Broken and Whole

She calls me as I am leaving the school parking lot. I’m leaving the carpool line where I’ve dropped off Annabelle and Elijah at school, and Lisabeth and I are headed home. She wants to know if I will meet her for breakfast. I haven’t slept much the night before but I agree. She asks me where I’d like to go hoping to please, but I am too tired to make a decision and hope that she will just decide for me. She does, and we meet her at a quaint Birmingham bakery, which on this particular morning is not crowded. Lisabeth gets pancakes, and because Lisabeth also wants eggs, I order eggs, bacon, biscuit, and grits. My mom orders the same, with her eggs sunny side up, the only difference from mine scrambled.

She tells me about hosting bunco, and I listen to the details of women too cold and some too hot, and some who load their plates tall with leftovers to carry home. I sit quietly as I almost always do. Ours is a complicated relationship – this woman who has known me longer than anyone on the earth, who carried me in her womb.

I rarely write openly about family including my children, because I tend to hold these relationships close to my heart, including the hurts and joys. I don’t mind being vulnerable about me, but I don’t want to share the stories of those close to me who did not choose for me to talk about them. So writing about this relationship is not easy.

Painting a picture of my mom through my eyes – I am always a child listening to my mom gripe about dad or asking me for advice. Some of my most broken times have come as a result of this relationship, so I don’t trust myself to tell you the truth as I see it or to even know what the truth is.

On this particular breakfast meeting, the man who delivers our food, Marcus, stops when he sees mom and gives her a hug.

He says, “Oh my God, do you know who this is?” asking me.

I say, “Yes, she is my mom!”

He says, “She is so special. She is so special. I remember her being so sweet to me.” He goes on to say that he has not seen her for 6 months or so. I was there for the meeting he referenced, but he does not remember me.

I just smile and nod. I get quieter than I already am, and if my mom notices, she does not acknowledge it. I am thoughtful about the scene. I wish that I could cast off all of the hurts and memories and hopes and dreams and fill all of the cracked places in our relationship with something that would make us whole again, that would give me back the rose-colored glasses because my mom is sweet, kind, and good. Yet, I don’t know if she really knows me, and I long for her to really know the depths of me.

I think about how I want her to approve of me or to say some sort of word of encouragement. As sweet as she is, she doesn’t give me the approval I crave. Thinking that she is just not as advanced enough in technology to read my blog, I subscribed her to it last year, but even then, she just opened and deleted the emails. I was hoping at least she read, but when I started talking to her about a post one time, she said, “I haven’t read it,” and it was in the same conversation she mentioned how she used to swipe to delete, but now she has to open to delete an email, so then I knew.

We finish our food. We stay and linger, and I tell a story about a funny meeting I had, and then I get my daughter to tell stories of school. My daughter goes and sits in my mom’s lap. It is rare for my mom to listen to my kid’s stories with me present, but my daughter and my mom have a relationship like I had with my granny. Lisabeth absolutely adores her nana, and my mom craves the attention my daughter gives her. I tell her that Lisabeth has gotten in trouble for hugging and kissing in school – that she came home saying that the teacher said no touching in school. My Lisabeth is an abnormally loving and touchy feely little girl. She says “I love you” multiples times a day, and there is not a day that goes by in which she does not initiate hugs and kisses with me. My mom says, “She is like me. Loving and caring like Marcus said.”

I just smile and nod softly. She wants my approval or to hear me voice something about what Marcus did, but I am only quiet. I am left wondering – “Am I sweet?” I am certainly not touchy-feely, and perhaps I seem cold and distant and wrapped up in my thoughts, because I usually am.

We leave, and as we drive off in the same direction before I turn off, and I think, “We are so cracked and broken,” and everyday I wonder if this is the day we will be made whole.

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Coming next week, a 31 day series called, “Image Reflections: a 31 day series asking questions of being.” Join me! I hope to have the outline up soon.