Miyasan’s Daughter

You know, when you’re an incest victim or a survivor of anything, memories often have a negative connotation. Words like “flashback” and “triggering” usurp the meaning and purpose of what memories can mean, and take them to a place of pain and hurt.

But tonight, I am grateful for them. I have a right to them, you know. And as I think of the things that make me smile, I savor each one like a good sip of hot tea. And somewhere, from deep inside, I am warmed from the inside out.

That’s an understatement. It’s downright hard for me to post here. It’s such a tender thing, this issue between my mother and I. Not only that, but I can’t think about her without thinking about my sister, who I miss very much.

But I don’t feel compelled to post on a regular basis…not here. That’s not what this blog or this space is about.

Still, I think I will be posting a little more often now. Yesterday I came to a realization that I really didn’t like my life. Oh, I love the people in it, and I am very grateful for many things. But how I’ve been living these days. So hectic, focusing too much time on trying to market or take care of the business end. I find I don’t have that much time, or any time, really, to create…or post here.

So, I’m reassessing my priorites, and going more with the heart and less with the frantic pursuits of everything I think I should be doing or am being told that I should be doing.

I need to reclaim my life, while I’m exploring it. That’s the whole point.

Today is my mother’s birthday. Well, not really. She never knew what day she was actually born. Her step-father had chosen December 25th for some special sigificance or reason to him - not Christmas, and she had celebrated that day as her birthday throughout my childhood. But somewhere in later years, when I was a young adult, I remember my mom talking about wanting to pick a different day, a day that had special signficance to her, one that wasn’t chosen by her father or buried under another holiday.

There is an ancient legend about a celestial maiden and a shepherd boy who fall in love. Of course, it’s a sad story filled with longing and momentary happiness, which ends in heartache. My mother loved it. July 7th, was the one night for the two doomed lovers to meet, year after year, and it was this date that my mother chose to represent the beginning of her life.

Many years later and after her death, as a part of a releasing and healing ritual, I rewrote the story and gave it a more empowering message. Writing that story, releasing it to the universe by sending it off to like minded publisher in terms of values and mission, not only played a major part in my own healing, but opened the doors to actually getting another story published, but that’s another post.

Today I think about my mom and the story she loved so much, the story that seemed to reflect the underlying theme of her life. Maybe tonight I’ll take out my rewrite. Maybe I’ll light a candle or two, and read the story out loud to my daughter and to my nephew, who I’ll be having this weekend. Maybe we’ll get out her photographs and remember…and i will share with the kid stories of her, so that they may remember when they get older, someone they never met and the daughter who loved her.

She died that night.

I was angry with her for years. But since then, I’ve been humbled by my own mistakes, by the things I have done that I now realize made my children feel unloved, neglected, perhaps unwanted at times, and I know - I know without a doubt how much I loved them, always, and how much they meant to me.

And I believe my mother loved me, too. This isn’t wishful thinking. It’s remembering all the things that she did lovingly, that I was too mad to remember before. It’s reclaiming what rightfully belongs to me, now.

It was she who would carve time out for herself in the dead of the night to paint. It’s this image of seeing her hunched over the kitchen table painting her beautiful Asian women that is the seed for my creative inspiration. It was she who cleaned other people’s houses, to save money and buy our first and second piano. It was she who taught me how to read notes, and who let me play for hours, never complaining or telling me to stop that noise.

And now when I perform, I often wear her beautiful lace or silk kimono-like wraps and throw-overs that she sewed for me by hand, because she knew, someday, I would need them, when I “made it”.

Everything was stacked against us to ever be close. And in life, we never really were. Cultural wounds, family wounds, dynamics that arise out of abuse, sexual, emotional and psychological stood in the way.

But some things are so strong, that they persist in making themselves known, even when life passes. One of them is the bond of mother and daughter. I don’t care that ours was imperfect or even down right warped at times.

This bond, what we shared, not only as mother and daughter but as women, is mine, and somehow through letting myself claim that, I am made stronger.

My mother and I had an ambivalent relationship. She had always stated she wanted her children to be close to their father, as she had never been. I believe her. But she had no concept of boundaries, no idea what a healthy relationship was. And the child in her was so needy she could not help but see me, and often treat me, as competition.

I don’t remember her being outwardly mean to me growing up. She “just” chose my sister over me. Just what this favoritism meant and how deep it was rooted in resentment did not fully reveal itself until we started dealing with the incest.

One time, I remember telling my mom what was surfacing up for me, a memory concerning my uncle and father. As I spoke, I got a sudden rush of nausea and went to the sink to throw up. As the realization of what happened to her daughters sunk in, my mother said, her voice full of emotion, “Oh, poor Vernice.” That was my sister.

When she saw the look on my face, she said, “Oh, you too.”

Another time, my mother stated, “Well, at least you had him.”

She wasn’t a monster, though at times, she could act like one. I’m not making excuses for her. It’s just that as I get older, I am becoming more understanding and more compassionate towards the great burden she carried within her soul, the stone she wore around her neck and with much fewer resources or opportunities to heal from them, as we have today.

My mom died angry at me. She died when I was pregnant with my third child. In a discussion, I had let her down…again. I could tell she felt betrayed. She got “that look” on her face. Laying in bed in the nursing home, she turned her back to me before I left. I can still see the side of her face; that pained, upturned look that said she probably wouldn’t speak to me for a few days.