#Hindsight

This entry probably won't be very funny. Just more like a brain dump. Fear not...I have some solid entries started about babies, poop and online dating. 

ATTENTION: I just finished this entry and it gets pretty dark.  Proceed with caution. Sorry!!

Yesterday was the 19th anniversary of my mothers death.  Don't worry, this isn't going to be a sappy "pity me" entry at all.  Just had me thinking a lot about my childhood. 1998. I was sixteen. I thought hated her, as most sixteen year old girls think of their mothers. I was a child that thought I knew it all.  She was a fucking badass though. Came to this country in 1961 when she was also just sixteen years old. Coming from Cuba and not speaking English, she still managed to go to school, learn English and help her parents pay their rent by working at night. I lived in the home that I spent the majority of my life in. Went to an elite all girls preparatory high school.  Had a massive social life including a monthly rotation of boyfriends. Life was real tough for me. 🙄 (if you don't recognize my sarcasm in that last line, unfollow this blog immediately.) All she ever wanted for me was the best of everything she never had. I distinctly remember one summer in my early teens asking permission to work at the snack bar at out local swim club. I swam competitively on the club's team for years and wanted so desperately to work with the older cool kids in the snack bar. "No daughter of mine will ever serve other people."  That was the end of that argument. 

     At face value that seemed so shallow and pretentious. When I got older and realized all that my mother had done in life to excel and ultimately provide for her family, I totally got it. Being called derogatory racial slurs daily in high school, working menial jobs to help her parents, putting herself through college, working a secretarial job at an accounting firm on 5th avenue (my dad'd boss' secretary to be exact), meeting my dad and dating him for ten years before she made him propose, finally having someone support her so she could go and obtain her masters degree. Then the roles flipped. She supported my dad so he could follow his dream in art. She worked three teaching jobs and raised my older sister and me. The woman was badass. I had no idea. All I knew is that my life sucked. Having an overachieving Cuban educator parent meant summer school just to get ahead of the next school year. Fuck. I can still feel the dining room table under my elbows and digging into my ribs from years of homework...and avoiding homework.  Not to mention the "workbooks" my mother had me do on the side. I was a smart kid that never "applied herself". At least that's what every report card from 1987-1998 told us.  I purposely performed poorly on the entrance exam to my high school because leaving my friends (and the boys!) to go to this new school was without question the end of my life. Failed plan.  I was a legacy. Thanks so much sis!

  In that month I told my mother multiple times a week that I hated her. She ruined my life and I would NEVER forgive her. I was a nasty volatile 14 year old.  I'm not sure which incident was the final straw for her.  In one argument she retaliated with telling me she wished she never had me.  I don't think it actually affected me all that much.  If it did, it was completely overshadowed by what happened next.  Early the next morning she came into my room before she left for work.  She sat in my bed crying an apologizing to me.  Saying how mad she was for saying something like that that she so very clearly didn't mean.  I think that was the moment I realized what a piece of shit I had been.  I wish I could say that was the last time I was nasty to her...but it definitely was not.  That year on New Year's Day she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She was given six months to live and left us five months later on Mother's Day.  My entire junior class showed up at the church for her funeral.  Over 300 people signed the book at her viewing.  Over ninty cars filled the streets making the largest procession the funeral director had at that point.  She was amazing and it took me so long to realize it.  Former students of hers still reach out to my sister and I to tell us stories of how my mother inspired and changed their lives.

    I never really felt the loss or dealt with it.  Maybe that's the sixteen year old mind's way of protecting itself.  Only in the last couple of years does it seem to be surfacing.  Maybe that's why I'm writing this?  Just to get it all out once and for all?  Maybe sharing this part of my life and my appreciation for her with others is a way of making up for not telling her myself?

  Fuck.  My intentions for this entry were to talk about family car rides with 8 tracks and not smartphones.  Lying to parents about where you were and not having to prove with facetime.  Somehow it came alive and into another direction completely.    I thought about deleting this..but then I'd close the laptop for the night and I promised an entry.  So, suck it up buttercup.  Shit got deep.  If by any chance she can see this - mom, sorry I ever told you I hated you.  I never did.  Thank you for everything you sacrificed for us.