I have very few early memories of my mother. It's not that she wasn't around or that she wasn't attentive when I was a small child. Actually, it was quite the opposite. She was a very nurturing mother. She was always at home with us kids until she finished her degree and started teaching. She cooked all of our meals from scratch. Birthday parties included fresh cakes and pies. She tended a garden throughout the year, where I would spend hours upon hours, picking and eating peas and tomatoes off of vines. The problem is that I don't have much existing memory of these times and most most of the things I can tell you now are either stories I've recited so many times, I've no idea if they are actually accounts from my own memory, or if they are stories handed down to me from friends and relatives. Memories are strange things to begin with, but I lost most of mine during my parents' divorced, when I discovered that so many of the things that I thought were true were only stories my mom had planted in my memory to spite my father and win in the courts.
More recently, I have very few positive memories of Mom. It's hard to create positive encounters with someone so unpredictable. When we're together for any length of time, we fight and argue. Frequently, one of us will leave in tears. The problem is that we both care so much and her mental illness simply doesn't allow us to communicate in any sort of healthy manner. I've learned to work around this over the years, but even the lightest conversation can still turn ugly very quickly.
There was a time, though, when I was truly at my lowest and she was the only one who stood beside me.
I was 20 years old and freshly separated from my ex-husband, Frank. I had left a very abusive marriage in a hurry and all I had to my name were a few articles of clothing and my car, which had only been purchased a few months earlier and I was making payments on. I had been homeless, sleeping in my car, eating off of $1 menus, and showering anywhere a friend would let me. I had a full-time retail job, but in the confusion of abandoning my marriage, my finances were a mess and many bills went ignored. I was in survival mode and I didn't have the first clue as to how I was going to put the pieces of my life back together. Just when I thought I had hit rock bottom and things appeared to be looking up (a friend and I had rented an apartment and I was negotiating retrieving the rest of my possessions from Frank), my car was repossessed and I was fired from my job. Without means of transportation in a large city that doesn't believe in reliable public transit to search for another job and no job to get my car back from the bank, I was facing eviction. I went to the DES office, only to be turned away for food stamps, despite my need. I was completely broke, and exhausted, and hungry, and depressed. I hawked the only possessions of value I had, my wedding dress and wedding ring, and sat there looking at the $80 it brought me with utter despair.
The next day I called Mom. In the months that followed the day I left Frank, she was the only one who believed everything I told her about the abuse and the pain. She didn't have any way of empathizing, of course, but just the fact that she didn't require any proof of my need to leave was enough. I told her how bad everything had become. I knew she didn't have much, but maybe she could help me figure out how to get on my feet again. We met over the course of the next few days. It was an excruciatingly humiliating time for me. She wanted me to account for every cent I spent and I had to show her all my outstanding bills, the eviction notice, and my bank statements. She insisted I must have something else I could sell, something that could pay the rent, but there was nothing and the more times I had to go back over my finances and show her how little I was (net) worth, the more I just wished for death to take me and end my suffering.
Within a week, she was convinced of just how bad off I was and she called me to set up a Federal Union transfer of $1200 to the bank that owned my car, so that I could get it back before auction and try to stay afloat. In that time, my friend and I cleared out of the apartment, accepting the eviction, and moved into the living room of some mutual friends of ours who had recently bought a house. I have no doubt that $1200 saved my life. I honestly don't know where or how she came up with the money and I will never ask, but it was her one time gift to me that got me out of the gutter and there isn't anything in the world I could give to her that would even scratch the surface of the gratitude I feel for her for that.
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