So I’ve finally watched this movie, a movie a friend suggested I should watch long ago, after having told him a story or two about my mother, who happened to have been an alcoholic, “The Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood.” It hit me pretty hard, emotionally, especially throughout the second half of the film, I guess because of how strangely close the movie hit to home, which shouldn’t have surprised me, considering that was why I was told to check it out… I think it hit so close to home mostly just because of missing my mother, but also thinking about her life, feeling sad for her, for her guilt, her mistakes, her passion, and mainly, her weaknesses. I suppose we’re slated to always be this affected by our parents, and their lives, no matter how old we get, no matter if they’ve passed on yet or not. I suppose as long as I live, I’ll always long for my mother’s love.
Cradled like a baby
In the arms of a ghost
And although nothing can take that away
Nothing really ever comes close
My mama, a human
Being human, a parent
Sins of confusion
This god's flaws, apparent
So often I struggle to try and understand what it must have been like to be her, to have lived her life, to have seen her life through her eyes, to have known what it was like for her to grow up when and how she did, to have gotten married at the age she did, to have had children as young as she did, to see all the possibilities and dreams and potential in herself, only for it to be washed away by daily life, responsibilities and her choices. I think the drinking was an escape, like it almost always is, like her mother’s was. I now know why she sometimes resented us. She resented me, and my sisters, for the same reasons I sometimes resent my dog. We’re all human. I’m human. I’ve seen visions of myself, in greatness, I know my own potential, its the potential all people see in themselves… But we make choices, and with each of those choices come responsibilities, and with the responsibilities of those choices, we give up other things, hopefully less important things, but not always… I think in more cases than not, we simply think we want things we see, but we don’t fully comprehend the day-to-day gravity of the responsibilities that will accompany the acquiring of those things. Take me for example. I wanted a dog. But I’m also a writer and therefore require a lot of solitude time. Well, puppies require discipline, training, and care, a lot of care. Yes, they give unconditional love, but that isn’t free either. What is in this life? My mother wanted children and even as I’m sure she understood, on some level, that children required care, and come with many deep-rooted responsibilities, I doubt most really understand how much, exactly, until they actually have children. At least, that’s what I always seem to be told by people who have them… But basically, we all feel strong and invincible when we’re young. We feel that we’ll always have enough time for all we want to do in our lives. Time though, as everyone realizes in their own way at some point, has a way of catching up with us. So when you’re 22 with one child in your arms and another on the way, you’d probably tend not to notice, while the time is slipping by you, that you’re not in nursing school or doing most of the other things that you’d once dreamed of doing, other than working to pay the bills and put food on the table, a table that is surrounded by 3 sets of eyes staring back at you for attention. And in those moments, after these children’s needs are met, your attention is divided, and they are put to bed, you realize how little time there is left, at best, before you’ll need to be bed yourself otherwise you’ll be more exhausted the next day. And so, often enough, the quickest way to relax or attain some sort of small personal gratification, is to have a drink…
Then one day, years later, you wake up realizing you’d never made it to nursing school, and you most likely never will make it there. Because, now, instead of the sun shining in your eyes coming over the top of the hill ahead of you as you climb, as it once did, the hill is now on its down slope and for the first time, you can see the end of the road, off in the distance. There it is, your entire life ending and there’s nothing you can do to stop your feet from continuing walking in that direction towards it. So maybe you have a drink, and as you do, you start to resent your seemingly pathetic, pitiful, un-glorious existence and most of what’s in it; your job, your house, your car, your husband, all of your responsibilities, and especially your children, even though they too have souls of their own, because without them, you could, like you once did, get up and go without worry… And all the while, they sit, staring back at you, their God. Only now, you’re an angry and resentful God, but still a God nonetheless, because that’s all they can see from where they sit. But all you’re able to see is your life, now from the outside in. A series of potentials, and dreams you once held, but those potentials and dreams have since transformed, and now they list like wasted potentials and failures. Upon having realized you yourself would never see these dreams manifest for yourself, any glory that could ever have come, is now gone, and the most there could be to hope for is what your children may, one day, give back to you. Say possibly, the day of your oldest daughter graduating from nursing school… Your dreams are now lived vicariously through their lives, while your life coasts continuously closer to its path’s end. But even in these proudest, most precious moments with your children, like a graduation, hides further resentment, and another, more devastating failure, also hiding, along side the memories of these oldest resentments… First, it’s the pinch, the mildest resentment in the memories of the dreams you once held so close, of living your life and your dreams, as your children now can. That once foreseen failure is now complete and is staring back at you, smiling with a child’s eyes in your face, looking, needing, begging for your love and approval. So, if you can, if you’re able, you push that last resentment away and simultaneously pull forward the pride in their accomplishment, and show them the love and approval they so desperately have longed for, and then you can wear the pride in having raised this child to fulfill their dreams. But in taking that pride, and in again thinking back to raising them, another set of memories surface, painful memories of long ago, memories that cannot be ignored, memories of these then children’s faces, staring back at you and seeing only an angered, resentful, and often drunk, God, their parent. In that moment, and in that reflection, the face of your final failure reveals itself, failure in the one thing you did actually accomplish in your life, that of bearing children, being a parent. And witnessing these memories again, now seeing what became future scars actually forming in your children, in these exact moments, knowing that you inflicted deep seeded wounds, to this child, these children, also your life’s only measurable accomplishment, the truth torments you. You remember the days spent trying to make it up to them, trying to balance it out by piling upon them the passionate good deeds, the making moments special to try to burry all the moments you destroyed, the moments that have and forever will haunt you in your sleep, the moments where they witnessed what you felt, even if for moments only, the dark waters, the deep and selfish resentment… And you try to balance it out, to make up for it, forever, and simultaneously, to try and drink it away…
Until, at best, maybe one day, maybe this day, you learn humility. You dare not ask forgiveness, but hope only that one day, your children will realize, will understand that you were human, that you were not perfect, that you were not, God.
