This article first appeared on Ravishly.com.
In 2005, I was a 31-year-old mother of three. My daughter was ten, my oldest sons five and seven.
On an August afternoon, I found the boys in a hurricane of kicks and slaps, a violent disagreement over something simple, Legos or Hot Wheels. I can’t remember which; it doesn’t matter. I raised my voice, yelling, STOP.
Despite my clenched fists, my volume, the anger in my eyes and in my scowl, their fighting continued.
My rage reached boiling. I don’t know why, of any fight, this fight was the fight that broke me, but it did. I picked up a wooden chair near the door and brought it down on the hardwood floor in a crash, splinters flying, the wooden-plank flooring scratched, marred from the leg of the chair and my rage.
The boys’ expressions were frozen in terror, their bodies frozen in fear. The fighting stopped.
♦♦♦
In the summer of 1983, my best friend ever in the entire universe came to my house for a sleepover. My house was the best house for sleepovers. I had Twinkies and microwave popcorn, Fruit Roll-Ups and A&W Root Beer — all the things nine-year-old dreams are made of.
The cabinets were organized alphabetically; Twinkies by the Triscuits, popcorn by the Pasta-Roni. The punishment for disrupting my mother’s organizational schematic was severe. I didn’t dare disturb the rows.
I had a daisy comforter and three decorative pillows that matched my lime green headboard. I had my own black and white TV and eight Cabbage Patch dolls. My mum would sometimes be gone all night — my friends knew this, their parents did not. This only made my house better.
Top Comments
My wife's mother suffers with mental illness. All the children are grown adults now. But their childhood was horrible, there was no mothering at all, of the children that is. It was like an abusive home in that they never knew what was going to happen next, that everything could crumble at a moments notice. The unpredictability eroded trust and now their adult relationship with their mother is very fractured. If you can, get help before having children. It could be the difference between having a relationship with them or not.