motherhood

Looking at pictures of my girls is almost debilitating right now. They've been at Dan's house visiting for close to 3 weeks. You would think I would get used to them being gone and it wouldn't be so bad, but every day is harder. I feel like a huge chunk of my heart has been ripped out, like it's missing. They should be home this weekend in theory, and that will be most excellent. Corinne calls me every day to tell me she wants to come home, and I don't know what to tell her. The last time she called from there in hysterics I drove all the way down and got them, and they didn't go back for a month. This time I'm thinking I shouldn't (really can't) jump so quickly at her every whim (she told me a week ago that she wanted to spend the rest of the summer there) but it's so hard not to just go get my babies. I really really really just want them both in my arms. I've spent the last week and a half moving, and they've never even seen their new home yet. It's not going to feel like home until they are here. Dan won't bring them to meet me half way till Sunday or Monday, and I don't know how I can swing it myself before then, but it's frustrating all the same.

My mom is missing. For the first time in my life I'm at a point where I want to try to understand, where I want to get past judging what she did, how she made my childhood, and she's gone. She's been living in a hotel in Chehalis (long sad story) and I called 2 nights ago to tell her I moved, and the girl at the front desk told me she doesn't live there anymore, and they don't have a forwarding address or phone number. Her cell phone has been turned off. My brother hasn't heard from her, and either has my grandmother. There is no one else she keeps in touch with, so it's like she's vanished off the face of the earth. I have to hope that she will show up somehow, but I am worried and scared. In a half-assed sort of way I almost feel like I am mourning her, because I just don't know in all honesty if I'll ever see her again. That sounds overly dramatic, but it's how I feel. She's an alcoholic, and she and her alcoholic husband have been on this massive downward spiral over the last couple years. They hop from place to place, job to job, never lasting anywhere for long. They've dabbled in gambling, gotten thrown out of every place they've tried to call home, and alienated everyone they know. They went on a cross country trip that was delayed because one or both of them had to stop and spend some time in jail. My little brother won't speak to her at all, and I've had a tendency to avoid her calls, as it seems sometimes she only calls when she needs money. Reality is that I know that's not true though. I know she needs help, and I know she would like nothing more than to have a good relationship with me and with her grandkids. God, I feel like puking. How will she even find me? I've moved, and I have to assume she's lost my phone number or she would have called to tell me what was going on. CRAP.

The things she's done and the things she's put me through are hard to forgive, and hard to forget. I've said many times that I really just don't think she was meant to be a parent. She never learned to put the needs or desires of another person before her own. As a child that hurt, and as an adult with children of my own it is still just really unfathomable. That said, I'm trying hard to have some perspective right now. My boss made a comment the other day about how crappy her childhood (with her single mom) was, and how she couldn't hold it against her mom because none of us are handed a parenting manual, and we all have to do the best we can. I'm not sure I believe my mom did the best she could, and certainly she didn't later on, as I was older, but I've never really thought before about how things were when I was young. My parents divorced when I was 3, and she was a single mom, on her own, trying to make it work. She worked hard, had a decent job, bought herself a house, really did ok. Who was she then? What snapped in her that made her become the person she is now? She may not have been perfect, but she was strong and intelligent, and she picked up the pieces and made them into a new life, a good life, for herself and for me. I hope she is ok.