The one thing I will never ask you

On Memoir: Ninety-nine thousand words, and not one of them blamed you

I’ve never held your addictions against you. When you chose the drugs over me I never said a thing. I only wondered why I had to pass under barbed wire fences, through metal detectors, and between the hands of police searches in order to visit you, why the other kids at school were allowed to have their mothers at home, why I had to receive letters from you instead of love notes in my lunchbox which wasn’t a lunchbox at all but a brown paper bag that Dad packed with beef jerky and fruit snacks. I wondered how someone so beautiful could be so destructive, so lost.

When the cops came to the door while I was home from college, I didn’t say, “How could you do this to us again?” I cried into the small of Dad’s back and begged the cops not to take you. You said they couldn’t keep you, but they did. They kept you long enough for us to lose the house, for Dad to finally leave you, and for my hope of ever having a normal family to be crushed like the Mojave asters under my tires as I left the desert for Los Angeles. With every letdown came grace and empathy and I only want you to be happy. I wrote a book about you, about us. Ninety-nine thousand words, and not one of them blamed you. 

It wasn’t until my son was born that the first sign of resentment began to settle in my bones. I held him in the hospital room and I cried because in an instant I loved him in all the ways I’ve never been loved. In those early days of motherhood, I predicted his every move, his every mood, and attuned to his needs even when my own were raw and burning. I asked myself how I could ever be worthy of such a perfect being and knew that I’d spend the rest of my life trying to be everything for him that you couldn’t be for me.

You held him the day after he was born. I watched as you wrapped him in a blanket the color of terra-cotta, dotted with tiny suns and my heart ached in the familiar way I never could understand. The ache that has always told me, there’s good here. The ache that urged me to unclench my hands and gather the love even if it didn’t look like I needed it to. I watched him fall in love with you, just as I did, and I wondered if he’d be enough to keep you. Was his love safe here, or would I have to protect him from the pain that comes when love turns to longing?

It’s been two years now, and you’ve stayed sober. I watch his face light up to the sound of your voice. I listen to his laugh cracking the sky as you kiss his tiny feet. I watch him run to you, arms wide open, just like I used to do in the prison’s visiting ward. I watch as you show up for him in all the ways you couldn’t show up for me, and now I understand what Mary Oliver meant when she wrote about painful gratitude. I only want to know one thing, Mom. Can you tell me just this one thing?

The one thing I will never ask you:
Why wasn’t I enough?

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