My mother died a little less than ten years ago, six months after she got me married off. If the last sentence left you wondering, my mother always despaired of me ever marrying because, in my father's words, "[I] ... believed in unicorns". Dad's statement exaggerated the case, but I did (and still do to some extent) feel more comfortable in fantasy than in real life.
I believe I got my love of unicorns honestly. My mother decorated the house every Christmas until it resembled a Mary Engelbreit print. She possessed a wardrobe that she collected to wear to the perfect setting, someday, creating the perfect scenario in her mind (some of those clothes still had tags on them when she died.) She created -- from sketches of pin-ups while she spoke on the phone to tantalizing dishes for dinner to embroidery projects that owed more to poster art than they did fuzzy cross-stitches of kittens.
Mom created personas -- the bold, outrageous woman who hung out in the bar after work; the confident employee who got promoted past her comfort level at the Census Bureau; the slightly hassled mother who nonetheless kept up a witty conversation with my sister's classmates. Sometimes, however, my mother would show me who she really was: a bewildered woman who never knew if people around her loved her or loved her personas -- her chosen, not real, selves.
My mother couldn't give me what I needed, because she couldn't give it to herself. She could not give me acceptance of who I was, the student the teachers praised to the point of embarassment; the moody teen who fell in love (unrequited) again and again; the child who looked in the mirror and saw only her own obesity. I grew up with the sense of not-okayness that my mother did.
In the end, illness stripped my mother of all her personas -- she grew weak and gaunt. She fell to the ground when trying to walk. She could not see well. The medication caused occasional hallucinations and uncensored commentary. But in dying, she became herself, and she was magnificent. She planned Christmas from a hospital bed (she would not make it) and picked out the jewelry she would wear. She requested (almost demanded) that a priest apologize for the emotional abuse the Church had committed. And her last words to me were: "Go out and have some fun."
Happy Mother's Day, Patricia Louise (Hollenbeck) Leach.
This is beautiful. She sounds like she was a phenomenal woman. Despite how annoying glitter can be, the sparkle can be almost magical when we allow it to transport us into fantasy. Sounds like you both sparkled in your own unique ways. Its only the light that made the two of you sparkle so differently. You both are magical.
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