Oh, damn it.

I just got a text message from my sister: "I guess you didn't get my email. (Niece) is going in for surgery tomorrow."

So, I called. Obviously. My sister told me that my 7 year-old niece is going to have three moles removed from her scalp tomorrow morning... They'll require stitches, and the doctors will have to shave her head in a couple of places to remove them.

She's scared, because she's never had stitches and she's afraid it will hurt. And how that breaks my heart, I can't even say.

The moles will be sent in for tests, and then we'll know more in 14 or more days. I stopped listening after 'fourteen' because seriously? Fourteen days to hear back about whether or not a little girl has cancer? So I don't know how many more than fourteen days we might have to wait. I do know that skin cancer runs in my sister's father's side of the family (we have the same mother) and that my sister has had to have several moles removed in her life, "just to be safe." I know that skin cancer is the leading cause of death in her father's family. I know my sister is afraid, and trying not to be.

I'm trying really hard not to furiously pepper big, terrified F bombs all over this. I just found out, and the baby is sleeping, and I'm trying to work my mind around the fact that we live in a world where things like this happen so I wanted to write about it... I wanted to try to work it out, and I kind of need help to do that. I know that bad things happen, and they happen to sweet, sweet little girls. Maybe not this one, though, I keep telling myself to shut up and remember that we don't know anything yet.

Let me tell you something about this girl. She giggles CONSTANTLY. I mean that seriously. It's constant. At first it comes off as a nervous habit, but if you know her you know that she laughs all the time because she's just that happy. She's really, really happy... And she's a cuddle bug. The child is never happier than when she's in someone's arms, or holding your hand, or sitting on your lap. She loves everything and everyone SO MUCH. She's a sweet, darling little girl, and she's scared right now because she's going to do something very hard tomorrow and she doesn't want it to hurt.

I don't want her to hurt. I don't want this to be the kind of world where sweet little girls have to do scary things.

I don't mean to be one of those people that goes onto their tiny little blog and asks the four readers she has to send happy thoughts to a stranger, but please... Please, if you pray, could you do that? If you have a spare happy thought, could you send it? It can just be tiny, and general, aimed at all of the nameless, sweet little girls out there. Because good thoughts can never hurt, and prayers are never things that can do any harm, right? And she's just so little. She's just a little girl.

(Look at that, two posts in one day. Wish it had just been the one, but I'm kind of panicked and The Boy isn't here to talk to me and did I mention she's just little? And our mother died of cancer? And oh, damn it.)

Fear.

Turns out, I really was in early labor. I didn't mean to leave anyone hanging, it's just that I've been kind of occupied with this little ball of baby boy, and that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for writing.

More than the physical and mental occupation with our son, I'll be honest and just put it out there that I'm terrified. I can't say it anywhere else without people looking at me like I might be too overwhelmed and at risk of throwing the baby out on trash day. (Which, let me be clear, is not what's happening here.) I'm just... it's just a lot. It's more than I thought it would be, and it's harder than I imagined, and I'm scared. When I say I'm scared, people look at me like I need medication. Maybe I do, I don't know, but the details are as follows:

My son was born a month early, at 5lbs 3oz... (I did it on my own, by the way. No medication, 12 hours of contractions 1 minute long/2 minutes apart, 2 hours of active pushing. I'm kind of proud of that.) He dropped to 5lbs 4oz, and was hardly maintaining there for a week... He had one bowel movement in the first two weeks, which is highly unusual, and we had to start supplementing with formula because I was starving my son by breastfeeding exclusively. And holy shit, can I just say that hurts so incredibly bad to even TYPE, no wonder people don't want to hear me SAY it...

