Tag Archives for Relationships

Gratitude and Creativity: Light Up With Happiness

This past week was a good one – all things considered – with the news of a surgery date making it even better. What made it good to start? Last Tuesday, I went to stay at the home of my adoptive Aunt C. It’s the first time since I was about twelve that I’ve spent any extended time with her, but it felt like no time had elapsed. It’s not that I haven’t seen her at the odd holiday dinner or picnic over the years where I’ve received tight, warm hugs overflowing with affection that showed how genuinely she cares for me, but being in her house and having her spoil me for a few days was nice.

When I was a little girl, I used to spend weekends at Aunt C’s house. Sometimes the excitement of the weekend started early. I would get to take the subway by myself to meet her when she finished work, at a designated place, in the central train station downtown. Then we would take the train out to her house in a suburb outside the city. At her house, it would just be the two of us. She would make me my favourite meals and desserts I loved. Aunt C would take me to movies; we would go shopping; or we would just hang out around the house. On top of that, she would treat me to little presents that would light me up with happiness. My time with her was always so happy – and because I believed she was perfect – I once asked her to adopt me.

Light Up With Happiness - Shadow

Light Up With Happiness

I felt some of that happiness this past week, as she showered me with attention, care, and concern for my poor health. There was also a lot of laughter. So much laughter, that at times my pain increased, but I didn’t mind because it was good to laugh with her. We spent some time talking in detail about things that have happened in both our lives that it wasn’t always possible to talk about with crowds of people around at family events. At one point, I questioned myself about why I never made more of an effort to keep Aunt C close in my life, but I know the answer is my mother and the ever-present fear I had about betraying or hurting her. In some ways, it was a get to know you again week, and in others, we just picked up from where we left off years ago.

It won’t be too long until my next visit with Aunt C. Apart from wanting to keep our renewed connection strong; she offered to take care of me after my surgery. I already have plans in place for my immediate aftercare, but I’m grateful for her offer and I will go to stay with her at some point during my recovery. I’m also grateful for the chance to reclaim and rebuild a relationship that was important in shaping my understanding of motherly love. Although, most of all, I’m grateful I’m in a place, emotionally, where I can accept the love she offers to me.

 

Lee Ann Womack – I Hope You Dance

I’m Not Lucky… I Am Blessed

I spoke to two important men in my life yesterday. Each of them is important for a different reason, but I love them both dearly.

The first is an old teacher of mine from junior high school. I know that seems strange. Why am I still in contact with someone who taught me geography when I was thirteen years old? I’m still in touch with him because he is a genuinely good person. When I was thirteen, he treated me, and a group of my friends, with respect. He always spoke to us as if we were human beings with brains in our heads. He listened to us. He challenged us. Most importantly, he taught us the value of working hard and he made us each feel special.

He called me yesterday because he needed his spirits lifted. He is in his early seventies and he has multiple health issues. Recently, his wife had a bad fall and was hospitalized. Her injury means that she won’t be able to move back into their home. That’s not good news for either of them. He’s not well enough to live alone and he doesn’t know if it’s possible for both of them to get placement in the same nursing or retirement home. He’s very sad and worried about that. I’m very sad and worried for him.

To take his mind off his troubles he called to see how I’m doing. He had it in mind that I already had my big surgery. When I explained the complicated path I’ve been on, he responded with something I didn’t expect. He wanted to know how I was managing to stay so positive with everything that’s been going on over the past few years. I answered without hesitation, “I have no choice”. If I weren’t positive, I would fall apart. If I weren’t positive, who would he be able to call to have a good laugh with? We did laugh. By the time we hung up I got him to promise to call me more often to let me know how he’s doing and to try to eat more than he is so he can keep his strength up to go for the daily walks he loves. He made me promise to call him more often so he knows that I’m thinking about him. That was an easy promise to make. I called him this afternoon to make sure he ate something today and went for his walk. Then we found a few sad things in both our lives to mock and laugh about. We ended our conversation as we usually do with ‘I love yous’.

