suggested an intervention long before such things became trendy. My father wouldn’t hear of it and steadfastly refused to accept that ‘his’ wife was a lush who was destroying both her physical and mental health.

So, when she did die, there weren’t many to mourn. That’s mainly because nobody really knew her any more.

I don’t think anybody really knew her – ever. I know I didn’t. She wouldn’t let me in.