Now at a month old, he's up to 6lbs 6oz, which is almost the size of a 'normal' newborn. I thank God every twenty seconds that he's growing... But his stomach is a mystery that the doctors can't crack. He screams for hours in obvious pain, and is constipated terribly. We've tried every stupid thing they can throw at us, even giving him diluted juice and Karo syrup in an attempt to give him diarrhea. So yeah, we're trying to make him sick to make him better... Again, I can hardly even type those words... Now the doctors are throwing around words like "barium" and "extensive tests" and "possible intestinal abnormalities" and I want to throw myself into fucking traffic because this can't be happening. It has to be a dream, and everyone knows that if you die in a dream you wake up. Or is it that you die in your sleep? Either way... Anything would be better than this not knowing, this inability to help my son.

He's just so little, yaknow..? He's so small, and he's in so much pain, and they aren't helping him, and I just want to scream ALL THE TIME. Babies aren't supposed to know pain. We're supposed to be able to protect them - I'm supposed to be able to protect him - and I can't. And I'm afraid this is what insanity feels like. A month is hardly any length of time in the big scheme of things, but it's an eternity when there's no sleep for you (literally three hours a night, that's how much sleep I'm getting) and no relief for your child. A month is forever.

So if there's no improvement by tomorrow I have to take him to the hospital, and I can't even think about what that means right now. I just keep staring at him, thinking stupidly that if I stare hard enough I'll be able to figure out what's the matter and fix it. I stare and hope and pray, and I hold my fucking breath until I think I'm going to die because its all I can do. And it's not enough.

That's what I've been up to... What about everyone else? What's been going on outside this tiny universe of mine?

I said the F word in a funeral home. A LOT.

Last Sunday I found out my dad died. I found this out the same way I always find out things of this nature - my older sister told me. People tell her and have her tell me, because... I don't know why. But they always tell her first, and leave my finding out up to her.



I was at work when The Older emailed me and asked me to take a break so she could call my cell. I said hey, no problem, and ran down the hall to the locker room. As I was sitting down to pee, I called my sister. She answered the phone crying, and I told her to take a deep breath and not say a word, because whatever this news was, I wasn't going to get it on the toilet.



After I was situated on a bench I told her it was okay, whatever it was, and that I wanted to hear her breathe for me. Big, deep breaths. After she did this for a few minutes, I told her to go ahead, but take it easy. (I can't stand to hear her upset. It murders my soul.) She told me between sobs that our dad was dead. I knew the news was coming, because there was nothing else that could have upset her this way unless it was news about our other sister or her children, which I would have gotten first because I'm closer to The Oldest than she is. I stupidly asked if she was serious, which appears to be my stock asshole response when I'm getting "So-and-so Is Dead" news, and told her it was okay. I told her to breathe. I stared at the tiled floor while the news tried to beat its way into my brain, while it tried to wring some sort of reaction from me. The Older noticed my lack of appropriately upset reaction and commented on it, making me feel about thisbig as I told her, "I'm at work."



It was all I could think to say.



It is my job to keep people calm in crisis. In order to do what I do, you fabricate around yourself a shell that is nigh on impenetrable. You do this to preserve yourself against the absolute horror that can come with what I do. That shell is most of the reason I did not react, I think. I hope. I hope the reason for my lack of reaction didn't have something to do with the shitty state of my relationship with my father, although if I'm being honest, I know that it did, at least a little. I know there was some shock there, although his health was TERRIBLE and certainly this did not come as a true surprise... Death is always a shock. It's so sudden, so permanent. And so, I focused on talking my sister through her grief and panic, because for whatever reason, it's what I could do at the time.



I went back into my office, asked my boss very calmly if he could get someone to cover the rest of my shift because my father was dead. He didn't seem to hear me, then turned and looked at my face, as if to see if I was serious. My phone was still to my ear as I looked at him, my skull filled with the sound of my sister crying on the other end of the line. I said, "I'm sorry," but to whom, I don't know. It was all I could think to say...



