Looks Like Rain

My mother had such faith that I would be a good mother. That I would be good at this thing called life. As I sit on my couch 27 weeks pregnant. As I struggle. My mom enters my thoughts a lot. She had four kids, all girls, all about three years apart. She had her first when she was 33 and didn't stop until she was 42. She died at 49.

Through most of my life, I've felt like I let her down. I'm the only one to leave Hawaii. I got an education and still only make $30K/year. I'm in my second marriage. I made horrible life decisions. I honestly never thought I would have a kid. In fact, until I was about 27 I never actually WANTED kids.

Yet here I am, life growing inside of me at a rapid rate. Three months to go, almost 7 months down. I rely on my mother, a lot. She's not here physically but I think about how she handled us girls, how we each managed to have her undivided attention at times, how she shaped us. It's really hard to wrap my head around the fact she won't meet her granddaughter. I do think, however, that she had her hand in all this. Naneki (Nancy in Hawaiian, which was my mother's name) is due a day before my mother's birthday.

Losing a Same-Sex Parent at a Young Age

“It's just like waking up,
In that second and a half,
The bliss of not remembering,
Before it all comes flooding back.” – Ben Folds

Yes, everyone dies. Yes, sometimes it is sudden. Yes, you are never prepared for it. At some point you lose someone you love, whether that someone is a friend, family or even a fur baby, it hurts and cuts deep and is so permanent.  

Here’s the part where my story may differ from some. I was 13 when I lost my mom. When you lose a parent as an adult you have memories to hold onto, you have a life. When you lose a parent as a teenager, pre-teen or child, you have scraps of memories. Little pieces you try to cling to and you hold on so tightly they tend to crumble to dust. Some days I can remember my mom’s laugh, other days her scent but most days, it’s a wash. I can tell you she dyed her hair a red-brown color and wore green contacts over light brown eyes. I can tell you she was a cardio queen and taught morning aerobics up until the day before she died. I can tell you she hated western medicine and doctors and believed in healing crystals which helped contribute to her downfall. I can tell you I loved her with all my heart. I can tell you it hurts everyday like a scab you can’t stop pick at and it festers and leaves a scar as a constant reminder. Some mornings I forget she’s gone, or that I’m grown up or that I grew up without her.

Most of the time I just feel guilty, because I don’t remember her, because I’m supposed to, because I hold a torch for someone I was only just beginning to know. My mother shaped me and molded me, even put me in the kiln but I wasn’t done yet, I wasn’t ready. I had just started puberty. I had no mother to walk me through hair and makeup, clothes and shaving, bras and tampons. Some people tried to help, but it was hard and there was pain in their eyes. My dad, tried, but he’s a man. If I ran out of deodorant or shaving cream he told me to use his. I spent one year of my teens smelling like Mennen without a bra and rarely shaven legs. I spent another year shaving everything including my stomach and chest because I didn’t know any better. My hair was a mess, my sense of style a disaster and it has taken me years YEARS to find the woman inside of me. To understand my looks, my skin tone, everything. Losing my mom meant losing my guidance and I had to feel my way through adolescence. My mother wasn’t there to tell me there’d be other boys or spend the night letting me vent with cookies and ice cream and movies. It was just me. I was angry for a long time. But it’s no one’s fault, there is no one to be angry at, my mother had a brain aneurysm. She had a blood bubble that slowly leaked into her brain. It amazes me how a little bit of blood can destroy a life, a family, a child.

Losing a same-sex parent at a young age means you don’t only lose your guidance, you don’t only live with guilt for not remembering, it means you also; don’t know how to respond or how to act. My husband told me at his father’s funeral, he didn’t cry and everyone thought this 11-year-old boy was brave. I didn’t cry at my mother’s funeral and everyone thought I was a heartless, cruel child. I’ve cried many tears for my mother over the years. What people don’t understand is as a child you have no coping mechanisms, you have no clue what you should be doing. You are in SHOCK. The gravity of the situation doesn’t hit you for YEARS. As a kid you barely understand your numbers and ABCs let alone death. Something so permanent, so absolute and final how can you expect a child to understand that? I cry at the drop of a hat, over anything, commercials, movies, breaking a glass, but my emotions are bewilderment even to me. I could mechanically tell you about how my mother died and what I had to do to survive without a tear in my eyes and usually with a smile because I know you’re just curious. My emotions have been severed and reattached and so they don’t work like you’d expect. You could be pouring your heart out and I will be dry eyed and supportive but maybe we could be shopping for clothes and I just start crying for no apparent reason. I never learned how to express correctly, how to be appropriate. My mom’s funeral showed me that people judge you constantly and it also showed me that it’s okay because I won’t force feelings, I’m me and that’s all I can be.

