Thursday, April 29, 2010

My Two Moms

From the time I was around 12 to about 14, I lived in eight different homes.  I had a reputation for being a difficult child.  Yeah.  I was.  My mother was schizophrenic and an undiagnosed one at that.  Imagine waking up with your MOM standing over you with a knife saying the voices are telling her to kill you.  That’d mess up anybody.

So, I was lucky, and ended up in a foster home when I was 14, and stayed there until graduation.  They loved me and even though I wasn’t ‘legally’ adopted, I was/am theirs.  For a long time, I avoided my mother.  I was ashamed and scared of her.  I didn’t want to be associated with the crazy lady.

I regret that now, because she is gone, and I can’t change anything from the past.  Once the doctors figured out her problems, they put her on medication.  It didn’t always make her stable, and she had so many medical problems that makes me wonder if the cure was worse than the disease sometimes.

The last few years of Mom’s life, I lived with her and my brother.  I am grateful that I had the opportunity to be there for her.  We settled our differences for the most part, and I helped her, I would like to think. 

They say that hindsight is 20/20.  Perhaps.  But I tend to not always remember the crappy stuff.  I remember the good stuff.  The stuff that made her mom.  Like when I was a kid, we would dance to the Stray Cats.  Or her waking me up when Madonna or Michael Jackson came on the TV.  Always making sure I had blank tapes so I could record songs off the radio because we couldn’t afford to buy the actual music.  Mom would cook chili for my birthday.  Best chili EVER.  Mom letting me dye her hair green, just because.  Letting me wear her clothes because they were cooler.  Letting me borrow her long earrings. 

I think my favorite memory of my mother is right before she got REALLY bad off.  Sixth grade.  I had to do a report on a country, and I chose France.  My mother made certain I had French food.  Anything that she could find, bleu cheese, french bread, french water (Perrier, I think).  We didn’t have money, but mom came up with it so I could have a good time with my presentation. 

My mother may not have always been the ‘best’, but she tried.  I was fortunate to get a second chance with her, and I was there when she passed.  I am fortunate to have a foster family that loves me as their own and a foster mother who was there with me when my birth mother breathed her last breath. 

So thanks.  To both of my mothers.  A person could only be so lucky to have two moms who love them unconditionally.  

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