The Boy showed up then- turns out The Older had called him before she called me, out of concern for my reaction to the news and the affect it might have on the pregnancy. He found me kneeling in the dark in another office, staring at the carpet and trying stupidly to comfort my sister over the phone. He pulled a chair over, sat down with his legs on either side of me, and there in the shelter of him the tears finally came.



The next couple of days are a blur. We wound up in our home town, where we picked The Older up at the airport. The morning after that there was the funeral home to visit, details to tack down that could not be finalized long-distance via phone or fax. I learned, not unexpectedly, that my father had not had one cent of life insurance, nor had he made any sort of realistic arrangements for his death at all. (My uncle's ex wife had gone and gotten all kinds of papers for him, filled them out, and taken them to his apartment. She'd explained that all he had to do was sign those papers, and the government would give him life insurance. They would pay for his many, many medications. He would have nurses that would come to the apartment and check on him, they would make sure he was okay. The drawback would be that my dad would receive a few dollars less a month in Social Security, which would be more than made up for in the deferred cost of his meds. The papers were never seen again. He made no effort to even sign his name.)



My dad had been in congestive heart failure for over ten years. He'd been told by every specialist, general practitioner, nurse, whomever that he'd ever seen, "You're not going to live much longer." How could he? He was poisoning himself with everything he ate or drank. It was some strange miracle of luck that he'd managed to live as long as he had. He knew he was going to die, and soon. He could not have thought otherwise, and did not think otherwise, as evidenced by a comment from his own lips not so very long ago in response to the question, "Who do you think it will fall on when you die? Who do you think will be responsible for handling that?"



His answer? "What do I care? I'll be dead."



With no wife to shoulder the burden, he knew it would fall on The Older and myself. With The Older not having had a paying job in quite some time (She is the primary caretaker for her fiance's very ill mother, and cannot be away from the house for stretches of time, so this is more than understandable,) he knew it would fall on me, the daughter that was not his daughter, more by his own doing than genetics ever could have accomplished alone.



So there I sat, at this table, across from a mortician that seemed to have a Jones for very large numbers. I stared at him quietly as he explained that the stiff cardboard box they used to transport my dad's corpse to the crematorium cost more than 200 dollars. (A box. A cardboard box. Worth 200 dollars.) The transportation fee itself was enough to boggle the mind, not to mention the cost of the urn or the memorial pamphlets that had been printed up, apparently using pure gold leaf as paper, and the blood of infant angels as ink. I sat very, very quietly, staring at the ever growing numbers. I did not make a sound.



And I got angry. I got angry because, as terrible as it is to admit, I resented that as the daughter with the shitty relationship with this man, who was not my biological father and had never treated me as an equal child to begin with, I was staring down the barrel of a six thousand-dollar gun while trying to save for the birth and future of my unborn child. I got angry because not once in his life had he ever done anything responsible, and it never kept him up for one second at night how his childish ways hurt the people that had to make up for them. I got angry because he was a PARENT and should have done MORE, because we were good, dutiful children and deserved more. I got angry because The Older started crying again, as I (the youngest) signed papers and prepared to shoulder a very heavy financial burden that she could not help with, and so she was being crushed by a guilt I could not sooth with words or actions, and the inability to save her from that feeling ENRAGED ME. I got angry because ANGER is not the response a person should have when sitting in a funeral home trying to iron out the details of a parent's final arrangements. I got angry because what I wanted more than anything in the world right then was to punch the funeral director in the throat and chuck that fucking over priced urn through a window, and I am not proud of that.



The Boy tapped my shoulder, asked me to step out of the room with him. I snarked, "I don't want to step out of the room. I want to fucking leave." He asked me again, very softly, to step into the hall. So I did. Of course I did.



And then I lost my ever-loving mind. He hugged me while I scream-whispered about how my dad was a selfish, heartless fuck who never thought of anyone but himself for one second of his life, and how were we going to do this with a baby? He held my hand while I asked over and over and over, "Who DOES this to their kids? Who fucking DOES this to people they're supposed to love?" He told me it would be okay, that he would write a check right then to pay for half, when I started hyperventilating again about how we're having a baby, I can't afford this with a baby, oh my god, THE BABY. He soothed me when I demanded if he'd seen the look on The Older's face, the one that suggested she was either going to throw up or kill herself right there, and how could someone do that to her?



