Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 35

“Hey!” Amanda called out as she entered the house. She’d been looking forward to this all day. Daydreaming at school, she pictured walking in the door and Jamie running into her arms. Instead she found her mom and Jamie on the couch. He was resting his head on her chest with his eyes closed, his paci in his mouth, and his bear next to him. An empty bottle was on the coffee table. Those weren’t the pajamas Amanda had put him in that morning, and her mom’s eyes looked red. Becky held a finger to her lips. Amanda felt her stomach drop.

Amanda set her bag down gently and sat next to her mother. “What happened,” she whispered. After Becky and Jamie had calmed down, she gave him a bath while he told her all about it. Once he was dressed, she made him a bottle one-handed while she held him. Once finished, he eagerly took his pacifier and fell asleep on her. Becky recounted the story in as even a voice as she could.

Amanda lost a few tears and shook her head. “Hateful bitch,” she muttered. When she was old enough to understand, Amanda had watched her mother’s relationship with her grandmother in dismay. She never got the full story of her childhood, but she had enough pieces of it to know it hadn’t been a happy one.

She didn’t know her grandmother’s moods were so volatile; that she was a perfectionist; a constant victim. She’d never once believed she was wrong in her life, not in what she did or said or believed. She berated her husband and children. Her default parenting method was screaming. She kept everyone in the house on eggshells. Even her husband was cowed by her.

Amanda had learned, from Danny and in secrecy, that for an entire summer when they were around elementary age, Dana would go to the end of the street every afternoon and wait for her husband to pull in. He’d roll down his window, and she’d tell him everything the kids had done wrong that day. Not much of it was wrong; most of it was age-appropriate behavior that simply violated her sense of decorum. Running in the house; using outside voices whether inside or out; getting dirty; not eating food they didn’t like or even when they just weren’t hungry. These were all indications to her that her kids did not know their place, itself a form of the worse sin of not respecting their mother and all she did for them.

To Dana, children were not children; they were defective adults. Therefore their opinions, even about themselves, were only valid if they agreed with hers. If they disagreed, it was worse than defiance. It was an accusation of what a bad mother she was; if they did it front of others, it was a deliberate attempt to humiliate her and stomp on the image of the perfect family she tried so hard to show the world but that she herself constantly undermined with her own behavior.

She’d shift from the unquestioned authority who always knew what was right to the unappreciated mother who could never do anything right for her kids. In between the extremes was a display of anger bordering on rage. She was an emotional blackmail artist, and she was spectacular at it. What made her so good at it was she believed it all; it was a performance, but it was not an act. She always did what was right; the kids were always wrong; no one ever appreciated her; and the hurt she honestly felt elicited guilt and shame in her kids, especially Becky.

Amanda knew some of that; she didn’t know all of it. If she did, she might have understood how her mother, more than twenty years removed from her childhood, was still seeking her own mother’s approval. She never stopped trying to please her, but worse, as Amanda saw it, was the perpetual cycle of hurt and forgetting. Becky would be the dutiful daughter, try to show her mother love, and she’d come away hurt, only to go back again.

Amanda remembered one Harvest Day when she was maybe 9. She’d been put to bed, but she could hear her grandmother yelling again. She didn’t know what set it off, but her grandmother recited a thirty-years-long list of everything Becky had ever done to disappoint her. She held a grudge like it was heirloom jewelry.

Becky was distraught for a week, but within three she was talking with her mother again, trying once more to win her approval not in spite of what her mother had done but as though it had never happened. She blocked that part of the day from her mind; it became to her another in a long line of wonderful family holidays.

Becky didn’t forgive her mother; she so badly wanted to believe her mother loved her, was proud of her, accepted her that it was as though her brain willfully forgot or at least subsumed the negative memories so that in her mind there was nothing to forgive, and soon again, Becky was back with her hand out and her heart on her sleeve, trying once more to get that approval. She never did believe that her mother was just not a good person because she didn’t want to believe that. If she had, she may have finally realized the approval of a person like that is not worth having.

Amanda knew her grandmother was unkind, but not that she was cruel. Becky never told Amanda because she hadn’t allowed herself to believe it. So Amanda only saw the cycle of a child perpetually seeking acceptance from her parent. She understood the dynamic: you can abuse a dog, and it will come back to you anyway. So, too, with some parents and children. It was hard for Amanda to watch and would have been harder if she knew the entire history. She acted as a buffer when she could; if she had known, she’d have acted as a barrier instead. But ultimately, the relationship was between Becky and Dana. Only they could fix it, or more likely leave it behind for good.

