Hello. How are you? It has been a while since I have written. The holidays for me were wonderful and terrible. I enjoyed much-needed time with my husband and kids just soaking up the sun and the ocean in Cancun. But I also felt a kind of deep loneliness that honestly, took me by surprise. This recognition of being alone started to creep in around Thanksgiving. I did not feel the normal angst this season brings. Trying to make the holidays “nice” or acceptable for my mother has consumed most of my adult life. Making sure she is happy or at the very least doing enough to keep the criticism to a minimum has taken up a lot of my energy. A good holiday became seeing Mom and not leaving to cry the whole way home. It’s a low bar to be sure. This year there was none of that. I had the freedom to do what I wanted for the holidays. It was nice not to have to navigate unexpressed expectations, anxiously awaiting the verdict on how well I did or more likely did not do.
It has been over a year since I have talked to my mother. I have talked to my brother on the phone, but it has been equally as long since I have seen him. There is a depth to this aloneness I have never allowed myself to explore. This time of separation has given me the perspective I have been needing. It has offered me a truer picture of my place in my family. Feeling like an outsider has been there a long time. Refusing to believe this is true, I have dismissed this feeling, as my selfishness, or my sensitivity. I never let myself feel lonely or alone. I told myself it wasn’t true.
I can’t imagine being out of communication with any of my children for over a year. I would, and I know I would do anything to get back into a relationship with them. Nothing would keep me from pursuing them. And yet each time my mother reaches out to me it doesn’t bring me closer it pushes me father away. It is always about how she feels and what she wants me to do. She has told me plenty about what I need, what I feel, and what I should do but has yet to ask me. When I have told her how I feel she has used it against me and pitied my lack of faith.
I have provided a service for my family. I played my role well. My brother was the golden child, and I was the responsible one. The dependable one. The one who didn’t have needs or wants beyond what others decided for me. I was the easy child. I love my brother and I always have. I hold no grudge against him. He had it hard too, just in a different way. Recognizing all of this hit me hard over the holidays, I have always been alone when it comes to my family but this year I knew it deep down in my soul.
The persistence of these feelings of loneliness seems odd to me. I am a quiet person; I like my time alone. I crave silence and stillness most of the time but get me alone behind the wheel of my car I often connect with my inner diva, singing along with my current music of choice. I am less of a shower singer and more of a car singer. The song that I have most recently been giving voice to is Adele’s, “Rolling in the Deep,” first released in 2010. I realize that I am a bit late to the Adele party, but I am completely enamored with her voice, her style, and her ability to summon emotion from deep within me. I have been drawn me by the richness and fullness of her voice. Full disclosure: I have been a Barry Manilow fan since I was in the 5th grade. Barry was my first love, although he was the age of my parents, so “yuck.” Barry has always been a performer in the truest sense. He belts out his music and uses his voice to create an emotionally moving experience for his audience. A few years ago, Kurt won tickets for us to see Barry on his “One More Time,” tour. It was almost a religious experience to be in Nationwide Arena with 15,000 of his faithful fans, singing his well-known songs at the top of our lungs.
Adele elicits this same response in me. During the pandemic, she provided a vital “live” outdoor concert at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. With so many things unavailable the concert was a must-see for me. Sitting in my basement TV room, I felt like I was there. It was spectacular! She adorned in her glamourous gowns, singing with passion and emotion that captured me. Transported me.
Growing up like I did, I learned to keep all of my emotions to myself. It makes me think of the old deodorant commercial whose slogan was “Never let them see you sweat.” I don’t wear my emotions on my sleeve. Almost no one knows what I am feeling at any given time. I am working hard to let my emotions out and to be comfortable with them. Not because I am afraid of my feelings themselves but, because I am afraid of the criticism and judgment that emotions can bring. Reactions were not safe in my home. My emotional expressions led to shaming and even punishment. I learned to sport a poker face and to never let anyone “see me sweat.” This may be why I am drawn to these two performers with their theatrical expression of emotion, their over-the-top showmanship, and their tendency to build to a powerful crescendo at the end of a song. Maybe they challenge that part of me that I have so effectively tamped down. Maybe, if only in the car alone, they give me permission to explore my emotions through their music.
When listening to and singing along with “Rolling in the Deep.,” I do not hear this song from the perspective of a scorned lover. That is not my reality. After meeting Kurt and starting our courtship when I was 18 and getting married at 20, I didn’t have a lot of time for scorned love affairs. When I hear this song, I think of my relationship with my mother.
As I have said it has been over a year since I last saw my mother. If my mother could hear me what I would say to her is, “We could have had it all.”
The lyrics are as follows:
“The scars of your love remind me of us
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all.
The scars of your love remind me of us
They leave me breathless, I can’t help feeling
That we could have had it all
Rolling in the deep
You had my heart inside of your hand
And you played it to the beat.”
I looked up what played to the beat means, and it has to do with someone holding your heart (the beat) and taking advantage of it. I wanted to be a good daughter to the point of sacrificing myself. I wanted deep conversations with her. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to laugh with her and enjoy her and for her to return that loving easiness to me. I wanted so much, and we could have had it all.
But she had my heart inside her hand, and she played it to the beat. The image of the heart is so poignant to me. One beat after the other, year after year. If you were to ask me what happened in my relationship with my mother, I couldn’t tell you of one particular incident. It was one beat after another for over half a century. My leaving the relationship makes it seem like I am the one with the problem. Like I am the enemy. I am hurting my aging mother, and that’s what I thought too for a long time. And it kept me staying for over 50 years. It wasn’t until the cost of staying was more than I could continue to pay that I was finally able to walk away.
I am not a scorned lover. I am a daughter who finally realized that I would never have the relationship with my mother that I wanted and deserved. She would continue to hold my heart inside her hand and carelessly play me to the beat.