My daughter asked my mother a different question in the fall. She asked why, if I had supposedly been such a difficult baby, everyone in the family seemed to have a different memory of me growing up. My mother laughed and gave the same answer she’d given for fifty-three years. She said I had always been demanding, sensitive, and difficult, and that she’d simply learned how to handle me. My daughter didn’t argue, but I could tell she wasn’t satisfied. She had already heard stories from my father, aunts, and family friends that didn’t match what my mother kept telling her.
At my mother’s eighty-second birthday in November, she gave the answer again in front of everyone. Someone complimented me for the way I’d raised my children, and my mother immediately said, “You should have seen her as a baby.” My daughter put down her glass and said, “Grandma, you’ve told me that your whole life. What did she actually do?” The room went silent. My mother started laughing and said it was just an old family story. My daughter shook her head and said, “No, it’s the explanation you use whenever someone says something good about Mom.”
My mother became defensive and said she had only been honest about how difficult those early years were. Then my aunt quietly interrupted her. She said she remembered those years very differently because she had babysat me several times a week. She remembered my mother being exhausted, overwhelmed, and angry that motherhood had interrupted the life she’d expected to have. My mother stared at her and said that wasn’t fair. My aunt replied, “Maybe not, but neither is making a fifty-three-year-old woman spend her whole life apologizing for being born.”
Nobody knew what to say after that. My mother started crying and said she never meant to make me feel unwanted. I told her I believed she might not have meant it, but intent didn’t erase fifty-three years of hearing the same explanation whenever someone loved me openly. My daughter took my hand and told my mother, “She’s not difficult. She’s the person everyone in this room keeps making excuses for.” My mother didn’t answer her. For the first time in my life, she simply sat there while everyone else talked about me without letting her rewrite the story.
