I’m conflicted, and I need to vent.
Quick backstory:
My mother left my father when I was young – two or three years old I think. The circumstances were less than ideal; she and my father met when he was playing band jobs as a trumpet player and she was a burlesque dancer at a venue he played regular gigs at. Though they married and had me, marred life didn’t agree with her; she found that she didn’t like being tied down and liked being tied to a baby even less. She left, leaving my father with a mountain of debt, which he could only afford to pay off over the course of a few years by having me stay with friends of his and paying them a monthly stipend for my care.
She remained a part of my life for years afterward, picking me up to visit her about once a year or so. Early in that mode of the relationship she was frequently with different men living in different places, so I never really knew where I was going to be heading when she picked me up. She eventually seemed to settle down with this ignorant lout of a man who liked his drink. Having done so she eventually fell into his world and began to drink herself. I won’t say either of them were alcoholics, but they ultimately seemed to find some kind of solace in the spirits. My mother was weird when she was drunk. The lout was aggressive, though rarely violent, which was some sort of comfort I suppose.
I didn’t like him, but whatever. It was my mother’s choice. To be perfectly honest she was so little a part of my life growing up that there was no real familial sense about my yearly visits with her, and to be honest I could have taken or left them. I suppose I enjoyed them when I was young but as I grew into a teen I came to merely tolerate them to make her happy.
One year, when I was 15 I think, I visited her for the last time. It wasn’t anything she discussed with me or even made mention of. She simply stopped arranging visits. I can’t say I missed them – or her, really. My dad was the one that raised me. She was just an occasional figure in my life who was making token gestures to maintain some sort of contact, and when she shacked up with the lout my interest in those visits waned even further, so when they stopped completely it really didn’t make no never mind to me.
So I spent the rest of my life trying to make something of myself (and hell, I’m still trying, though succeeding much better than I have in years past). It’s been over 20 years since I last spoke to her. The last time I heard anything about her was just after the turn of the century. My maternal grandmother – her mother – was put up in a group retirement home having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At this point she was still as well and fit as could be for an octogenarian; the disease had yet to start consuming her mind. My mother – presumably while drunk – sent her a rather nasty letter telling her what a bad mother she was and spelling out her displeasure in several ways.
It was totally out of the blue and completely uncalled-for, especially given her mother’s situation. As much as I could really care less about what my mother was doing – I rarely even thought about her over the years – I was rather flabbergasted that she would have the unmitigated gall to do such a thing. Having visited my grandmother frequently over the years, I can safely say that I had a far better relationship with her than my own mother, and frankly both her and my grandfather were the nicest, kindest people you’d ever want to me. I was at a complete loss to explain my mother’s reprehensible actions.
If I hadn’t completely written my mother out of my life before, that letter tore it. I wanted nothing more to do with her. My mother’s sister – my aunt – apologized on her behalf for her behaviour, but that hardly excused it. My aunt was one of the nicest people, too – clearly her mother’s daughter, unlike my mother.
Tonight, my wife directed my attention to a message sent to me on Facebook. I almost never use my Facebook account, so I’d never have thought to check myself. I had a private message. It was from my mother. To illustrate the level of estrangement involved here, it literally took me a few moments to even recognize the name. I actually had to work out why that name seemed so familiar to me.
To be fair, she was affecting a joint last name; she and my father never officially divorced, so she can’t remarry, but she hyphenated her last name after her maiden name, and I didn’t recognize this new name. Apparently she ditched the lout and was now with someone else. Well, good for her I guess. This new appendage on her last name had thrown me a bit – but I still struggled for a moment with the rest of it, too.
She sent me the message from a public library, indicating that she didn’t have a computer of her own. I’ve no idea where she learned to use one. Nevertheless, she sent a message, using my full name (few people know my middle names) and her hyphenated last name – even fewer people know her maiden name. Or her first name for that matter. I just never really talked to her, and still referred to her as “my mother” if ever I did. It looked pretty legit.
She says she’s been searching for me for years and has apparently talked to other people who share my first and last name but turned out not to be me. She wished me a merry Christmas, told me she loves me, and wants me to write.
I honestly don’t know what to do. To be honest I don’t really want her to become an active part of my life; she never was before, and I see little point in it now. I’m still simmering over that nasty letter, but beyond that I just don’t really care all that much. She’s my mother, but for all the time she spent in my life, that’s turned out simply to be a matter of biology. She wasn’t a bad mother, though she was hardly a good one, either. She was mostly just an absent one who seemed to maintain contact with me largely because she felt like it was what she was supposed to do.
I could write her and generally keep it civil and friendly but standoffish, but I don’t really know what to say. I keep myself pretty busy these days, so it’s not like I have a lot of room for her in my life, and once again, my level of interest in such an endeavour is pretty much flat.
And what would I write? “Hi, Mom. Yeah, it’s me. I’m all grown up now. Worked lots of jobs, currently have a decent job, a wife, working lots extra-curricular hours to write a game for the iPhone, maintain a couple of blogs, and have three cats. Things good with you? That’s nice. Well, see ya.”
On the other hand I don’t want to be rude and just ignore it. So … I’m just at a loss here.
Crud.
