Her, Mom, & Me

She was a Her before me. She was Mom before I was born. I am nothing without both.

Forty-two years ago, I was due. I envision my mom pacing the floor, anxious, nervous, but mostly excited. I was stubborn and kept her on her toes. 

She became a mom the day she found out she was pregnant. I wish I knew exactly when that was. Maybe it was immediately after conception. Maybe it was months. Was she happy? Did she cry? 

I know I couldn't possibly know every detail of her life, but I wish I did. I want to fill my memory, my brain with her story, her stories. How did she become who she ... was? How did she become so courageous, tough, and able to endure such pain - physical, mental, emotional? She shared some of her stories that rose enough to the top of her mind, for better or worse. I don't know if I want to know her legacy, her to be remembered by some of her most traumatic experiences. I know several of those. Was her diagnosis a manifestation of one of them? Depression passed down in the form of smoking in the house, alcoholism, loneliness, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, distrust in others. Or was one of her strongest, most definitive qualities, empathy (and kindness and unconditional love), her superpower? To be able to push through all of the pain and psychological distress and raise her daughter as though we had what we could ever need, when we barely had enough to survive (but without me ever knowing). 

Maybe her superpower was born from her trauma.

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