The second of the important men who called me is an adoptive uncle. He’s been part of my life on and off since I was about 10. He’s one of the people I’ve felt guilty about having in my life because of how my mother’s relationship with his brother ended – whom, by the way, I still consider my stepfather. My uncle called to see how I am. He was very apologetic because it’s been about a week since we last spoke, and he felt the conversation had been too short. He also feels that he hasn’t been supporting me enough. I had to stop him from believing that. I told him how lucky I feel for him and all the other people I have – including my growing online community – in my life who show me love. He told me that I’m wrong. He said that luck has nothing to do with the love I have in my life. He said that the love I have in my life is a blessing.

I had to agree with him. I do feel blessed. I am blessed because he never gave up on having me in his life even though I am not his brother’s biological child. He was one of the first in his family to come to my aid when he learned about my illness. He has demonstrated that he is willing to drop whatever he’s doing at any time to help me. He is my family more strongly than many of whom I’m related to by blood.

These two important men in my life are blessings. Just receiving phone calls from them makes me feel loved. Those phone calls have been added to the huge pile of blessings I feel building in and around me.

 

Avril Lavigne – Keep Holding On

My Mommy Dearest Strikes Again

I’ve written in the past about having a ‘complicated family’. However, upon reflection I’m thinking I may have made an incredible understatement. It’s the only conclusion that makes sense after speaking to my sister for the first time in five years last week; then late last night receiving a 19-word text message from my mother after hearing nothing from her for four months. For four months, it was complete radio silence. She did not answer the calls I placed to her cell phone or landline. She did not respond to my voicemail or text messages.

Text From My Mother

Text From My Mother

Because of her silence, I spent the past four months performing mental gymnastics trying to figure out what I may have said or done to offend her this time. I say ‘this time’ because our rocky mother-daughter relationship is peppered with endless examples of me conceding to her allegations: I was disrespectful to her, I was responsible for starting an argument, I chose my father instead of her when I was 12, or I somehow wrongly accused her of being a bad parent when I was a child. It felt and I had hoped – after a long absence from each other’s lives – that this time it would be different.

I have lost sleep wondering why at this time in my life when I need all the support I can get; my mother is incapable of offering me even the smallest comfort of being a voice on the other end of the phone. But I am wrong to have this or any other expectation of her. After all, we’ve never been close. In the strictest of terms, we never bonded. In fact, I once calculated how many years of my life I lived under the same roof with my mother. The number is somewhere in the range of seven years. I’m well into mid-life now so that’s a rather small amount of time for me to have spent sharing day-to-day life with my mother. Nonetheless, her silence caused many childhood insecurities and memories of experiences lived during that time to surface.

I was not a child that she wanted and she once told me so, but showed me that without words endless times. The seven years that I spent with her were full of abuse (physical and emotional) and neglect. She was quick to raise her hand or any object within reach to mete out what she felt was necessary discipline. Today when I look at my body, I can still see reminders of her discipline in the scars created by some of those objects. She rarely said anything to me that wasn’t angry or laden with words that pierced the flesh my small frame and clung to me like the smell of days-old mackerel on a fishmonger – I can still feel their impact. And she withheld affection and kindness as if she knew that those things, coming from her, would have made me too strong and confident for her withering glances and cutting tongue to dismantle me in an instant. Even today, I desperately long for her to stroke my face although I have no memory of such a thing ever occurring before, and I don’t know if she is capable of such an outward display of feeling toward me.

I say all this because for four months I have lost sleep and tortured my mind asking what, why or how I did whatever I did this time to deserve being shut out. In between the self-interrogations, I resolved not to care about the reason, knowing deep down that I do. She is after all my mother. More relevantly, she still holds the power to wound me. She’s skilled at creating illusions of closeness by briefly pulling me into her life then cutting me loose to fall apart. Now, when I have almost rebuilt myself and reclaimed the reality of what we are not to each other, with as little as 19 words sent to me by text message she makes me feel like a powerless child again.

 

Suzanne Vega – Luka