Broken Nest...or Becoming The Mother I Wish I Had by Tanya Anton

"A-den, a-den!" she demanded, with a glint in her eye.
"Happy Birthday to you...Happy Birthday to you..." I continued. And even though her birthday had already passed, there I was teary-eyed yet laughing, leaning over the crib singing to her over and over however many times she asked, switching to a different name each time just to make her giggle, just to please her. We'd already been through "Twinkle, Twinkle" and "B-I-N-G-O" substituting the names of the entire cast of little characters at daycare. Oh, I knew she was stalling to avoid going to bed, but I didn't care. Connecting my eyes to hers, her eyes staring back at mine expectantly, smiling and happy, I was relishing the joy, the deliciousness of loving my child my way with my own small voice.

At that very moment it occurred to me, I bet my own mother didn't do that. Indulge me that way. No, I know she didn't. She didn't have it in her and we made do without that kind of closeness. It was more the one-two punch of need/fear. But she was all we had and we had to make it work. We had to fend for ourselves. We had to suffer her wrath...the 2am rage-fests over whatever...a missing can of her diet soda...or line up for some refreshing Lysol mouthwash if caught swearing...or face green Palmolive laced oatmeal as payment for not rinsing her dishes well...or get beaten down for the latest...atrocity...against her. (Couldn't we ever just leave her alone?) Was she too busy tending to her own needs to notice the simple ones of a child? Was she that imbalanced? Was she continually overwhelmed and shut down? Nothing left to give? Perhaps. My heart ached as it ripped open even more, aware of previous scar tissue, of longing unfulfilled, and continued anyway. She might have wounded me, but she couldn't touch my daughter, I thought.

"Do...Bastar...do Bastar!" she bellowed.
"...Happy Birthday, dear Jasper," (this time the family cat), "Happy Birthday to you." In this bittersweet moment, I took another deep breath and sang through the tears, not wanting to dwell on the past and ruin a precious moment in the present.

Showing up. Being there. Doing what you can, as simple as it is. That to me is Love at its very essence, the core of mothering. Seems obvious, yet it was so profoundly missing from my own life. The purity of a conscious connection...and healing comes in a single revelation. "There, there, it's all going to be OK" I tell myself, for it's as much for me to hear as it is for my daughter. Through mothering my own daughter, I am (finally) learning to love myself, that wounded child who felt abandoned and un-cared for.

Mothering 101
Determined to heal past wounds and mend broken patterns, this is my chance to start fresh, to reclaim an experience of unconditional love and design a new way to mother consciously. Yet I'm going it alone, without guidance from my own mother, grandmother, or mother-in-law, without a positive family experience. Lord knows I don't want to recreate what we went through, but who do I turn to? Even my older sister no longer remembers the details of her mothering experience as her child is now in college, plus she lives half way across the country. (The breakdown of the nuclear family is palpable now more than ever for me. Of course, the breakdown of OUR family is ancient history, and was quite palpable then and even more so now. My dad bailed when I was 3, my angry narcissistic mother raised three kids bitterly...)

I can only speak to what I'm feeling, but sometimes it feels like I'm Mothering by Braille. Without a net. Without a map or compass or toolkit or help. Mothering by intuition and what feels right. I DO feel as if I'm parenting in a void. Books, the internet, my pediatrician, even my yoga instructor have taken the role of advisors. It's up to me to root through it all, ferret out the truth and find what works. They say it takes a village, but where is the village? They never told us we'd have to build it on our own.

"You need a license to buy a dog or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish, but they'll let any...a**hole be a (parent!)"
--from Parenthood, the movie.

Becoming a mother has really made my relationship with my own mother even more conflicted and mysterious. Her "disconnect" and lack of support was (and continues to be) astounding. Was locking us out in the sub-zero winter barefoot in pajamas the best way to elicit a confession to some petty crime we didn't commit? Or getting smacked across the face the only reaction she could muster after we took the wrong bus and needed her to retrieve us from the other side of town? Is it ever a good parenting choice to beat your child to a bloody pulp with the metal dog leash? Aside from sporadic outbursts of cruelty when we were young children, ongoing emotional-verbal abuse and missing most school events, why wasn't she at least able to make it to the final big event before I left home-my graduation where I was being honored with special senior achievements? I guess it was more important to hang out with friends in her kitchen that day. And later, couldn't she find it in her heart to help my sister buy a house even when she could afford to do so? Was her response "a secretary doesn't deserve to own a house" really how she felt about her own daughter and granddaughter's future? Why didn't any of us feel welcome back in her house once we left as teenagers, and why even as an adult has she never really bothered to find out what I do, where I live or what I'm passionate about? Wasn't she even curious?