I said 'fuck' more times than I can remember.



My sister and uncle came out of the office eventually with the funeral director in sheepish tow, and explained to me that since our dad had been a resident of the same county for the last 40 years, that county might be willing to help defer some of the funeral costs if we could find certain information. They needed his social security card, a copy of his lease, any titles he might possess, bank statements, etc. I growled that we would never find those things, as the man had never kept any sort of responsible record. They insisted we try, and so we went to his apartment.



Walking into the room where my dad died had absolutely no affect on me. I looked at the chair his body was found in, and wondered if he had been comfortable. I hoped that he had. The Boy and The Older went to search our dad's vehicle while The Uncle and myself poked around the apartment. Long story short: We found what we needed. The county deferred close to four thousand dollars of the funeral cost, and I was absolutely floored.



I cannot describe how grateful I was and am that a system exists to assist people with this burden. While The Boy and I could have paid the full cost, it would have put us in a precarious position, one where ANY unexpected cost would have put us very, very close to being shit out of luck monetarily. The fact that we were not put in that position but instead are still able to pay our medical bills and our house payment without having to beg, borrow and steal, is something I will never stop being thankful for.



Things I will never, ever forget or find my way around to accepting:

-The fact that my father was selfish down to his last atom, and his self absorption was entirely complete and unrelenting. This was evidenced not only by the total lack of insurance, etc, but more so by the *very large* quantity of something he should not have had that was found in his apartment. He had it and knew that if anything happened to him we would find it, and didn't care what that would do to my sister, how it would hurt her to know that he had been such a different person than she thought he was.


-The way a business or industry can capitalize on the misfortune of those that have lost a family member or loved one, going so far as to QUADRUPLE their cost and absolutely ROB people blind.

-Finding the papers my aunt had gathered for him, the papers that simply required a signature to insure his life, shoved in the back of a drawer in the kitchen and forgotten.

-My surprisingly violent reaction to the above three points.

-The fact that my sister will form this experience into a club and use it to bludgeon herself for the rest of her life, feeling guilty for not being able to help do what needed to be done, because he couldn't be responsible for himself and keep that burden from her shoulders.

-Going into false labor as soon as we got home. Having contractions and mind bending nausea for hour after hour because my body was coming down from the stress of the last week. Being so thankful that it stopped because, although my baby could be born now and survive, he needs more time. Don't we all need more time?

-That the predominant emotion associated with this whole shebang, for me, was anger and frustration. Anger that my father, who I loved deeply despite how I know it seems, could not care enough for his daughter - The Older - to take care of himself, or at least be marginally responsible for her sake. Anger that I'm angry, because it's easier than being sad for him and my sister and myself. Frustration that everything he ever said or did seems like lie after lie, in the current light, and he said he'd never lie to us.

My childhood was dark. Literally.

My first memory is of heat and yellow-orange shadows flitting through stained glass, cool mesh pressed against my too-warm cheeks because it felt nice. There is the soft, faded smell of pipe smoke and wood polish. I can hear people, though I never see them, and am content.

I asked my mother about this years ago, and she said that when I was a baby, I would sit in the old play-pen in my grandmother’s sitting room with the lights turned off, pressing my face to the side. (The lights were off because the house was ANCIENT and did not have air conditioning. Also, there was very little insulation in the walls, and the ceilings were incredibly high. None of this lent itself towards keeping heat out or in. The pipe smoke was a reminent from my grandfather, who had died 15 years before.) She mentioned in an off-hand way, through a blue-silver shimmer of cigarette smoke, that we must certainly have a picture of it somewhere, as I did this face pressing thing all the time. This never turned out to be true because there exist no pictures of me as a baby. Probably she meant to take one upon catching me with my wee baby face mooshed against the side of the play pen, but didn’t have a camera on hand. (I don’t think we had a camera.)

