My mother was a stickler for rules. They seemed to give her a sense of safety.
I cannot say that I hate rules. I certainly do not like the way those in power misuse and bend them to punish those over whom they seek to maintain control.
I do not know that my mother misused rules. This is a comforting revelation. She was fair.
She did what she said and promised, even if the consequences she warned of involved excessive force or could be considered abusive.
I am not trying to protect my mother from the part of me that she hurt, the aspects of me that will always remember and will remain in touch with the abuse she perpetrated upon me, my spirit and my body. Rather I want to understand and forgive, more the latter.
I have clearly forgiven my mother–at least I believe so–in that I am writing these words. I want what I write to focus less on my life, and more upon what my mother taught me, what I have learned even when she was not instructing and now seek to integrate as I write.
I want these writings, these blog posts that form the rudimentary beginnings of a memoir to address what I now realize was my mother’s immense pain.
If this can form an ode to what existed, but never fully and honestly revealed, and what I now hold in the wake of my mother’s absence, her death to this life and transition into another, perhaps I will have accomplished my work.
I see these posts, scripts of writings recalling memories, sketches of recollections as forming a mosaic, a quilt of my past, the foundation on which I was nurtured and given hope even while it was being ripped and shredded.
I imagine myself that when it is finished, I am done writing, taking these slivers of essays stitched together by weavings and transitions like a coat of many colors and wrapping myself in it.
Then and only then will I know my mother.
And truly understand her daughter, myself.
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