It’s not easy admitting envy of your best friend’s children.
She was the same age that I am now when we met. She terrified me; more accurately, I was wide-eyed in intimidated admiration because she so clearly had it all together on every front. Over the thirty months during which F and I worked in the same building we bonded over the love of perambulation as exercise, the practicality of carpooling and the ability to integrate the word “plethora” into everyday conversation.
At twenty years old and with no deeper understanding of abuse than a slug has of its own salting, sudden painful stabs of envy for F’s children even then caught me by surprise. We visited one day in her kitchen as she marshaled her daughters through homework (their enthusiasm was tepid at best) and the preparation of dinner (spaghetti, from a box), unable to understand what it was that made the very atmosphere in her house different from my own but knowing that I craved it.
I observed from a distance as she raised children alone while working full time and studying for a terminal degree. Later I saw her fall in love with and marry a man raising his own large family completely alone. It was hardly a fairy tale. Daughters from two families integrating themselves into one house (and one small-town high school) proved almost fatally difficult; there were times when F thought the teen-aged fractiousness had damaged relationships to the point they’d never heal. And yet over and over again I watched F do something I never saw in my own family: No matter what hare-brained decisions her children made (and oh there were a few), no matter what trouble they got themselves into, I don’t think she ever stopped loving them. And while they surely felt from time to time F’s fury, they never wondered if she loved them. Never.
They’re all adults now, all happily enjoying careers and children; and like everyone who knew no life before cell phones and CDs, they are all on Facebook. More specifically, they are all on my Facebook. I watch the messages fly back and forth between F and her children, the sisters who once would have been happy to rip each others hair out. I love you, they tell each other. So thankful for my family, they write, followed by tiny heart symbols and multiple clicks of the “like” button. Call me tonight, please; I need some advice. Will you watch the kids this Saturday? Mom, can you bring me those pants? We miss you, they say to the one recently relocated out of state. Only ten more days ’til you come home!
No one counts the days until I come home.
I write this on a morning when simultaneous demands from a failing parent and a child embroiled in a work-related crisis prompted a late-night phone call from F. She couldn’t come visit me today, she said, already on her way in one direction after having dispatched another child to aid her sister. Can I help, I asked, but they’ve got it all covered. Their family is complete. They need no more hangers-on. As much as I might wish that F was mother as well as friend and mentor to me, that’s just not the way it is.
I can learn to mother well, but the chance for me to be mothered well has long since passed. This is the bitter envy made even less palatable 500-odd words later.
So bittersweet and beautiful at the same time. I’m at a loss for words.
Some of us get born into the ‘right’ families, some into the easy families and some of us make our own families. It seems that being mothered is not something that we ever stop wanting (even after our own biological parents are long gone).
I watched my own mother go through abuse; the love and approval she never got from her parents clearly haunted her. But we had many more accepting older friends in our lives who thought my mom was the bees knees. I noticed a change in her when she started living for her own approval rather than my grandparents. At a certain point she quit caring what her parents thought and started worrying more about what she thought of herself and what her new ‘family’ thought.
I can believe that there is something for the future besides bitter envy because there are people in the world who, granted did not birth or raise you, but can and do love you just for who you are.
I want to hug you. I want to hug the woman that wrote this post. I want to hug the 20-year-old woman sitting in that kitchen wondering why this feeling was missing from her own family. But most of all, I want to hug the little girl that didn’t feel loved, that didn’t have the kind of mother that every child deserves to have, that was abused by the people that are supposed to protect her from all of the things that they perpetrated towards her.
I think that we accept the people into our life that we need at that time. You met F at a time when you needed her. You needed to learn something from her; something about yourself, something about your upbringing, and something about the kind of mother that you wanted to be.
Envy is a natural feeling. You can envy her children and still be happy that they were lucky enough to have the kind of mother that every child should. You can be the best mother that you can be to your kids, and give them what you never had. I’m so sorry that you missed out on something so essential, but I’m glad that you were able to find people to demonstrate the way that parents should act, so that you are able to break that cycle of abuse with your kids.
I know this wasn’t an easy post to write. I’m sending lots of hugs your way, to you, that 20-year-old girl in that kitchen, and to that little girl that’s still inside you somewhere and never felt the motherly love that she so needed and deserved. <3
Thanks Britni. You are pretty darn smart. Has anyone ever told you that? :)
I know. I know, I know, I know… Sometimes when things get really hard I just wish… You know.
I tell myself that even despite everything I’m a wonderful, really good mother to my own children. I tell myself they’ll never have to feel this way, unmothered. It usually helps.
xoxoxo
I hear you C. Sometimes I’m even envious of my own kids. Sad, eh?
I’m sorry, sweetie. You deserved better. ((hugs))
I envy your words, their haunting rhythm and deep, clear, cold stillness. The events of our lives and choices we make along the way shape and mold us. You’ve weathered your storms well. That doesn’t make the pain any less, but sometimes we need to rejoice in survival. Hugs, Gerry
This brought tears to my eyes. I can relate in so many ways. Thank you!
): I’d seriously hug you right now if I could. (I give awesome hugs, by the way, just ask my friends.)
The family (friends included)you create is always better than the family you are born into. At least it is in my case.