Today marks 15 years since my mom passed away. She’s been dead longer than I even had time with her. Each year the anniversary hits me a different way. Some years I completely forget, other years I am overjoyed thinking about the time I did have with her, some years it hits me hard and I can’t contain myself and other years I remember but am neither happy nor sad, it’s just another day. Losing a parent at a young age turns them into a ghost, they are a pale comparison to the person they were or we think they were. They are in your peripherals. They are misty and ambiguous. There are only so many pictures or videos to remind you of someone you can just see the outline of, like a mirage. When the pictures run out, when you've memorized them, when you look at yourself in the mirror and try to pull traits, there's not much more you can do. Some days I remember her voice and think I hear it in mine. Today, I remember everything, the way she clicked her tongue, the way she lost her temper, the way she danced, the way she laughed, her perfume, her outfits, her walk, everything. Tomorrow I might not be so lucky, best to hold on to today.  

Halloweenie

Little Leila as a Witch!

I couldn’t imagine the fall season passing by without the joys of Halloween. As a kid every year for Halloween my neighborhood would have all the costumed kids start at one end of our main street and we would parade, with the high school marching band leading the way, to a party house.  Once we reached the party house there’d be food and festivities – bobbing for apples, hot apple cider, pumpkin carving. It was some of the best memories of my life. My mother would make all our costumes from scratch and we spent just as much time as a family, carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating as we did with any other holiday.

It bugs me, personally, when people prevent their kids from partaking in the dress up, fantasy and family time that IS Halloween. I understand some people do it for religious reasons, which I find a little ridiculous. Halloween is in no way a religious holiday I think the closest it has to being religious is All Saints Day and Day of the Dead. Both are rooted in Catholicism, not “Satan worshiping.” Halloween is in no way a devil-worshipping, sacrificial, bringing the dead to life celebration. It’s rooted in a million myths and beliefs but it is not a religious holiday. While were on it, technically, neither is Thanksgiving. Think about it you think the Native Americans who joined in that meal understood who the pale skins god was? No? Thanksgiving to me is a time to come together and be grateful for one another, not necessary to be thankful to an almighty entity.

No one said you have to join in the haunted houses mayhem that is plentiful during the celebration. Carve happy faces in your pumpkin instead of a scary one.  I understand if you want to keep your kids away from the terrifying parts of Halloween, sure. Then do that, but there is no reason you have to cut out the fun holiday fully. If your child wants to spend time with her friends and dress up as a princess, is that wrong? Isn’t that what she does during her imaginary tea parties? Except on this day she can go out and be rewarded for her fantastical costume and adorableness.  I had friends as a kid who had diabetes and they would go trick or treating and sell their candy to their parents – Ha!

Our carvings 2011

Bottom line: I am in love with Halloween it has always been a time of the year where the temperature cools and family time begins (next in line – Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all big family celebrations). Halloween is a celebration of harvesting and ushering in the winter. It’s when the leaves change colors and you can wear that awesome scarf again. Whenever my husband and I have kids, you better believe if they come to me with their big beautiful eyes and ask me if they could please be a fairy for  Halloween and go trick-or-treating, I will buy a sewing machine and get on it. I will not push Halloween on my children. I don’t think any of our lifestyles should be pushed on our children. If I, as a meat eater, discover my child doesn’t like meat, guess what? I’m not going to tell them they can’t leave the table until they eat their meat. If Halloween scares my child I will not force them to participate. But if my child comes to me excited and sees and grows from my Halloween enthusiasm, I’m running out and buying more pumpkins.