I was considered a slut all through my late teens and my entire 20's. I went to bed with men I thought I wanted to fuck, I allowed men to fuck me that I didn't love or even like, I had low self esteem and I was always trying to please men and I was desperate for approval--consequently I had multiple sexual partners and in one month I had four and that was the month I conceived my youngest daughter who is now 32 and has just graduated with an MD/PhD (and a Masters in Math for good measure) and is now about to launch her brilliant medical scientist research career with a 4-year residency at Columbia University in New York.

I am proud of her.

Our last luncheon together, before she leaves this city where we both share avoidance, hostility and animosity (on her part) was long, arduous and incredibly painful. It was then that she shared her residue of anger at me kicking her out of the house at 15 ("I had no parent. They should have called child protective services. I was alone") Not completely true but that's another blog another day. I cried. I bawled my eyes out in the restaurant--a local one where I am now embarassed to show my face. I recalled all those awful movies where I see mothers crying and daughters dredging up the past, accusatory, angry and hurt. I felt HER pain, not my own. I understood my stupidity, my cavalier selfishness, my bad parenting and not only did I apologize but I felt such a sense of those lost years it was overwhelming. I blew Parenting 101.  All those years we could have connected and I ruined it with one thoughtless act when she was fifteen. I regret it.

She's my baby. I made huge sacrifices to have her. There I was--a single parent of 2 kids by two different fathers having a third and I didn't even know who the father was! My parents, family and friends turned their backs on me. The entire community labeled me a spoiled brat and a slut and no one talked to me. I sold my car and went on welfare and food stamps and moved out of our family-subsidized townhouse to a lumbering, rotting 3 bedroom house on the Eastside of town. I bought a 1977 Pontiac Catalina that had endless problems-I got 3 jobs, one was playing 3 nights in a local club where my ever-expanding stomach made me have to pull the bench out farther and farther from the piano. One male customer asked me about my husband and I said I didn't have one, and he handed me a $20 bill and said, "Oh, you're poor." Until that moment, I never realized that yes, I am poor. I just thought we were going through a hard time.

Ananda's birth (her name means bliss) was easy and pain free. I was so anemic that I had to have iron shots the last 3 months of my pregnancy. The doctor was afraid I wouldn't have enough oomph to push the baby out. Her god parents were there and during the birth her godfather made some stupid comment about how I shit when I gave birth. I didn't really want them there--they were friends sort of, not THAT close, but I needed someone to drive me to the hospital and they wanted to see the birth. So be it. My dad finally arrived after not speaking to me for 9 months. He saw Ananda when she was only 10 minutes old. To his credit he was a very loving, supportive father from that point on until he died 13 years later--but again, that's another story.  

Sitting in our local pub, in a small booth on a rainy day in Chicago (what day ISN'T rainy this spring?) she told me that her anger is subsiding now because she realizes I was mentally ill when I raised my kids, my life was a mess and anyway, I was promiscuous when I had her! I was being called a slut by my daughter. Then she told me how angry she was when I went back to school in my 50's and majored in Creative Writing. She was hoping I'd major in something practical that would get me a decent job! I didn't bother to tell her that writing is my passion and my vocation, just as medicine is hers', that I have serious learning disabilities that weren't even diagnosed until I was 55 that block my ability to study subjects that demand highly quantified understanding, that I really thought my MFA would lead to at least a teaching gig. Well, it did--but more on that later, since I am now unemployed! She then lectured me about how that's fine, I am an artist, she understands artists need "day jobs," so why don't I write a light hearted, easily read- on- the- train memoir? I didn't answer back. I simply thought, this blog is as close as I will ever get to a memoir and I don't plan to write a "serious" memoir. I am a fiction writer and every piece of fiction I write comes from me! My imagination is my memoir!

At any event, instead of showing me how proud they were that their mother finally went back to school at age 52, graduated with a BA at age 55 magna cum laude and got into a top MFA program, they acted sullen, withholding and awful. I could never figure out why. Finally, these many years later, (I graduated with my BA in 2004) she finally told me that she had spearheaded the family rejection of my choice of major--they were all simply angry because mom didn't earn a living and now would never earn a living. And I hate to admit it, but perhaps they were right. Here I am on food stamps, unemployment and social security--it seems that "earning a living" has never been something I've been able to do. And now I have been told by my children that I have flunked MOM 101--the only thing I did do! 

I didn't say this to her. My goal in that lunch was to tell her how much I loved her, how proud I was of all her hard work and accomplishments and how much I will miss her. My secret goal was to make sure she knows the door to my heart is always open so that if some tragedy does befall her or even if she simply needs someone to talk to or cry to, I am always here for her. I don't think she will take advantage of this offer, she doesn't respect me or my insights or my opinions, but you never know. I put it out there anyway. 

Her goal in that lunch was to tell me that in spite of the first 15 years of her life, in which I thought I poured all my love and energy into her, she had succeeded in life IN SPITE of me, not because of me, and that her memories of childhood  were anything but positive. In fact, she informed me, I was mentally ill and depressed. Yes, there were times when I was depressed. I was a single parent of 3 kids by 3 different fathers, I was being sexually abused by a therapist slash "teacher" for nearly 14 years--(I never told anyone--I didn't even really understand what was happening to me) I was working at a series of dead end low paying  jobs--I did my best. I still am.

This is who I am. I probably won't write that memoir.

However I ask myself: what about all the music we did at home? The games we played, the trips to the lake, the lessons I drove them to for 15 years 4 days a week after school--the violin, the piano, the Montessori, the bed time stories I read each one of them--making sure each child had his or her own story, (Ben had Sir Gawain the Green Knight, Sheba had The Little Princess and Ananda had a series of children's tales) You know, am I kidding myself? Whitewashing things? Were there ANY good times or am I simply trying to rationalize a childhood filled with trauma and bad parenting? I will never know. I have to believe her when she says she sees her childhood as a blight and move on from there.

I asked her if there was anything good she had to say about me before I stopped bawling in the middle of that restaurant and we left and went our separate ways. She said "You"re very creative." Check. Anything else? Something about my character? "Yes," she said, "you have a flexible and curious mind--you are not rigid the way most people are. You are open minded, you can learn new things, you can change and grow."

Well, that's good to know.

She is 32 years old and about to launch into a  brilliant career that may change the world. I am glad I brought her here and I hope one day she will forgive me.

Forgiveness is the only way we can really love one another.  

Even now when I tell people I have 3 kids by 3 different fathers they act as if I were the only woman on the planet to have multiple sexual partners at some point in life. I haven't had sex at ALL since 1996 so I've sure made up for it! I went from being a slut to being a NUN. Still, in their eyes I am and always will be a slut.

So be it.

We've always had a double standard when it comes to sex--we judge men differently than we judge women. We always have.

When will this ever change?