[Snuffleupagus]

It's so close. I bought my jokey card two weeks ago, but I kept putting off signing it. Part of me knows whatever I write won't be good enough, so I didn't sign it until today in the post office parking lot.

Here's how my mom is: When I found out my dad had cancer they put him in hospice immediately. All the doctors were saying, this is it. (They were wrong.) When I thought he had maybe a month left, I gathered my resources and wrote him a letter thanking him for the ways he was a dad to me and telling him that I understood him and his self-hatred and misery and loved him anyway. This was a huge undertaking for me because our relationship has been about 85% crappy and 15% not crappy. I told mom I was going to visit to give my dying father this letter, and her response was, "Oh, well, I hope you have a letter for me too, then."

Sigh. Narcissism.

So, I'm starting to write, and I'm sweating, and my heart is pounding, and somehow I eek out some kind words that aren't lies. It was rough, and I felt totally exhausted afterwards. Then I'm driving home from the post office, and Aimee Mann's Invisible Ink comes up on my mp3 player, and I sing it for all I'm worth. I'm pretty sure it refers to a romantic relationship, but damn it offered me comfort and seemed to fit my feelings so well. I thought I'd share:

Invisible Ink

There comes a time when you swim or sink
So I jumped in the drink
Cuz I couldn't make myself clear

Maybe I wrote in invisible ink
Oh I've tried to think
How I could have made it appear

But another illustration is wasted
Cuz the results are the same
I feel like a ghost who's trying to move your hands
over some ouija board in the hopes I can spell out my name

What some take for magic at first glance
Is just sleight of hand depending on what you believe
Something gets lost when you translate
It's hard to keep straight
Perspective is everything

And I know now which is which and what angle I oughta look at it from
I suppose I should be happy to be misread-
Better be that than some of the other things I have become

But nobody wants to hear this tale
The plot is clichéd, the jokes are stale
And baby we've all heard it all before
Oh I could get specific but
Nobody needs a catalog
With details of love I can't sell anymore

And aside from that, this chain of reaction,
baby, is losing a link
Though I'd hope you'd know what I tried to tell you
And if you don't I could draw you a picture in invisible ink

But nobody wants to hear this tale
The plot is clichéd, the jokes are stale
And baby we've all heard it all before
Oh I could get specific but
Nobody needs a catalog
With details of love I can't sell anymore

[tkdgirl]

It's amazing the effects mothers can have on us. At least you can take comfort in knowing the card has been sent and you were able to refrain from lying. I took a listen to the song and I like it.

All I managed to write in my card was "Happy Mother's Day". I could muster up the effort or desire to actually write anything more than that. Funny part is my mom will still be oh so happy with it tomorrow. She has no idea the pain she has caused and actually believes she is a good mother. I have written it off as a lost cause.

My mother and I talked on the phone today like we do at least once a week. She's a wonderful woman and a blessing as a mother and grandmother and great-grandmother. She lost one daughter as an infant to infantile leukemia and buried another last year who was 54 from complications of breast cancer and a bone marrow transplant. Her strength through the pain of loss strengthened us all. Love you, Mom.

[stopdog]

My mother has shuffled off this mortal coil. Sometimes I go over to a park very near my house and watch the families out for brunch or picnics. It is fun to imagine all the relationships from watching strangers interact. I do miss my mother even though she thought I was odd, embarrassingly individualistic, weird and not like the daughter she wanted.

Aimee Mann has been my musical soul mate since about seven years ago. The timber and frequency of her voice is like the physical manifestation of things I thought had to be left unexpressed. I enjoyed her privately, it felt so personal. As I collected all of her albums, it kept appearing that so many of her songs described with uncanny lucidity the quality of my relationship at the time. Turns out she was singing mostly about drug addiction.

I too freeze up when I feel obligated to write heartfelt things toward people with whom I'd rather not be vulnerable. I didn't get my mother a card. I got her a small potted flower. A perfunctory gesture that will, I hope, mean to her what she wants it to mean.

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by stopdog

I do miss my mother even though she thought I was odd, embarrassingly individualistic, weird and not like the daughter she wanted.

And this is why I think I have something to say to you, something you can hear, cos I am in the same boat, but maybe that's not the boat you want to hear from? You want to hear from the people in the park, the NOT weird, odd daughters? I was telling T some stories about my mother this week, and I was laughing, but at the same time I had to remind both of us that she would not appreciate my enjoying these stories about her. She would think I was laughing AT her, not WITH her, not with love. As you say, not the daughter she wanted. But I was that from birth or before or shortly thereafter.

[stopdog]

No. I never wanted to be the type my mother wanted. I wanted my mother to like the type I was. I like watching the families in the park because I think they are odder acting than my family was. I hear people say stupid things to their children, watch the children do stupid things inreturn, watch them try to act happy, watch some seem really happy and so forth. I don't want to be any of them. I just like watching. And even remembering the sorts of rituals and things we would do with my mother, things she liked to do, expressions she used, the smell of her perfume and cigarette smoke, food she made and food we made her, etc.
I like hearing you Hankster.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by stopdog

No. I never wanted to be the type my mother wanted. I wanted my mother to like the type I was. I like watching the families in the park because I think they are odder acting than my family was. I hear people say stupid things to their children, watch the children do stupid things inreturn, watch them try to act happy, watch some seem really happy and so forth. I don't want to be any of them. I just like watching. And even remembering the sorts of rituals and things we would do with my mother, things she liked to do, expressions she used, the smell of her perfume and cigarette smoke, food she made and food we made her, etc.
I like hearing you Hankster.

Sometimes you have a connection to humanity that I find very touching.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Aimee Mann has been my musical soul mate since about seven years ago. The timber and frequency of her voice is like the physical manifestation of things I thought had to be left unexpressed.

She is by far my favorite artist. Her voice is always a comfort to me. Her rhymes amaze. I've seen her perform six times and even with high expectations I've never had a whiff of disappointment.

I've always particularly enjoyed the lines

I feel like a ghost who's trying to move your hands
over some ouija board in the hopes I can spell out my name

but today it felt so applicable to the futile efforts I've made over the years trying to get my mom to see me. And I think my efforts felt particularly futile today when I was purposely tempering myself. I wasn't even trying to get her to see me. I've tried to stop doing that. It was more like fulfilling a contract.