Selective Memory

          How is it that anyone can block out/ blank out 27 years of memories and remember only ONE year?  How is that possible?  I guess with kids, anything is possible.  I have to admit, I did the same with my own mother, except I focused on 3 years as negative. 

         In my situation, I was a pre-teen, my mother was dying and I didn't much like that fact.  In addition, there was another very bad thing going on in the same time frame.  Nope, I hated that time of my life.  I blamed my mom for a lot of it.  And I blamed her for a good 9-10 years!  I even blamed her for dying, as though she could have not done that!  But, I changed.  When my own daughter started walking, and the first times I was overwhelmed by motherhood, I realized how much I missed my own mother.  And, I started to realize:  my "mother" had been a PERSON, a WOMAN, not just a "mother."  I started to judge her less harshly for what I had believed were her flaws and sins, and I began to see how much she had struggled, failed, tried again/tried harder, and I started to understand the possible reasons for a lot of the things she did and said.  I still didn't AGREE with some of how I thought she thought...and her ways of dealing with things...  BUT, I could see reasons for WHY she was like she was...

      But, no, not MY kid.  She's 28 years of pent-up rage at me.  She is 28 years of resentment.  Our especially bad one year together was as bad as my several bad years with my mom.  Emotionally, there is no scale to use to weigh the emotional wounds one carries.  I realize that.  I realized that when my daughter was a child.  I even knew at the time that my "sins" as a parent would be held against me: it's what kids do.  When she was a teen, I told her I'd always be available to discuss anything, and I meant it.  But, instead, my kid would rather hate me. 

      There's something to be said about parenthood.  Becoming a parent yourself humanizes the parents you grew up with.  It doesn't erase the parents' mistakes, but it sure does soften the anger and resentment when you can see a parent as a human being.

      I don't know when my daughter will come to the place that I am no longer the "worst mother on earth" and come to remember the good I did or tried to do.  Maybe never....