Written by Deborah Blenkhorn
As I sit down to write this from my lonely island outpost in the Pacific Northwest, I’m reminded again of how my long-lost friend Dirk once suggested (with perhaps more wit than kindness, but that was just his way) that if I ever wrote my memoirs I should call them “Nana Was Right: Memoirs of a Very Selfish Little Girl,” alluding to a comment my maternal grandmother once made that’s stayed with me all my life: “I think you’re a very selfish little girl.” I’ve written about this before, but everything has a new resonance in light of (perhaps in dark of) my current situation as primary caregiver for my mother, whose post-stroke existence is an increasing challenge for herself and those around her. I think my mother must be thinking of her own mother, my Nana Hamm, whose life—and quality of life—extended into her late nineties (my mom is seventy-three). My mother said recently, after yet another twenty-hours-of-sleep per day day, “I’m just like Mother was at the end, sleeping all the time.” What she didn’t mention, and perhaps didn’t think of, was that such a twilight existence, for Nana, began over two decades later than this.
As a child, I lived with Nana Hamm, sometimes for months at a time, when my mom was working in other places, far-distant cities that seemed a world away from the rural island community of home. I now realize (but certainly didn’t at the time) what Nana provided for me, how close we were despite a sixty-year age gap. At the time, I couldn’t get away fast enough: first for evenings next door at the commune where we had previously lived; then in highschool I high-tailed it into town to board with my friend Thea and her family. For years I never really looked back.
Now I look back all the time and question everything.
What was the origin of Nana Hamm’s fateful comment, the words that have steered my fate as I try to put them to the lie again and again, to prove I’m not the selfish little girl she said I was? It was anything but trivial. I was seven (I think) when my father lost custody of me and I went to live with my mother and her partner at the time. They made some effort to ensure I fit into my new family; then, a few years later, when that relationship had dissolved, my mother asked me if I would like to go and live with this man and his new partner (which wasn't actually an option). Stupidly (but because I somehow thought it was the right answer) I said yes. My mother, devastated, flew in tears to her own mother for consolation (they were very close in adult life to make up for earlier neglect—according to family lore, my grandmother had withdrawn into her own grief for several years when her husband was killed in World War Two). Nana always took my mother’s side against me—but I can’t and mustn’t blame whatever trips she laid on me forty years ago for my current angst.
That reminds me of her other favourite expressions, like “a poor workman blames his tools.” From this I understood, and still understand, that we need to take accountability rather than lay the blame. In short, we need to come to terms with ourselves.
I need to figure out what’s wrong and try to fix it with whatever tools I have available now.
I have to try to at least start to get it all down before it gets me down—oops, too late—... OK, I think it might help to write something down. I just don’t know where to start. Do I start with the anecdote (always good for a small-talk laugh) about my inability for some reason to say the words that come so easily to my husband: “You’ve got your pants on backwards (or shirt, or dress, or skirt). Again.”
Or what about the time when my mother’s occupational therapist told her in my presence, at the end of July, that she really had to start trying to keep track of what day it was. “You’re right,” my mother agreed, then turned to leave. “Merry Christmas!”
But maybe it makes the most sense to start with my hissy-fit in front of mom’s speech pathologist last week, who suggested that I look at some websites dealing with the issue of aphasia. “I DON’T HAVE THE TIME OR ENERGY TO LOOK AT ANY WEBSITES!” I blurted. “I AM THE SOLE INCOME EARNER SUPPORTING A FAMILY OF FIVE! I AM RAISING TWO YOUNG CHILDREN! MY HUSBAND IS REBUILDING OUR HOUSE AND WE ARE OUT OF MONEY! I HAVE TWO JOBS! I WORK SIX DAYS A WEEK AND THIS IS DAY SEVEN!”
Finally I had to stop for breath and to blow my nose on the tissue the poor woman extended to me across her desk. “Uh, would you like a hug?” she asked.
My mother sat there, impervious. In that moment, I’m not sure if she remembered that I was her daughter. I’m pretty sure she now thinks my daughters are her daughters and that I am her mother. She never refers to me as her daughter or speaks of my childhood or even calls me by name. Just “Mom.”
Without fail some well-meaning soul among the hospital staff where I take her for rehab will make a comment about how “It’s your turn now,” and I’m tempted to turn and say, “Well, actually, my mother didn’t really raise me.” Not long ago we had my younger daughter’s playcare teacher over for dinner and she said to my mom, with a wink at me, “So, I bet you have some good stories from the past—was she a good girl?” With a confused look, my mother piped, “Yes. And her mother was a good girl too.” The playcare teacher, an eyebrow raised, wisely moved on to a different conversational gambit. I explained to her the next day that my mother doesn’t have any stories, not because she can’t remember them but because she wasn’t there. I may not be entirely certain who the hell I am either.
As for me, the mother/daughter sandwich girl, I certainly wouldn’t have thought I was the type to have a full-blown rant in front of a stranger. Or what am I saying? Isn’t it the kindness of strangers that’s got me where I am today? Even those kind folks on the commune, whom my mother legally designated as “in loco parentis,” in place of parents, for me: yes, arguably, I was abused by them, but I think they really loved me. I know they did. And so did Nana, despite the devastating indictment of her comment. Even my friend who suggested the memoir title: he loved me enough to make me take my worst fears, bring them out into the open, and have a good laugh and a good cry. Isn’t that what I’m still trying to do now? I have been loved and nurtured and cherished in myriad ways by dozens of people over dozens of years, and here I am today: a functioning adult, able to (regardless of whatever other limitations I may have) love and raise my own children by hand. I know the value of love, if only because I know how devastating it is NOT to be loved by a parent.
I think what gets to me the most is people’s assumption that everything I’m doing for my mother right now (and frankly it’s a lot) is out of love. “It’s beautiful, what you’re doing,” a kindly neighbour insisted, even after I tried to articulate my ambivalence about the whole thing. I’m doing it because I have to, because I have no choice, because it’s the perfect revenge. Right? You tell me.
It’s all become part of a vicious family circle in a household where I exist completely to serve the needs of others, an unfortunate paradigm in which my mother’s daily medication regime, my seven-year-old’s request for crepes for breakfast, my toddler’s insistent tugging at my empty breast, and my husband’s pleas for sexual intimacy are all part of the same dynamic. Not this on top of everything else, I scream silently. I just can’t. But I do. I just do.
Lately I’ve been having these romantic dreams that I know are pure escapism: I’m always in control.
Waking life is somewhat different. Sometimes I think the only thing keeping me sane is my network of women friends whom I know will greet each complaint with the same unconditional support. It feels a bit selfish and self-indulgent sometimes to burden them with it, but apparently they don’t even mind. Let it out, they urge me. Speak it out. Write it down.
Put it down, like the letters on a Scrabble board. See what you can make of it all.
I keep coming back to Nana. It’s her influence that inspires me to keep my house in order. It’s her strength that I draw upon—I keep reaching into that Scrabble bag and I never run out of tiles.
It’s the seven letter word she scored in our last Scrabble game—VAGINAS. It was in Scrabble that Nana Hamm always said that thing about the workman and his tools—you know, if I complained that I couldn’t make a word with the letters I had in my hand. The answer is there if you look for it. Now I’m looking for a way out of my misery, a rescue, a saving. A SAVING. A nanagram!
Oh. Maybe it wasn’t a criticism after all. Maybe it was advice. A compliment even. Not a complaint…“a very selfish little girl.”
My selfishness might just save me.
Again.
About the Author
Deborah Blenkhorn is a poet, essayist, and storyteller living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work fuses memoir and imagination, and has been featured in literary magazines and anthologies in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Check out her page on Pebble+