In any case, she said I was one or two years old when this memory must have planted itself in my brain. She said the play-pen was one of those dangerous old metal and mesh contraptions with the baby-killing collapsible sides. I also remember pinching my fingers in the hinges, and pulling it down on myself more than once. Somewhere in all of this, I remember the heavy, erratic thud-thumping of my older (younger) sister storming around the house. The sound is of her full-leg casts pounding against the hard wood floors, and is often punctuated by her sweet baby laughter.

**

My mind skips ahead from there. Again it is dark, and this time the darkness is complete except for candle and day light. Instead of stifling heat, it's always slightly cold now. This is due to our electricity being turned off more often than not, despite the fact that our mother works 3 jobs, 20 hours a day to provide for us. It’s two years after the hot, shaded comfort of my grandmother’s house.

My sisters are there, and any time I go to this period in my life I am overwhelmed with a bone-crushing love for my older (younger) sister. I can see her as she was then, almost-black hair down her back, thick bangs straight across her sweet, pale, round face. Too blue eyes staring wide and innocent out at the world. She was maybe four years old, and already terribly kind and thoughtful. (This is how she still looks to me inside, how she looks to my soul, if that makes any sense.) She was my first friend, my best friend, and I was her shadow. She was everything to me. We played happily, constantly.

I remember our oldest sister, too, but in stark contrast to The Older… The Oldest scowled, was frequently too harsh with her words and hands, and was tasked too often with watching her nuisance siblings, 15 years her junior.

I see our mother in this chunk of time only briefly, fleetingly, and am stricken by how beautiful and perfect she was. (The knowledge that I realized even then that she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever see comforts me, as it comforted her when I relayed the childhood observation to her twenty years after it had occurred to me, whispered against her hand as she lay in the hospital, dying, though we didn’t yet know it.)

We lived in a small trailer, the four of us, and my toddler bed was in the closet of the room my sisters and I shared. I had a long yellow blanket with white fringe trim that I dragged with me everywhere, which bore a redish-pink stain from the time I used The Oldest’s favorite fingernail polish to paint part of our bedroom wall. I thought it would make her happy. It most decidedly did not.

***

At the very end of this cold, dark period, I see my mother in a wooden dining chair (or a large, black chair. The memory wavers on this one detail alone,) she is crumpled and crying. Her hands shake as they cover her face. The Oldest is sitting in the corner, curled into another chair, glaring out at the world but seeming for once less aggressive and more wounded. More human. As our mother cries, I curl myself around one of her legs and tell her it’s going to be alright, and that I love her. She cries harder, wracked with these animalistic sobs, and the man we call my father appears in the doorway to take The Older and I away. This is my memory of my mother’s first psychotic break in my lifetime.

(To be continued..)

Pray for us sinners, now and in the nursery full of cloth diapers.

So, The Boy went outside today and ran into our neighbors to the South. We know them- we work with The Mr. occasionally on a professional basis, and are passing hi-how-are-ya nodders with The Mrs. I'll mention quickly that no one has ever met The Boy and failed to love him and find him engaging and charming. Uh. Ever. He's like a cobra, the way he hypnotizes people into worshiping him, which is funny because The Mr. is a pastor. Or... Preacher. Or something. He's a guy at a church. I don't know which church, so I don't know the correct title, but you get me. And The Mrs. is heavily (heavily, heavily, heavily) involved with the church, as well.

This is all well and good. We don't care. We rather like them and all of their super holy judginess, although I have frequently guessed that The Mrs. is more than a little uncomfortable with us right next door, sinning it up. She's never said anything. She's very sweet. But I often picture her over there in her house coat (and bonnet? I don't know why,) praying for our immortal souls.

