What makes A Mother

I got into a bit of a rant yesterday while Robert and I drove to town to restock our fridge with yummy vegetables and fruit. It all started with Robert asking me about my weekly chat with Jen, the Highlight of my week, I will admit.

I know what you were thinking...Oh here she goes again....poor Robert..the man is so abused... (and you'd be right he is abused... in a way...because he is forced to sit here and listen to me go on and on about how I wish I could experience more in my life and how much I hate doctors and what have you...and there is no where for him to go...oh he can delay the inevitable by going outside but sooner or later he has to come back in...and I'm usually waiting...)  Actually that's not completely true...I do make a concerted effort to not harp on him all the time..even when I am feeling overly frustrated...that's what this blog is for...it's suppose to be benign venting...in my first marriage, before I had a computer...I used to bite my tongue and split wood...and boy did we have a lot of fire wood...I mean a LOT....

Anyway, I digress.... so we were driving into town...and he had reminded me about something I had thought of last fall...and have been ruminating on ever since...the topic of crappy mothers... I know I have talked about this subject before...but this is coming from a different angle...this is from the perspective of being one of the crappy mothers... because while I was not a "Norman Bates" kind of mother... I certainly could have done better...but a lady whom I respect very much, Mia Angelo, once said... "As a mother, you did what you knew best to do...and while not perfect...when you knew better, you did better"

So I did the best I could with the knowledge any 18 yr old could have of raising a baby without any support circle around her ( a husband who was more interested in getting his work done that helping with the baby).
And let's face it I never had the greatest role model to mold myself after as far as mother hood went, and that brings me back to my subject.

I don't think being a kind nurturing mother is genetic, I mean it's not something we are born knowing...I think it is learned behavior, imprinted on us at birth by the experience we are exposed to in our very own mothers...be she good or bad or in between. My question is, does that experience then translate itself into how we interact with out offspring... I think it does...well actually I know it does.  

What I am about to say is not meant to offend anyone it is just something that I have been thinking about for a long time and am finally putting down in words.

I do not have a memory in my head of ever being spontaneously hugged or cuddled by either of my parents...I do remember once, my father meeting at the airport in Powell River and I was shocked to see how much weight he had lost and how ill he appeared to me...and I became emotional...he hugged me and kissed the top of my head, he said he loved me and had missed me (it had been a few years since I seen him last)  but my mom, well I'm not saying it never happened, I just don't have any memory of it...so it couldn't have happened very often..if ever... My parents just weren't made that way...and why should they have been, when now as an adult I have learned by asking distant family members what they know about my Dad and Mom when they were children, a sad story emerged for both... My Dad... whose father was a mildly abusive womanizer, and his mother was a shy, wallflower type young woman with a heart defect from birth, had a fairly volatile marriage. My grandfather flirted and cheated on my grandmother and she was very jealous...and surrounded with her quite large French Canadian family, who were apparently very vocal in their dislike of her husband, there just never seemed to be peace in the home...When my father was two and half, his mother was found lying on the floor dead, he was sitting beside her crying and his father was no where to be found...he disappeared and was never heard from again...the children were shifted from family member to family member and eventually divided up...the older boy Leo going to  live with their mothers parents, who ran a small hospital in the town of Turner Valley...and thought a six year old slightly easier to look after... Ethel his sister was taken in by their mothers sister who had four boys of her own but no daughter...but no one wanted a two year old still in diapers who cried all the time so his fathers family took him and he spent years being moved from one home to the other...he started that life with his grandparents but his grandmother died after only ten months of his mothers death, and his grandfather was devastated...so Dad was sent to live with his fathers sister pearl...but she had six kids of her own...and things were getting tough just before the 1930's.. so some of the other aunts and uncles took him in for a few months at a time... until he was old enough and ran away..when he learned his brother Leo had joined the army..he lied about his age and joined as well... so how could he learned how to be a loving father with that experience as his model....and for that matter respect for women...the only experience he had with love was when it got hard, you walked away...or quit...

My mother, grew up in a family where the girls were basically ignored until they reached an age where they could be of help in the home.  Her mother was a strict disciplinarian, and her father was the kind, Daddy who winked at his kids behind his wife's back when she was scolding them and bought them candy... but he escaped every day to work at Dominion steel and had been having a long term relationship with one of the women working in the office there...His wife was horribly jealous and lots of disputes took place over his infidelity. My mothers mother had one great accomplishment in her life and that was her son David...she lavished, it seemed, all her love and attention on him and the four girls, while not abused were definitely not afforded the same attention. I learned this, not from my mother, who rarely spoke about her mother...but from her older sister Bessie...and her brother David and his wife...(who by the way grandmother hated for not being good enough for her son and taking him away from her)  Uncle David even confronted his father about his affair...and it was not denied...and he ended it not long after that. That woman had a son, but it was never determined whether it was Grandfather's or not...and no one pursued it. So while my mother's mother was not a cuddly or lavisher of affection it is easy to understand why...when I delved a bit deeper I discovered that she herself had been raised, along with a sister, by their father, after her mother when she was only 1 month old. The girls father was a master boilermaker by trade and spent long hours at the factory, leaving the care of his infant daughters to hired care givers living in the same tenement building with children of their own... so they never learned love and coddling from their mother, the went on to have children to whom they did not lavish affection either and my mother did the same to her children... so I see a cycle...a very unfortunate one at that... because how can you show love ...and nourish when you have never experience love or nourishment from your own mother...you certainly don't learn encouragement, to show affection or the simple human contact with someone who loves you because you are a part of them, from a neighbour lady with a half dozen kids to look after all day.. or a mother who has no time to cherish her daughters because she is obsessed with making her only son someone her husband could be proud, with her then becoming deserving of her husband love and undivided attention... Her son was her one great accomplishment in life...Once her husband ended his affair she became calmer...and appreciated her grand children very much, but the damage was done by then...my mother was the homely little middle child..with the bad complexion and the weak bladder..who was neither a genius or dull witted...but somehow easily overlooked... and those are not my words...but her brothers, who in spite of being spoiled rotten as a youth...was a wonderful caring man with an easy smile and love enough for all his family.

So if you don't grow up feeling loved or cherished, what becomes of you, and how do you raise children of your own....

I have, over the years determined that there are many forms love can take...and while some mothers are not capable for what ever reason of showing love physically... they show it in other ways...  By cooking your favorite dinner, collecting all year long things that she knows you like so she can include them in a gift box at Christmas... or surprising you by having every photograph of you she has ever been sent in an album and arranged with thoughtful care...

She might have made bad choices in her life, she might have made some serious irreparable mistakes, but don't ever doubt that she loves you....

She loves you, she doesn't know how to show it....