Being a Mother Is One Thing; Being a Daughter Is Another

We're thinking about making a little fish pond with a fountain type thing in the backyard and I wanted to show my husband some I'd seen at Tallahassee Nurseries yesterday. So after breakfast we took off for town.
We went to the nursery and walked around and had a nice time, looking at flowers and trees and fountains with spouts made of bamboo. The wind was blowing, it wasn't too hot, and it's always a pleasure to walk around a nice nursery.
Then we went to a big box store to check out pond-making supplies and I started feeling weird there. Too many people and stuff for sale that I deem to be tacky and nasty and cheap which will end up in a land fill after people get tired of looking at it or it breaks, which it inevitably will.
I don't know. It all made me depressed.
Then to Publix to buy things for tomorrow's Mother's Day Sushi And Strawberry Shortcake feast and for tonight's Welcome Home Roland Party.
We stopped and had lunch and then we drove home through neighborhoods, looking for leaves for my husband to shred and mulch with, which seems to be his new favorite activity.
By the time we got home, I was ready to weep with the relief of being here. I opened up the front doors and let the breeze sweep through the hallway and put the groceries away and I'm still feeling sort of weird and anxious and I'm not exactly sure why but I think it may have something to do with Mother's Day, which is tomorrow.
Mother's Day is yet another big ol' American holiday that has come to represent a whole lot of shit that it was never meant to including flowers, jewelry, breakfast in bed served by impossibly cute children and impossibly handsome husbands and, oh yeah, all that emotional stuff tied into mothers.
I have no problem with the way my kids treat Mother's Day or me on it. I love getting together and doing some sort of food thing and maybe playing a couple of games. Sounds good to me.
But it's the part where I should be doing something with my own mother that makes my soul feel like it's covered in poison ivy.
My mother and I do not have a great relationship and I'm certainly not going to go into it here, but the fact is, well, I'm not a good daughter.
Just take my word on that one.
And I'm selfish to boot, which means that on Mother's Day, I want to be with my kids and I send my mom a stupidly expensive bouquet of flowers that are delivered and call that done.
Which would be fine if it really worked to make me feel I'd done my best but of course it doesn't.
Yoko Ono wrote a song that had the line in it, "It's that faint, faint sound of the childhood bell, ringing in my soul" and that line comes to me frequently because sometimes the sound of that childhood bell rings faintly and sometimes it tolls quite loudly for me.
BRONGGGGG! BRONGGGGG! BRONGGGGG!
And holidays seem to be especially good at creating the strong winds that swing it from where it's hanging, somewhere just right of my heart, somewhere just north of my belly, somewhere just inside my head.
I don't know that I'll ever resolve it, either. Don't know if I'll ever come to grips with everything that has so unfortunately happened between us. I probably could, if I spent tens of thousands of dollars in counseling but really I don't want to.
Just the thought of that makes me want to crawl into bed, turn on the fan and burrow under the covers, even on such a fine warm day as today.
Which of course I won't do. I'm not that fucked up about it. Not anymore. I used to be.
No. I think I'll go make some cobbler and a squash casserole for Roland's party instead. Make a cup of espresso to try and chase this depression and anxiety-fatigue away because right now I feel like I have a pond-sized well of tears sitting right behind my eyeballs, making me feel like I do on those days when the sky is gray and filled with huge clouds that are just not going to let down and rain to relieve the hot, humid air or the ground beneath them, panting with thirst.

It's no wonder I don't ever want to leave my house. It's beautiful here, it's calm. There are hardly ever voices raised in anger and there is no fear waiting behind doors, ready to jump out and grab me. Instead, there is light and there is a breeze that smells of confederate jasmine. There are birds at the feeder and a kind man outside, working in his garden who loves me and loves the kids.
Somehow, I've managed to create a sanctuary here and if I look at myself lovingly, I understand completely why I don't want to leave it.
I wish I could create a better relationship with my mother, too, but for some reason, I don't feel as if that's possible, or maybe that's just an excuse for not wanting to.
Either way, it's not happening today.
Not in time for Mother's Day.
Thank God for my kids. Thank God for them and thank God that I have been able to give them the sort of life that doesn't make them want to avoid me. I don't know how I managed but I know that somehow my mother must have had something to do with it and I am grateful beyond words for that.
I think I'll try and tell her that when I call her tomorrow.
It's a start.