This book slaps you in the face with the realization that not all moms are great mothers. I have had a few mothers like this in my life- women I know, family members. I have never prescribed to the myth that all women are good mothers. I fully support father's rights. And I think we need to be cautious with how our ideas of mothers may not necessarily represent what is actually being experienced by some children in our society. I was raised by my mom to be cautious. I don't easily trust others and I don't think things could never happen to me or my family. I was raised to protect myself, to keep alert and to observe. Having said that, I am surrounded by a lot of great women in my life who are wonderful mothers. And I am a good stepmom. A lot of good comes from good mothers and they carry a big responsibility to make our world a better place and to raise good adults. I am lucky to have been raised by Robert and Teresa Gonzalez, and I am grateful to have my mom here with me again.
"The room was dark except for the faint light from the street below. I looked up at the molding on the ceiling, tracing it with my eyes as I did every night before I went to sleep. I followed it around and around, imagining a toy train on the ceiling racing on a track. I heard the wheels of the stretcher again in the hall. I climbed out of bed, snuck over to the door, and peeked out.
Even half-dead, Mother was beautiful. She had the icy good looks of a Hitchcock heroine - a high forehead, long, thin nose, and striking cheekbones. Her blond hair, most of which was a fall attached to the top of her head and expertly teased to create a tumbling-mane effect, lay tousled on the stretcher pillow. She was wearing her blue Pucci peignoir set that brought out the color of her eyes - which were now, of course, closed.
My chest felt twisty as I watched the men in white uniforms with blue jackets wheel her down the hallway and out of the apartment. I believed Mother was safe with the calm, quiet stretcher men and their nicely combed hair and castdown eyes, but I wondered where were they taking her, and what they would do. Did they have some magic way of waking her up - a special drink, true love's kiss? Would they put her in a glass box like Snow White while she slept? I felt anxious as the questions kept coming. How long would she be gone? What would I tell my sister?
I climbed back into bed and stared again at the ceiling, trying to slow my racing mind. The low murmuring of my stepfather and the firemen ended with the clicking of the lock of the front door, and a quiet stillness that came down. I was left alone with my thoughts, listening to my sister's soft breathing. I squeezed my eyes shut and rolled over, pulling the blanket carefully over my neck..." pp. 7 - 8
"But despite her clucking over our preferences for French cheese over fried bologna, and extra conflicts over late nights and heel-dragging in the mornings, Catherine remained our much loved anchor in the whirlwind of Mother's new life. Her strictness and resolved to provide some kind of structure made us chafe, but drew us closer to her.
On Saturdays that winter, Catherine took us down to Rockefeller Center for our ice-skating lessons. She'd take us into the dressing room and help us put on our skates, using the big lacing hook that she'd pull out of her battered but voluminous black handbag. We were constantly surprised by its contents, which she always presented with such nonchalance: a seemingly endless supply of dainty, embroidered hankies, little boxes of raisins, a small, collapsible drinking cup, a flashlight for seeing in a dark movie theatre, a sewing kit, and a big whistle on a chain.
'I've never seen anything so crazy,' she said, leaning over and grunting as she threaded our skates. 'People running around on a floor that's frozen.' She laughed and shook her head at the foolishness of it all.
'Thank you, Catherine,' Robbie and I both said as she he slowly raised herself up and stashed the hook back in her purse for the next time." pg. 46
"Sometimes he would take us to the theater with him and we would hang around the greenroom, playing pool and bumming money off the actors to buy snacks from the vending machines. I loved the smell of the theater: an intoxicating perfume of coffee, paint, and wood that to me smelled like romance, beauty, and possibility. I felt about the theater the way Holly Golightly did about Tiffany's - nothing ever bad could happen to you there.
At the end of the summer, Robbie and I would tearfully call Mother and beg her to let us stay in Minneapolis with our dad. Mother would listen to us sobbing into the receiver and then ask that we put our father on the line. They exchanged a few words, Mother reiterating the terms of their divorce agreement, and Daddy looking down at the floor frowning slightly as he listened to my mother tell him e had to return to her.
[I have seen this scene play out so many times with my stepson and my husband. Things changed when my husband's ex-wife and her husband became abusive to my stepson. We filed an emergency order with the court and at 4 different hearings, my husband was granted emergency responsibility, full timesharing and mother had supervised visits in a public place as she underwent counseling. She used my stepson to hurt and emotionally destroy my husband on a nearly daily basis. I remember that. Yet she was behaving horribly. It is very rare for a judge to grant a father sole parental responsibility. I think we saved my stepson's life, and his mother had a year and half to learn to treat people better, to compromise, to respect others even if she faked it for the time being in order to later be able to see her son more.]
'I'm sorry, girls,' he would say, then carefully and deliberately pack our suitcases himself and put us back on the plane to New York. He always stood at the window of the terminal, waiving and smiling, until we took off. I could see the little, dark speck of his head through the small fishbowl window as the plane lifted off the ground and my sister and I cried our eyes out. The flight attendant would come down the aisle and pin on our little gold wings, the accessory of the traveling child of divorce. They were meant to make you feel special but only made you feel even more alone and pathetic. What we really needed was some Kleenex and a hug. At least we had each other - another small hand to hold as the plane rose into the air and the other passengers stared at us, shaking their heads and wondering who would let two little girls fly alone.
