Forgiving Mother
...p” lines into the paper. I am—yet what I am, none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host. I couldn’t understand my mother’s attitude. My father was working at night and sleeping in the day, so he had no concept of my problems. At this point my mother became a stranger to me. As his poem continues, Clare’s speaker feels his friends and family have forsaken him as well: “Even the dearest that I love best/Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.” Here the writer is quoting only two lines so she includes them within the body of the paragraph with a / between the lines. As my brother and I grew older, my mother grew more antagonistic. Her attitude toward me changed from indifference to anger. She blamed me for her failure in accomplishing her life’s goals. I was useless. “If you hadn’t come along,” she would say, “I could’ve progressed further in my career.” Note how commas and periods are always within the quotation marks. Due to the pressure of constantly being told I was worthless and having no real friends to confide in, I became ill. Mother told me my stomach aches were “all in my head.” She was right. I was in my twenties when my doctor recommended tests. He said my stress was manifesting itself in the form of stomach cramps and possibly an ulcer. As I approached my thirties, I found my life was slowly turning into a psychological repeat of my mother’s. When overcome by the day’s pressures, I would find myself yelling at my son. “I can’t believe your timing! Why is it you get sick just when I have something important to do?” Then I would cry. I would go to my bedroom and cry uncontrollably. I remember my mother crying when I was very young, and the confusion I felt, wondering if I were also the cause of her tears. Now my son must feel the same way. We both probably felt like the Martian in Craig Raine’s “A Martian Sends a Postcard Come.” The Martian doesn’t understand the rituals of earthling adults either. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly Openly. Adults to a punishment room With water but nothing to eat. They lock the door and suffer the noises Alone…See how the writer uses an ellipsis (…) to indicate she is leaving words out. The solution I finally realized was to break free from the rut I was in. The last time my son was sick, I realized I would not meet a deadline. I was frustrated and felt like crying, but this time, I realized my child was more important to me than a deadline. I spent the rest of the day holding and rocking him. I guess I was hoping someday he would remember this moment more than those times I yelled at him. Maybe this would be his “rocking chair” memory. During this time, all the other sounds of turmoil inside me faded to the back of my mind. As in William Blake’s “Nurse’s Song,” in which the nurse hears the children laughing and playing and she calls for them to come home and prepare for bed. She probably had a number of jobs to complete around the house while the children slept, but grasped the reality of the situation. The sun was still out, the children were having a good time, and the tasks at home could wait. The nurse saw the importance of the children’s viewpoint. What effect might her wielding her domineering adult powers over these children have had? See how clearly the writer explains the lines before she quotes. Only when the lines are completely obvious does she slip them into the paper without explanation. "Then come home my children, the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies. “No, no let us play, for it is yet day And we cannot go to sleep;…” “Well, well, go & play till the light fades away And then go home to bed.” I had resolved on my thirtieth birthday to change my lifestyle. I was going to lose weight, write more, and give up on my mother. I gave up trying to arrange time for her to see my son. I only telephoned to speak with my father. If she answered, I was polite but distant. If she wanted to visit, I figured she could call me. But somehow, this didn’t seem to solve a thing. My birthday turned into one of the most depressing days of my life. My husband was out of town, I had unwanted guests who wanted to visit Southfork Ranch, the baby was sick, and I had no babysitter. Suffice it to say, Southfork was a nightmare. With the day’s debacle behind me, I had put my son to bed, gotten rid of the guests, and sat down with a glass of straight scotch. The telephone rang. It was mother. She wished me a happy birthday and proceeded to tell me that my life was half over. It was just what I wanted to hear. True, I wasn’t thrilled with the turn of events in my life. Alfred, Lord Tennyson seemed to have similar feelings regarding my outlook at that point in his poem, “Maud”: Ah, what shall I be at fifty Should nature keep me alive, If I find the world so bitter When I am but twenty-five? My mother was fifty. I wished I was twenty-five. She was unhappy with her life and trying to influence my feelings as well. Tennyson’s speaker went on to have a positive outlook in his poem (for a while at least) because he knew it would be a good thing growing old with Maud. I really couldn’t see much of a future for myself. I was fat, tired, depressed, thirty, and sober. I was unpublished and unfulfilled in all areas of my life. As Matthew Arnold stated in “Growing Old,” it can be a shock to find yourself aging. What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The luster of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? --Yes, but not this alone… …Yes, this, and more; but not Ah, ‘tis not what in youth we dreamed ‘twould be!... For Arnold, growing old meant losing the feeling “that we were ever young” and eventually feeling nothing at all. So, now I am about to turn “thirty-something.” I have lost weight, I am writing, and I’ve learned something about my mother. During this past year, my grandfather became terribly ill. Mother went back to Tennessee, and while he was in the hospital there, she had his home cleaned and painted. Upon her return, mother told me with tear-filled eyes, that all he could do was criticize her good deeds. As she imitated his voice, I realized he was using the same hurtful words to her that she had used on me as a child. Then instead of crying, she took a deep breath and said, "I just don’t understand that man. He’s not worth the spent tears.” As I stood there watching her, I saw for just an instant a woman who was deeply hurt and seeking solace from me. I had none to give. Mother was a broken record, repeating the same old behaviors caused by my grandfather’s influence, but I was falling into the same trap. Someone once said, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” Or perhaps that is why I remember with such clarity these instances from my childhood. I thi...