Post a comment
We've all seen those silly soap operas where a character discovers her "real father." It turns out that the man who raised her and whom she called "Daddy" all those years is not her real father at all--just some guy who made an "honest woman" out of her mother decades before. Her real father is actually the town drunk or the murderer recently paroled from prison or the town's richest oil baron or even--uh, oh--that nice older gentleman she started dating last month. Not very realistic, but these scenarios make for some high drama.
My story is not nearly as dramatic. For most of my life, I had a sneaking suspicion that my mother was not my "real mother." As a teenager, I had Dad's eyes and high forehead and muscles and usually calm temperament. Mom sometimes seemed to be an alien creature so much more like my sisters than me. Don't misunderstand--she was a wonderful mother, dedicated and kind and generous and funny. But she wasn't like me. She was softer and rounder, had an unpredictable temper, a lack of patience, and an inability to drive a car effectively.
Dad was definitely Dad, but how could this woman be my real mother?
I understand that the biology behind this fantasy made no sense--not even soap opera sense. Finding out that your Mom is not your real mother is something that happens only in Psycho sequels. Because Mom told so many stories about what a difficult pregnancy and birth I had been, she clearly thought I was her biological son. And I have a twin sister, obviously Mom's child. The whole thing was beyond my powers of explanation, yet I held tightly to the not-my-real-mother fantasy for much of my life.
Two unrelated moments in my late-thirties led me to put away my childish fantasy. One afternoon while I backed my car out of a parking space at the gym, my workout partner chuckled. I asked what was funny, and she told me that I backed the car "like an old lady." I immediately had a flash of Dad harshly criticizing Mom's driving. When I pondered that memory later in the day, I realized that I never criticize anybody's driving. People drive the way they drive--different styles for different drivers. Dad and I may have the same shaped hands, but when it came to criticizing drivers, we took very different roads.
Of course, the relative I resemble in the car is Mom. Her driving used to make me crazy even before I could drive myself. She was well into her forties when she finally got her license. Even at age twelve, I saw that she had very little idea what was going on behind her. She seemed content to travel down the interstate at forty miles per hour, confident that she would never run into anything or anyone. She was right. She never hit a thing with her car, but the drivers screaming past her and shaking their fists were running the risk of head-on collisions. This was a woman who stopped at green lights because she was afraid they would turn yellow. Mom was completely safe--just a terror for everyone else on the road.
I maintain and sometimes even exceed the speed limit when I'm on the highway, so that's not where the connection is. It's backing up. Mom inched backward a millimeter at a time, looking frantically over one shoulder, then the other, then back and forth again until she was dizzy. I'm not that bad, but I admit that I always make a tight U-turn in the driveway so my car points headfirst toward the street. And I'll walk an extra half a mile at the mall to find a "pull-through" parking space that requires no backing to enter or leave.
Not long after the driving revelation, I decided to shave the beard that covered my chin for nearly twenty years. I'd started growing it in my late teens and endured all the jokes about how scraggly it grew. Eventually, the bald spots filled in. People only occasionally ask me what I'm hiding behind my beard. I usually claim that I don't like shaving or that I'm tired of being a baby face.
The day I shaved it, however, I found what I had been hiding. As I wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror, I saw Mom's face staring back. I still had Dad's forehead and eyes and the top half of his nose, but from there down, I was my mother. In my amazement, I uttered a few soft curses and even saw Mom's words in the shape and movements of my mouth. Good lord, I thought to myself at long last, she is my real mother.
I'll always love my mother and be grateful for all that she did to raise her stubborn, sometimes distant son--not an easy task. Mom has been gone for many years now, and I wish I could let her know that I never really thought she wasn't my real mother. That theory was never more than a childish fantasy. I know for sure that she was always my one true real mother.
Two other facts I know for sure: I don't back the car quite like an old lady, and I started growing my beard back that same day and haven't shaved it since then.
###
|
