a mother's love reflected

it's amazing to me how fuzzy everything gets when i try to look back on the past. memory no longer has a bright eye but a faded smile, or is it a grimace, a wince, a sober silence locked away while i swallow the key and peer beyond a ship over a foggy ocean?

i'm writing stories of my childhood in working on my next book. stories of my mother's desperate tries to be a good parent, of my desperate tries to be a good daughter, and stories of failing miserably, both her and i. but we were only human, what else could we expect?

i look back and see a mother who was trying so hard to be liked, to be loved, and by people who didn't know how to like or love anything or anyone that wasn't money in the bank, a sly, stiff drink, or another man who knew how to handle his power. she wanted to be loved by people who tried to love, but were just no good at it, so i think they stopped trying, only my mother never seemed to notice. this is the problem with always seeing the good in people.

we hold these truths to be self-evident, but we shield our eyes from the light of that truth and look away when it's too hard to bear. so many times i see a mother who could have changed everything, and refused to try until it was too late, and that last attempt did, in fact, change everything.

but i can't imagine a life that was changed by an action that never happened, a life that never was. i used to dream of a place where my mother was still alive, where she cared more about me than she did about being loved by people who would never love her, where she cared more about herself than being wrong. but i know this place does not exist, and so i stay in the world i've created, here in the now, the present, the life of love and truth and what's real, and right here in front of me.

love never dies. only people do. i love my mother even more fiercely now than i ever have before. in part because i love my self more fiercely now than i ever have before. i recognize that her actions did not reflect her love for me, only her lack of love for her self. i don't pity her, i learn from her, and i love her. as i always have, as i always will.