Okay, I’m cheating. I am working on my Daddy’s Little Girl entry now for two writing contests and the hubbie and I are running back and forth between “our offices” to finetune it.
This is actually something I wrote for Writing Workshop on 11/12/04 for my ninth grade students to get them writing about their own mothers.
Everyone has a mother whether they like her or not. I never liked my mother. I stopped loving her before I turned ten years old. I know it sounds crazy but she was crazy and hurtful and that made it very difficult to love her. Her unbridled hate for her children sent us running for cover a couple of times.
When I was seven years old, my mother was late in picking me up from Sunday school classes. I was really shy so instead of telling anyone she was late, I waited out front and cried. My true fear was that my mother had left me like our father had three years before. I was so terrified that I started to cry hystericaly until my mother finally showed up.
When my mother arrived, she looked at me and laughed. I told her how scared I had been. I couldn’t stop crying. To make me stop, my mother slapped me in the face more than once. At least, twice I was slapped that day.
I will never forget that day. I think it was that day that I stopped loving my mother. My sisters and I stopped celebrating Mother’s Day when our mother took to beating us on that holiday. Father’s Day made us even more uncomfortable since we were never comfortable discussing our father.
It seems that to make up for my lack of parental guidance, I have been quite fortunate to have replacements of some sort. My mother’s sister acted as both my mother and father for most of my life. My eighth grade English teacher, who I still keep in touch with, has been the closest thing I have ever had to a father. My first real boss bought me lunch every day and always gave me a shoulder to cry on when I needed one.
Lucky for me that though we can’t pick our family members, we can pick our friends.
Needless to say, the students were so shocked by my emotional piece that they worked their little butts off to write detailed missives about their mothers, mothers they had lost to disease, mothers who had forsaken them to foster care and yes, even mothers who they worshipped and were ever grateful for each day.
Memoirs of a Jewminicana 