So today, The Boy is standing there talking over the hedge, like they do on Leave It To Beaver or whatever, and notices that The Mrs. has a pretty package in her hand. "Going to a birthday party?" he inquires.

"No." She says.

Here, we insert a long, awkward pause. (This is all second hand from The Boy, and he is not given to exaggeration. When he says there was a good couple of minutes full of pointed, eerie silence, he means it.) The Mrs. stares at The Boy, and The Mr. shuffles his feet uncomfortably. Well, okay. No explanation, nothing further at all. The Boy rather got the impression that she was intentionally not elaborating on her negation for some reason.

Finally, The Mrs. says, "How's your girlfriend? And the baby?"

The Boy, being sweet, misses the tone and says, "Oh, she's great. The baby's going good, just had an appointment. He's kicking and healthy and-"

"Oh, good. We're off to Bible Study now." Interjects The Mrs. with obviously arched eyebrows and bulging eyes, turning on her heel and walking away.

When The Boy related this story to me, I almost choked to death on my Sprite because really? REALLY? Why didn't she just come out and say that she wouldn't be giving notice of her whereabouts to any ungodly terrorists such as ourselves, and ask us how our premarital sex was going? I don't know, maybe we left the window open one night and she could hear us thumping away in there, but I've never met someone so off-put by the living situation of her neighbors. Sure, we're young and unmarried and pregnant. But she's holy and old and judgemental, and you don't see us getting all up in HER grill about it.

So, whatever. Apparently we're adding the neighbors to the list of people we need to explain ourselves to. On the top of that list is every member of The Boy's family, each balancing one toe over the fucking line and trying my patience on a bi-weekly basis.

Maybe I've been an orphan for too long, so I've just grown accustom to making my own choices and not having to detail the why's and what for's of every move I make. I don't know. Maybe I'm just a crabby bitch. But man, do I get tired of having to tip toe through the tulips with these people, afraid to offend them with my "earth mother" sensibilities.

One of the big choices I feel like I have to justify is the Cloth Diaper (DUN DUN DUUUUUUN) Issue. You'd think everyone would be all gung-ho about it, because there's nothing wrong in the world with cloth diapers. They've never hurt anyone, they don't break into your house and hold you at knife point, demanding the combination to your safe. So you'd THINK that we'd all be excited about the totally harmless, happy little endeavor. But no. Apparently, here in the upper Midwest, we're more than a little terrified of things that are New and Different (or old? Because not so many years ago everyone used cloth? Hello?) and the Dirty Hippies that try to infiltrate our families.

I'm the dirty hippy here, if you're not tracking. I didn't want to lose anyone. Because I've never killed anything with my bare hands, I guess.

Honest to god, when I mentioned the cloth diaper plan to The Boy's mother, I could almost hear her brain petrifying. Why on Earth would someone want to do something differently than she had? Because different is wrong. AND HIPPIES ARE FROM HELL. Go brand a cow, you pansy ass tree hugger, YARR! (So I guess in my mind pirates are the back woods farmer type?)

Feh. Whatever, I don't understand the problem. To me, there is no problem. I'm really, really excited about doing cloth, and I feel great about the decision to do it. I want to do it very badly. I haven't yet ordered the diapers, but I think I've settled on the Fuzzibunz one-size. I only mention this because, okay, I'm a freeloading jerkface, and there's a wonderful blog (http://pacingthepanicroom.blogspot.com/) that is right now, right this moment, threatening to give away a whole MESS of FB one-size diapers to people who link to the FB cite. And man, I could use that. We aren't destitute, but cloths are a little expensive to get up and going, and with this economy... well, you know the rest.

So yeah. The innitial investment is kind of a chunk of change, (But MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS THAN THE COST OF DISPOSABLES OVER TIME) and it'd be nice to have that cost differed. So I figured I'd link to the FB cite (Fuzzibunz.com) and throw my hat into the ring.

