rethinking mom

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I've been wanting to write a play about my mom (I, II, III) for years, now, but I'm having no luck getting my head around her character. You'd think that'd be easy enough, but you try writing about a selfish, bitter, insanely jealous hero. Not many characters in literature or film fit that description, and for good reason.

The "hero" notion is something that I've only become aware of in recent years. When divorces spread through her circle in the 70s, Mom dumped my dad (I, II). He deserved to go, but in casting off the breadwinner she consigned herself, and her remaining child, to a life of poverty. Mom had a college degree [sic] in Home Economics. She'd never held a job. She would only hold two in her life: working the deli at the neighboring Kroger and wiping butts as a nursing assistant.

I told other kids she was a nurse. I was ashamed of her.

I was a latchkey kid. Money was scarce. We didn't go on vacations or trips to amusement parks like my friends. A couple Christmases went by without presents. In perhaps my personal lowest point socially, I had four shirts in the sixth grade. I carefully rotated which shirt would be worn twice, hoping that no one would notice. They did. You know how kind kids can be.

In modern parlance, I was an "at-risk" kid. I had no conception of it at the time, and all credit goes to Mom. She worked hard. (She bitched about work constantly, costing her "superhero" status, but frankly so do I.) But despite the fiscal realities, I never worried about going hungry or not having a roof over my head, and I accepted as a foregone conclusion that I would go off to college and live happily ever after.

Now, I was not uninformed. Living alone for long stretches when she was hospitalized with cancer, I had better access to the checkbook than most kids. I knew the realities, yet I worried not once about my home's stability or my lack of future. For creating such a comfort level, my mother is a bona fide hero, for surely she worried about it constantly. That this at-risk kid didn't become a realized-risk kid is entirely due to the wholly unwarranted confidence she engendered.

But how to marry that accomplishment with the woman who viciously maligned her children at every turn? Who wailed enviously, and unremittingly, about what others had? When I figure it out, I'll let you know.