The annual ritual ended in New York when my mother would unpack our suitcases, and without skipping a beat, throw out all our play clothes. Those polyester separates just didn't fit in with our cosmopolitan lifestyle. Eloise didn't wear Garanimals to the Plaza for tea, or to her French lesson. Of course, by throwing the clothes away, she cast aside our summer, our time with our father, and our memories,as well as her own. She did not want to be reminded of a time when she'd eaten three-bean salad and certainly not that she had liked it." pp. 50 - 51
[I remember one Christmas dropping my stepson off to his mother's house. She refused to let him keep the Christmas presents given to him by our family. She screamed and yelled on the front lawn, said the gifts would be thrown in the trash if we left them there. My stepson cried his eyes out. If I had known she would react that way, I never would have innocuously thought he could take his presents inside. At the time, he stayed at his mother's house more than he did with us per the divorce order. He could use his presents there more. I felt so terrible, I felt angry and I felt duped. I had misjudged the situation. We had to turn back around, after dropping the gifts off, and pick them up and take them to our house. I was sad that day. Everything that happened was violently against my nature and I could not understand how she could hurt this kid so much.]
"After breakfast, we took out the trash and headed over to the hospital to see our mother. Unlike Mother's first trip to the hospital, after she'd locked us in the closet for a day, when we arrived to visit at Mount Auburn, there were no moccasins and she didn't look like a fairy princess; she looked like shit. She was puffing away on a cigarette in her cigarette holder, defiantly blowing the smoke at the no smoking sing on the bilious green wall. We took turns kissing her cheek, then sat in the plastic chairs next to the bed.
'Mother, you look great,' I said. She looked as if she would have sold one of us for a glass of wine had there been a market nearby.
'They've taken out practically all my internal organs. It's a miracle I'm still alive,' she snorted.
I turned to Robbie for backup, hoping that she would say something nice, but she just glowered and snapped her gum. I couldn't think of anything to say. There was nothing to say. Sitting there, I felt overwhelmed by a deep feeling of utter helplessness. It was like a black blob crushing me that made me wish I were dead. I couldn't do anything that would make things better. Our family, such as it was, was like a big dying animal. And there wasn't a shovel large enough to bury it, cover it up, or put it out of its misery.
After about ten minutes, my mother turned her face away from us. The audience was over.
'We'll go now, Mother,' I said. 'See you tomorrow.'
I was afraid Robin was about to say something unhelpful so I grabbed her arm and dragged her away. It was best to get out before there was an eruption.
I admired Robin's fuck-you attitude, which was so different from anything I would ever dare to do. After years of trying to shield my sister from the truth, I had to almost come to believe my little Girl Scout routine. When things were bad with Mother, whatever anger or resentment I felt was channeled into my cover-up. I still wanted the neighbors, everyone at school and at the grocery store, to thing that we were just like everyone else. When things with Mother calmed down, I was just so grateful for the peace, I didn't want to do anything that would disturb it. Trying to disguise it all was my full-time job; and for a while, I thought I was fooling the world." pp. 138-140
[I think this passage depicts how my stepson, at an early age, tried not to provoke or rock the boat, but then became argumentative and learned how to not do things, how to oppose and defy. The passage also parallels, in my opinion, how my husband's ex-wife tried/tries to keep up appearances with friends, work and church (ironic to me most of all). My husband wholly got in the way of a life she envisioned, so much so that she took my husband off my stepson's emergency contact card completely and listed her husband as my stepson's father, even though the court order granted both father and mother joint decision-making authority. She kept him on days he was supposed to spend time with us, she did not notify of doctor's appointments, put my stepson on psychotropic medication and she listed her husband as Wesley's dad on Christmas presents. Life was bad until we talked to a psychologist and he told us to completely disengage with her. It was then she became more abusive to my stepson. And then we filed emergency paperwork.]
"Since the fall after we'd moved to Boston, we attended Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, where I was a senior and Robin was a junior. Beaver was billed as a 'college preparatory school' on the sign out by the stately front gate on Hammond Street. It was well-appointed with soccer fields, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. Many of the kids came from well-to-do families, and the headmaster was kind of famous because he had taken Sylvia Plath to the prom. In short, the school had just the right country-club patina for Mother.
Beaver was our third school in three years. By now Robin and I were accustomed to being the new kids. It was our metier, and any novelty attached to it had worn off for us long ago." pp. 141-142
"As soon as I started going to V's theater classes and to Drama Club meetings, I knew I had found my place. Since my first play in London, I had known that I loved to act. But what had started as a way to connect to my long-lost father had developed into something even more intimate. I loved pretending to be someone else; it was so much easier than being me. I could hide inside this other person and, even if it was just for a short time, inhabit a completely different world far away from the one I had to live every day." pg. 143
metier - a trade, profession, or occupation; an occupation or activity that one is good at; an outstanding or advantageous characteristic
Lawless, Wendy. (2013). Chanel Bonfire. New York, New York: Gallery Books.
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