Because you know what would REALLY get The Boy's mom's short and curlies in a knot? If her tree-hugging someday-to-be daughter-in-law got her hippy diapers for FREE! And in all seriousness, I think they have a great product going over at FB, so I want to help get the word out. It isn't that I think people who use disposables are doing something wrong, not at all. I just like the idea of doing cloths for ME, PERSONALLY, with MY (still unborn, but not for too much longer) kid. It feels good. It's a choice I feel really solid about, and it irks my tater that TBM feels the need to drag me down about it.

Much like my neighbors and their fear of premarital sex and childbirth out of wedlock.

I mean, really. What gives, people?

(Seriously, with The Boy's Mom -- I've gotten to the point that I don't even talk about the parenting choices we intend to make. Don't even get me started on circumsision and how last Wednesday her skull cap blew off and knocked a hole the size of a Mercedes in our drywall. Holy crap.)

We had it rough.

My mother and I had it rough.

I think I was so hard for her because I was sort of a pre-death reincarnation of herself. Also, the subject of my birth and origins was a touchy one -- who do I come from, why won't you tell me, what would people say if I told them my husband wasn't your father? and I think it was a source of some embarrassment for her, to say the least. Not to mention constant aggravation once I realized the truth and started routinely begging for confirmation from her, which was always denied. She was too proud, and the truth hurt too much. I understood that and respected it. It was one of her many boundaries, and I could not force her into allowing me to cross it.

But man, I loved that woman. I loved her so much, it still aches inside of me. There's this place that was hollowed out, carved raw and left pulsing when she died. It takes my breath away sometimes, remembering out of nowhere that she's dead. (Not gone. Dead.) She was all I had, in a way. I don't know who my birth father is, and realized that at a very young age- so she was the well, the source, the only beginning, the entire history. I had so much - too much? - invested in her and our relationship, that it probably became difficult for her to live up to any of my expectations.

It was hard for my mother to live up to expectations in general. She had various and sundry medical conditions bouncing around inside her skull, some diagnosed, some not, but all adding just a pinch of disorder to situations that were commonplace for others. This included relations with the people around her - it's obviously going to be difficult for a very paranoid person to carry on a 'normal' relationship with someone, you understand. Or for someone with mild schizophrenia to view or handle routine circumstances with any degree of predictability.

Aside from her specific mental issues, her personality made it hard for her to sustain meaningful relationships. She hated birthdays, LOATHED Christmas. Any time someone expected something of her, she felt suffocated and resentful, like she had to arch and buck away from whatever she felt was binding her... be it social constructs or obligations, or her children...

See, there's not much difference between a friend wanting you to do something for them and a child expecting or needing a certain action. Not to someone like my mother. All of it boiled down to the same things: Constraint, obligation, expectations. Need. Demand. Want. All of it was often too much. It strained her.

And so, we had it rough. My older (younger?) sister has always been far more demanding emotionally than I am, far more needy than me. This was allowed and encouraged because there was something different and beautiful about her, something special and specific and queer. Something she could love without resentment. I observed this at a very young age - 3? 4? - and knew that while it was all I wanted in the world, to be adored the way my sister was by our mother, it would not be tolerated from me or anyone else. My mother needed me to be independent, needed me to stand alone. And so I did, because I loved her so much.

Over the years it became my responsibility to protect my older (younger. I always want to say younger. But she's not, she's 13 months older. Older, older, older,) sister, because her sweet nature left her needing protection and because it was what I could do for them both. Act as a buffer between my lovely (I say that without an ounce of sarcasm- she is everything good in the world, and I adore her completely) sister and the world around her, thus keeping the one thing my mother treasured above all else safe. It was what I did. It is what I do still. It is what I love and resent, this role I was obliged to take but now wouldn't know how to abandon.

