Pancakes and Parenting

In relation to my post about search engine antics, someone in Australia came to my blog today by Googling "re-parenting ourselves".

I not only find this concept interesting, in my case, it is totally necessary.

I know I've written about the fact that my childhood was unstable and confusing. It's almost ironic that, after years of trying to hide/bury/suffocate it so I wouldn't be guilty by association, I find it so cathartic to post it on the world wide web.

Because my mom was quite the party girl, our home was consumed with beer cans, vodka bottles, pot bongs and cocaine trays. As a little girl, I would tiptoe to the kitchen in the morning, (careful to step around the strangers - last night's company - who were passed out on the floor) where I would make my cereal, often pulling a blackened spoon out of the drawer. I was never comfortable in my own environment but the real pain came when I began spending the night with other girls and realized that this was not standard parental behavior.

It all started in the second grade when I made friends with a girl named Heather who lived in a beautiful, four story brick home with an in-ground pool and four dogs. I remember she had a chandelier and a balcony IN HER BEDROOM. This made visiting Heather fun but it's not what made me jealous...

On my first Saturday morning to wake up in Heather's house, we rose early and bounded down the stairs toward the family den. At first, I thought the aroma was just the pleasant scent of their home but when we rounded the corner of the dining room and entered the kitchen, I could hardly believe my eyes - there was Heather's mom, preparing homemade pancakes for the family (at 7:30 AM on a Saturday!) and she was already dressed, showered even. I remember standing on the cool tile of their kitchen floor and falling quiet. I was caught up in the moment, suspended in disbelief.

That night, as I lay in my bed listening to my mother and stepfather's drunken argument escalate into another fist fight, I thought of the pancakes. Did her mom make them every morning? Surely not. What about every Saturday? My own mother never crawled out of bed before noon. I decided that Heather's mom probably made the pancakes on my behalf - because Heather had company. I knew it was unlikely that my mother would do the same if Heather were to spend the night with me but perhaps that was the only difference between my mom and hers. Between my life and hers.

Over the course of the next five years, however, I ate a lot pancakes at Heather's. It didn't take long for me to realize that her household was different from mine in every way - I just couldn't understand why. Why couldn't my mom rise on Saturday morning, fresh faced and smelling wonderfully, smiling from ear to ear as she asked me how many pancakes I thought I could eat and then hum to herself as she flipped each one? It hardly seemed fair.

It wasn't.

It's also not fair that, at 16, I had to figure out how to mother my own child when I never had a mother. I had no recollection of softness, warmth, or security to draw upon. My own needs as a child had not been met. Although unfulfilled, I was in a position where I had to give everything I had (and then some) leaving me in an emotional state of perpetual withdrawals and negative balances.

And it's not fair that, to this day, my mother has never apologized. "I know I wasn't perfect. I made mistakes", she'll say "but you turned out just fine." I wouldn't even mind her rationalization if only I got credit for it. But I don't. Somehow, somewhere, she thinks she did something right.

The unfairness hurt when it was new and it hurts just as much now to sit with it and remember.

That's where my "re-parenting" comes in. Eventually, I have to come to terms with it all. I know my mom is sorry, even if she never says so. The pain she must feel apparently overwhelms the courage it would take to truly own the circumstances. But I do forgive her.

I forgive her so that I no longer have to be affected by her choices, so that I no longer have to feel controlled by her chaos. I forgive her because I want to spend the emotional energy she would otherwise claim giving myself all of the things I never got from her; reassurance, unconditional love, stability, structure, hope. I would rather invest in re-parenting myself than spend another day angry and hurt over my mother.

I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I don't want to feel sorry for myself anymore. I'm tired of licking those wounds and keeping them fresh and tender.

But - if it makes me feel good, if it bandages something inside me, I will still allow myself the sense of well-being and contentment from rising early on a Saturday morning to fill my home and my family with the smell, the warmth and the love of homemade pancakes.