As is often the case, I was late getting there.  My sister was gone; there was a bloody kitchen knife on the counter. 

I had no idea what to do.  I was 17.

I sat on the curb in front of the house, crying; a neighbor came out and asked if he could help - he told me an ambulance had just left with my older sister, who was bipolar, perhaps, and suffered more damage than the rest of us from Mom.  

At the hospital, she was calm, her superficially-cut wrist bandaged.  My Dad chuckled at the clearly-planned gesture, hugged me hard and said "I hope you know this wasn't your fault".  My Mom, tearful and stricken, said "I wish you'd got there on time."  

Such is Mom.

Now I'm lying on my mom's bed watching "Wheel of Fortune" with her, in her little apartment in Assisted Living.  Visiting is mostly a duty, now that my Dad has died.  He was The Rock of the family: affectionate, even-keeled, emotionally articulate.  The kind of Dad everybody wishes they had.

 And Mom was, well, Mom.

And yet, my dutiful visits to Assisted Living are the closest thing I have to going home, now.   I drive 3 hours, watch TV, have dinner, sleep in my mom's double bed with her.  Sometimes it feels like I'm 4 years old, being allowed to crawl into bed with my parents.  If I squint my eyes just right, it can feel like I have the Mom I wanted, and I can get this growing up thing right, finally.

I'm still working on it. . . stay tuned.

All four of us kids have been wounded in our own ways by Mom, and her innocently toxic ways.  In my years as a psychiatric nurse I tried to fit her into a diagnosis: narcissistic personality disorder?  Borderline?  Histrionic?  None of them quite work - Mom is childlike, charmingly unedited, not malicious, yet profoundly hurtful to the undefended. 

I see her in myself - the parts I like and the parts I'd like to kill.  She's guileless; you NEVER have to wonder what she's thinking.  She's kind, in her way.  But her channel selection is always on "What's wrong with this picture?"  And usually what was wrong was. . . us.

What I remember most is her automatic criticism, her need to control everything about us - what we wore, what spoon we stirred the oatmeal with, how we talked. When my brother forgot to use the acne cream she got him, she told him how ugly his skin looked.  When my Dad lost his eyesight but still helped with the cooking, she said, disgusted, "You dripped gravy all over the stove!  I wish you could SEE!"   When I came in 2nd instead of 1st in the spelling bee, she said "I can't believe you don't know how to spell 'niece'!"  (or is it "neice"?. . .) (Kidding.  Sort of.)

We eventually learned not to hope for certain things from Mom - mostly.   We had all the props - homemade cookies, dinners with all the basic food groups, a spotless house, church on Sundays.  But when I tried to put my head on her lap in the car, or tried to give her a kiss before they went to choir rehearsal, she pushed me away, not wanting her dress wrinkled, her hair mussed.  

I kept hoping to be seen, somehow.  Instead, Mom's focus was always just past me, on her image in the world and how we might be damaging it.  On what was wrong with us and our collective life: the sink wasn't cleaned properly, our clothes and hair weren't right, the sidewalks weren't swept, we weren't as clean and cute and successful as our cousins.  She seemed to think that if she could just control her world well enough, she would feel safe and happy in it. 

It never happened.

Somewhere in my 30's I had an epiphany.  I had two kids, and understood the ferocity of the hopes we invest in our children.  I imagined what it must have been like for her, that day at the hospital.  My sister had been committed to a psychiatric hospital; my brothers had left, angry with her and dabbling in drugs; I had defied my Christian roots and moved in with my boyfriend at 17.  

The facade was crumbling.  What did she have left?

And I cried - deep, snot-all-over-my-pillow crying - for my mom, who tried so hard to get the props right, but was so clueless about the real stuff.  She constructed her world the only way she knew, and it had collapsed.  When I stopped crying, my mom's horns had receded.

I know she gave us the closest thing to love that she could muster.  The bittersweet truth of it is this: we're all doing the best we can.   And I do my best - try to squelch that voice of hers that still carps, at me and at my own daughter.  I want to be on a different channel - one of gratitude and appreciation.  I don't want that knee-jerk criticism to damage my daughter as it did me.  And sometimes it leaks out, and I see that look on my kid's face, like she's been slapped.

Small potatoes, in the spectrum of how you can hurt a child.  Yet effective, in its way, and insidious.  We can bruise a kid's heart without thinking, without raising any "abuse" flags.  God, what a responsibility this parenting is.

Now, my siblings and I have turned into pretty functional adults.  My wonderful sister, closer and most dutiful, calls Mom every night.  As a result, she gets the most flak; those closest bear the most responsibility for Mom's unhappiness, which is tenacious.  I visit every month and call when I think of it, and am treated like an honored guest.  I have enough distance that I usually find her sort of cute. 

And I know it's far easier to deal with her than it is to BE her.

I survived Mom pretty well.  I'm a better parent than she was.  I have moments of abject joy and gratitude, and I'm learning to be nicer to myself, and gentler with her.  

We get ready to go to dinner, and she says, "Are you wearing THOSE shorts to the dining room?"  And I say, "Yep.  You'll just have to live with it, Mom", and give her a hug.  She gets over it, and we eat some basic food groups.