By the time I was old enough to look my mother in the eye flat-foot, I started hearing you're too hard, you're too much work to love, I love you because I have to, because I'm your mother and I'm supposed to... by that time she had come around to brutal honesty because my personality and our likeness frustrated and often infuriated her, leaving her without any other weapon to wound me with. So she told me frequently and in great, imaginative detail how she hated what she had made me into.

It didn't matter, not really. I mean, at the time I could have killed her and never been sorry, just to stop the noise. But I didn't kill her, or even so much as raise a hand to her, because I loved her so fiercely that it was all I could to hate myself for not ever, ever being what she needed.

I only ever wanted to help her and never could have REALLY fathomed acting out against her, nor she against me. On my end this restraint was born of love and difference, the desire to keep her safe and happy.

My mother's restraint was a little bit different. By the time her Daily Rundown of Shit I Did Wrong (To Include Breathing and Blinking Occasionally) started, I was taller than she was by several inches, not that size tempered her fury much as it broke like waves against me. What kept her always raging at arm's length was that I could (did not frequently, but could) look at her without expression or reaction to the things she was doing or saying. I would watch her closely - you could never be certain she wasn't going to reach for a knife, although she only did once - and the more attention I paid, the more brightly her rage burned. She hated that I did not turn away from her. She longed to make everyone turn away so that she could be left alone with her self-loathing, without external expectations. She wanted badly to push us all away, occasionally desired to cause an emotional pain that could not be recovered from so that we would only hate her and leave her to hate herself.

But I could not turn away from her. How could I? Even in her fits, her frustration, her terrible anger at me that was brought on by nothing other than that we'd had the misfortune of my being born to her, she was beautiful. She was captivating to me. She was all I had, and I could no more leave her there to commit emotional suicide than I could slit her wrists myself. I knew even when she was tearing me apart at the seams that she loved me... She just didn't know what to do with it. And because I did not and could not turn my back on her, she could never summon the courage to strike me with any real determination. Having been terribly abused and tortured by her first husband, she could not wound the one that looked at her with only concern, love, and confusion in her eyes.

And so we had it rough. Me, constantly trying to keep her in check. Her, forever trying to thrust me away by any means necessary so that she could just be left the fuck alone already. My anger, frustration, FURY would occasionally rise to meet hers, but mostly I could not match the passion with which she threw herself into destroying me.

It was an odd thing. I know my mother loved me intensely. I know she was proud of me because she would say so occasionally, after I got older and moved out from under her feet. When we could breathe without the taste of each other's exhaled breath in our mouths, we found that we liked one another quite a lot. I was shocked at how easily I could surprise her into laughing with me, absolutely blown apart and rebuilt the first time I saw in her face a love that was untempered by frustration or anger. I can still see that expression in my mind, the surprise in her beautiful eyes at realizing that we were the same and it was okay. I can clearly remember the relief, thinking Dear God, finally.

By the time she died, we were quite close. Very close. My older (younger) sister was still the favorite. Our oldest sister was a close second. Then there was me, pulling up the rear, but at least I was on the list...

My mother had issues. Big ones. Serious ones. We all do, and if someone tells you they don't, they're a dirty liar and you should get away from them before the Earth cracks beneath their feet. (Because liars, if no one else, go to hell.) But I loved her intensely. Still do. She was perfect in the way that we all are. She taught me to see people, not disorders, and understand that everyone has motives and reasons behind everything they do and say- no matter how obscure or hard to understand. She showed me how to hate the deed, not the doer, how to love unconditionally and hang on 'till it hurts and after. How to push aside the iron curtain around someone you love and reach them underneath.

I was just thinking about that. Feeling the baby kick, wishing she was here. She would have been so happy to have herself another grandson. I would have been so happy to give her one.

I am the fighter that she made me into. I am the hard one, the difficult one. I am the one that does the things the others will not do. I am her daughter, and I am so proud of that. She was my everything once, and it will always be enough that I was part of hers, too.