My mother was an independent, intelligent career woman who built herself a sizeable nest egg. But I doubt the woman's movement meant for it to be at the expense of her three little children who wanted nothing more than a loving mom since dad was not an option. Where was she when we needed her most? Were her mothering skills that "off?" Why did she take custody of us if she didn't really want us?

Compared to the fierce love I feel for my own husband and daughter, I just cannot seem to grasp what her experience was, nor was she willing to share anything but vitriol and anger toward all men in general. "Don't ever trust them, they'll let you down!" and "whatever you do, don't EVER have children," she'd scream. "You'll regret it!" (I guess she really did regret it.) Of course it must have burned her that her children have all left and are rarely in contact with her--if at all--and she is now an absent grandmother twice over. (Either that, or she's skipping around her house laughing in total utter freedom. I wouldn't know.)

With all the anger and cruelty in that household, it's pretty clear that I won't be going to her anytime soon for advice on how to raise my child. Nor will she be called upon to babysit, share a meal or celebrate a birthday. If it was too much of an inconvenience for her to drive 10 minutes across town to see her first grandchild, she'd never consider crossing the country to participate in our lives, nor would I want her to either. No, she hasn't really "participated" in my life at all during the last twenty years. Not a lot of joy there.

Which leads me to my latest point, my lack of answers. As a new mother, one who thought long and hard about it and consciously chose to become a mother, there are so many questions left unanswered...how my feelings as a mother are so organic, natural, automatic, yet so different from hers...how I can't help but love and protect and be there for my baby...how even when it gets hard and trying, which believe me it does, I could never be abusive or cruel, or abandon her...how my experience is such the polar opposite of what my mother must have felt in order to do the things she did to us. Granted, her husband left her saddled with three small children to raise and never came forward with a dime of support until we were grown. I can't even imagine that kind of burden. But still, that doesn't account for the neglect on her part. Dealing with our father's absence seemed to us anyway, punishment enough.

How unsettling that after all these years of being able to at least "put her in a place," now especially as a new mother, I just can't grasp it, still. It is hurt on a whole new level of hurt, a new ripping of the old wound. How could she be wired so differently than I am? How could our mothering be so completely reversed? And why three? If it was all so hard and horrible for her, why not stop after the first child? What happened? Diaphragm broke...twice more? I thought she was smarter than that.

What is it about new motherhood that challenges us to re-examine our own mother-daughter relationship? But how can we not? As all the dreck from the past gets pulled to the surface once again, I wade through it trying to find a new perspective. At a time when I might need my mother the most, I realize she is the last thing that I actually need, but the WANT is there nonetheless, fully charged. She was never close then. She probably never will be. Her love was poison to me, why would I want it now? Like a memory that glamorizes yet never quite captures the true ugliness of the experience, I have to let it go. And learn to “mom� from some other place. Although saddened by the lingering reminder of what I never had, I must move on, must not wallow, for my own sake as well as my daughter's.

On Becoming The Mother I Wish I Had
Motherhood for me is a chance to heal a long-standing pattern of neglect and experience true love, both for myself and for my daughter, and in turn then for the family legacy; to set future patterns right. Perhaps my mission after all was to raise a conscious daughter, nourished inside and out, full of possibility and wonder and value no matter what. To let her experience deep, nurturing love from both parents, who are present and involved. To raise an aware daughter who will in turn spread her love and wholeness through whatever and whomever she touches in her life, breaking the cycle of damage and abuse.

Ultimately, we are the new mothers raising the future mothers of the world. If we raise loving, conscious daughters...they will in turn become conscious mothers to the next generation of humanity.

So for now, despite the scar tissue, I reach deep within my heart and sing, again:
"There was a girl with a head of curls and Sienna was her name-o,
S-I-E-NN-A, S-I-E-NN-A, S-I-E-NN-A, Sienna was her name-o!"
And, at least in this moment, our nest is being mended and another historic landmine has been averted. I'd trade that for peels of laughter any day.

Tanya Anton is a singer-songwriter who lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two-year-old daughter. She is currently writing about her bumpy transition into motherhood and the "emotional 180" it took to get there. Her work has appeared in Brain, Child Magazine and various online mothering groups. She is currently producing "Mama Moments" for radio and exploring ways to help and encourage new mothers.

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