How Did It Come To This?

Art by HaDong Song

I came back here, to my mother's nest, thinking I would be creating cherished last memories with her for me and my daughter, but it has turned into something ugly and uncomfortable. 

I listen to her say things like "so that is what went wrong with you" in regard to my sense of humor and finding things funny that she thinks are just vulgar or stupid when I tell her that my exposure to others outside of the family household influenced my sense of humor.

Fart humor...

...she doesn't get it and doesn't think it is funny. My daughter and I laugh and jest with each other a lot and, apparently, my mother finds it gross and offensive.

It is a well known fact that farts are funny!

She has no sense of humor, that has become clear, but I have this memory of someone who used to be able to laugh. Who is this woman that has replaced her? Who is this woman that thinks I am insane, disapproves of my parenting choices and can't see and cherish who I have become no matter how many times I have tried to show her. She loves poetry but never seems to acknowledge that I write beautiful poetry. I write and grow and develop but she can't grasp the value or understand the content. 

My 77-year-old mother is continually at odds with my 13-year-old daughter and often seems to pick fights with her and hold grudges. She doesn't understand her and wants to put her in a box and make her behave a certain way. My daughter refuses to be contained in a box with her mouth sewn closed and her light snuffed out. She is fierce and wild and I like that about her. My mother has repeatedly shown the opposite of support towards her grandchild with backhanded put downs and negative predictions about who she will become one day. 

I've listened to my mother call my daughter a "13-year-old snot nosed brat" and threaten to buy a plane ticket tomorrow to send her home to her father because she "wants to get rid of her". I often end up refereeing and trying to explain how inappropriate my mom is being. 

"You are 77!! You are the grown up and supposed to be the example!" I tell her in my frustration.

But on my walks with my daughter, I let her know she has room to not be so sharp and antagonistic with her grandmother. I say, "You have to try harder to curb some of your prickly side. You have to be the bigger person and choose to not escalate the fight because she isn't going to."

Sometimes during some shitty thing my mother is saying to me I exclaim internally, "Who the fuck are you?!! How did I come from your body?!!"

I thought this time spent with her would make us all closer and more attached, but it has done the opposite. Any lingering attachments I felt for her from childhood have dropped away with every time she shows me she doesn't see me or know me or value me...not in the way I know, see and value myself.  Instead she pecks at me like a vulture on a corpse. The symbolism of the vultures that always fly overhead in the skies here is not lost on me. I miss the eagles of the Pacific Northwest.

Because of this current turn of events and situation, I have been able to see so clearly where some of my hurdles have come from that I have been working on overcoming, so I am grateful for that, but I feel ready to move away from the toxicity that dwells within my mother. It was always there, I just couldn't see it before. I romanticized a lot about her when I couldn't see her everyday, I guess. 

I know that when I finally leave here, I will probably never see her again and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with leaving people behind who will never see the brightness of my soul or the enormity of my value. I'm okay with letting go of old attachments that no longer serve the highest good for the me I am becoming. 

I want my daughter to feel seen, heard, valued, supported and nurtured. I don't want her to fade into the back drop of barely existing. I want her to stay wild and free and feel like anything is possible if you believe.