If Jamie knew, he’d forgive Becky. How much easier his job would have been if the children he pulled from abusive homes did not love their parents. How much easier it would have been to keep them separated if the parents did not believe they loved their children. Not knowing, he forgave her anyway.

Amanda sat in silence questioning how to put a stop to the pattern they seemed stuck in with Jamie. Having reached the point where everything worked so well between the three of them, it seemed they couldn’t have someone to their home or leave the house but that Jamie was made in lesser or greater degrees to feel as though he wasn’t understood or seen or respected. In a few days, she’d be in class and her mom would be at work, and Jamie would be among strangers. Whereas she had felt nervous before today, she now felt frightened. If he was only safe in their home, Amanda knew, then no, they wouldn’t be able to help him.

“Mom, why don’t you go take a shower? Maybe a nap, too. I’ll take him.” Becky acquiesced and passed Jamie’s sleeping body to Amanda.

That evening, Becky let Jamie stay up late. He finally saw the night sky unfiltered through a window, all the stars that surrounded his new world.

Dana called Amanda. She ignored the call. Dana texted her; there was no apology in it; just more bullshit about Jamie needing to forget who he had been and accept what he now was. “That’s what you do with littles,” it read. Amanda blocked her number.

The house phone rang. It was Daniel. “Hey, big sis. Mom just tried to give me an earful.” He sounded chipper; he understood everything Amanda did not. Becky tried to protect him all those years, and in return he tried to make her feel all the things she should have felt from her mother and emotionally absent father.

“Yeah, what’d she have to say?”

“No idea. I cut her off.”

“And?”

“And told her whatever happened, I’m on your side.”

Becky’s voice quivered. “I love you, Danny.”

“I love you, too, Becky. You’ll call me if you need anything?”

The words felt so good they hurt. Becky held her breath to let the emotion pass, and taking in one breath of air answered, “Yes.” She cleared her nose.

“Listen. Laurie and I’ve been talking. We want to be more involved. Can we talk about it this week?”

“Of course.”

“Alright. Talk to you soon, sis. Give him a kiss for me.” Danny hung up; Becky put the phone down. Her throat hurt from the stone lump that had been there ever since she got home. It was late.

The three of them had no interest in mourning. They found reasons to laugh together instead, ending up on the floor of Jamie’s room, all of them building a house with his blocks.

The phone rang again. It was too late for anybody to be calling.

“You don’t have to tonight, Mom,” Amanda told Becky. Jamie felt self-conscious.

Becky hadn’t been sure what she’d say to her mother that afternoon when she threw her out. Her instinct those hours ago was to try to teach her mother what she had done wrong, try to reason with her, try to smooth things over and move on. Becky looked at the building blocks they were playing with, the home they were building together taking shape, and then at Amanda and Jamie. Her babies. She answered the phone.

“We’re done. You’re not welcome in this house, near me, near Amanda, or near Jamie.”

She hung up. Amanda reached over and patted her mother’s knee. Jamie knew what a hard thing that was to do.

Becky had a lot to say to her mother if she cared to say it. She didn’t care to; she said only what was important. She had absorbed a lot of hurt over her years from the one place she was supposed to receive only love. Why she’d been willing to do it, or even that she had been an unconsciously willing participant in it, she didn’t understand. If Dana had transgressed against her alone one more time, nothing would have changed. She’d be upset only so long as it took for her mind to push the memory aside in favor of the part of her that yearned for the maternal approval she would never get. It had blinded her to the dangers of trying to make Dana a part of Jamie’s life. She was madder at herself than her mother.

“I’m sorry, Jamie. I’m so sorry.” No tears, just soft words. “I didn’t think … I wanted her to … It was just for a morning. I thought … To a little. Just that she’d be … kind to a little. My little.”

Jamie moved over to Becky and hugged her. He knew what she needed to hear. He gave it to her not because she needed it, though, but because he wanted to give it. “I forgive you.”

Only the forgiveness of those we love can heal all the parts of our souls we cannot mend ourselves. Jamie knew from the long life he’d lived in his few years that this is one of our needs, at least one and heaven willing many who see us for what we are and are not, forgive what we do and do not, our faults and defects, because in their great love for us, they offer us their mercy and absolution and expect nothing in return.

Jamie knew this. He gave so freely of this grace, he could even forgive Dana. He did, but he would not forget.