The Cat, The Sewing Machine and My Mom

She moved and left the cat behind.  I knew she was in a hurry to start her new life, ready to move on, get away, run away.  But it still surprised me that she left the cat.

"Well, she never liked me anyway," she said.  It was the same thing she said about me when she told me she was getting married and moving to California.  She was right, I didn't like her that much but I thought it was normal for most 16-year-olds to not like their mothers that much.  

I can't remember the final good-bye with my mother all those years ago.  But I do remember going back to the house and looking for the cat every day after school.  The new owners hadn't moved into the house yet, it was empty.  "Kitty, kitty," I called.  That's what we called her, even though her name was Furry Socks.  A dumb name my sister and I had given her a decade earlier.  My sister, the smart responsible one, wanted to name her Socks because she had white spots on her paws, yeah, like socks.  I wanted to name her furry because yeah, she had fur.

The cat really didn't like my mother, or me.  The cat liked my sister, but she left for college several years earlier.  The cat liked my brother, but he moved to Nebraska to live with our father a few months earlier.  My memories of the cat included moments of terror.  She used to pounce on my legs as I came down the stairs, clinging to my jeans with her sharp claws.  My mom would run and get the broom and hit her until she finally released my leg.  

Even though I hated the cat and she hated me, I went back every day for her after my mom moved.  Nobody should be left behind, not even a really mean cat.

She finally showed up and I swear she looked at me like "you? really? you are the one to save me?"  I picked her up and found her a home.  The family I was living with didn't want a cat, so one of my mom's old friends took her.


                                                             
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I don't write about my mother as much anymore because well, it is complicated.  Mental illness is complicated, addiction is complicated.  Being the daughter of someone suffering is complicated and frustrating and sad and upsetting and confusing.

My mother moved to California when I was 16.  It's a long story.  One that I understand with such deeper compassion and empathy now that I am an adult.  But at 16, I felt deserted, rejected, left behind, unwanted. My father moved away.  My sister moved away.  My brother moved away.  And finally my mother moved away.  I was the one that was left behind. 

Being rejected, being left behind brands you.  The scar fades but it never totally goes away.  

Over 20 years later, I have so much love in my life. I have not let the scars on my heart ruin me or make me a victim.  I have worked hard (and had a shit load of therapy) to use my pain as a tool for more empathy, more compassion.  In the last few years especially, I have learned to embrace my emotionality rather than be afraid or ashamed of it.

I have also tried to have a relationship with my mother.  She moved back to Michigan after being away for 15 years.  We weren't in the same town, but close enough that I could help her a little or at least try to help her.

The doctors called, I went.  When I showed up in her hospital room, she often gave me the same look that our old cat did "you? really? you are the one to save me?"  I felt like I could take her insults, her misplaced pain--the result of her addictions, her mental illness and her plain old meanness.  I tried to help her through several episodes of withdrawal from the million prescription drugs she took like candy, surgeries, tried to help her quit her addiction to the Home Shopping Network, make peace with her neighbors, find the right doctors, clean her house and find her a driving service.  I stopped going to her house alone with my kids because she would either pass out in front of them too much or be rather mean to one of them.  I took a break when she accused me of stealing things from her home and called the Better Business Bureau (again) on the service I hired to help take care of her.  

It was all kinds of complicated.  But I wanted to do it because it was the right thing to do.  Because she had no one else.    And maybe just maybe, if I am really honest about it all, I thought there might someday be this moment of clarity, a moment of real mother/daughter connection.  It seems so silly and ridiculous to even write that, but it's true.  It's sad and upsetting and confusing.

I thought it was going to be like this until she outlived us all.  But a few weeks ago, she informed my sister and me that she was moving.  She'd found an "Over-55" apartment complex that had an activities director, access to an emergency button and people that checked in on her.  It was cheap and in Alabama and she was leaving.  When she told me my heart raced and I instantly felt 16.  I felt like I hadn't done enough, been there enough, helped her enough.  but 40-year-old me knew it was never enough for her. 

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"If you don't want this old sewing machine, I'm going to give it to Good Will," my mother told me last week as she was getting ready to move. 

There is a more modern sewing machine built inside of my great-grandmother's original foot-pedal sewing machine.

She was leaving the sewing machine behind.  The sewing machine that belonged to my great-grandmother.  The sewing machine that my mother used to sew all of my Halloween costumes when I was a kid and so many of my clothes.  I remembered playing at her feet while she made matching sundresses for my sister and me.  Years before any complicated-ness.  

How could she just leave the sewing machine behind?  Nothing that important should be left behind for just anyone.  I decided I had to go get it, even though I don't know how to sew.

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Last week, the movers packed up my mother's things in a truck.  My sister got ready to drive her down to Alabama.  And I loaded up the sewing machine in my minivan and said good-bye.

All the feelings of being the person a mother can't wait to get away from came back.  It overwhelmed me.  There would be no more caring for my mother.  There would be no more real hope of a moment of mother/daughter connection.  

It's complicated and sad and frustrating and confusing.  

While my sister and I helped pack up my mother's things, two of my children laughed and played in the back yard.  They had no idea that anything was heavy or weird or sad or complicated.  They  laughed and chased and played make believe and distracted my sister and me.  And reminded me to get out of the past.

I got back on the highway after the good-byes and headed back to my very full life of busy, laughing children and so much love.  A life I never want to leave behind.