Dear Mom,
I don’t think I have ever had the courage to address you directly in any piece of text or writing I have come up with. I’ve scribbled in journals, on napkins, on post-it notes, and even tapped away in my Notes App under the covers in a dark room trying to discern our relationship. You, on the other hand, have written me many quasi-letters in birthday or congratulation cards. We have always had different beliefs of when to address the other fittingly.
I have been voyaging into adulthood as you watch from the sidelines, and we call every so often. I, in my shitty apartment nine miles away, and you, on your bed watching the worst movie ever made. You talk loudly (I can tell you are on speakerphone) to tell me about one of my sister’s days and ways that I could save money, and I look to the ground and feel bad that I forgot to listen to your voicemail. You tell me you wish my other sister would spend more time with you and I begin to curse her in my mind for not doing so; yet I only appear in your basement every three weeks or so, doing laundry with your cat perched on a shelf watching me anxiously. I can tell she is always around loud and aggressive noise.
Surprisingly, as I think we both can tell, we work better with this distance. Where I live is peaceful now, and a dark shadow of indiscernible perturbation no longer lurks around the corner. It’s too depressing to talk about aloud, but sometimes I lie awake at 3 am and wonder if the peace will ever reach you too. Maybe it is too late. Either way, I have never felt so far away, and yet so close to you as I do now. It works. We both have too big, too different, too angry, too sad personalities to be around each other for more than a couple of days. Unresolved trauma and undiscussed feelings linger in the air between us and are pushed to the side with a tight hug right before I leave. We have tried before to fix things and apologies don’t work; every apology I hear from you falls a little short, since none of it really matters now. So instead, at some point, we quietly decided unwarranted advice from both ends and physical affection should be a sufficient enough substitute.
Adulthood means womanhood and womanhood means I occasionally don’t view you as my mother, but as a woman I might meet on the street where we would exchange stories until I would say I’m on my way to work and can’t talk longer. I would clock in and think about your stories throughout my shift and space out thinking about how every woman is scorned. I think that is usually what a mother is anyways. Or at least where we come from. I am not saved from that fate just because you are my mother and we fight, and in my subconscious I falsely think I would be able to handle everything differently. After all, I am my mother’s daughter.
You appear in the way I organize my closet (listening to the same Led Zeppelin album), in the way I curse when I look for parking (murmuring “Who parked like a jackass?”), and in the way I started to write all of my friends quasi-letters in their birthday cards (or I end up texting them the letter and they call me corny). I pace in my room to try and determine what this means for me. The floorboards creak and groan as do I. The woman I have fought and loved for so long ended up manifesting herself in me.
Sometimes when I look in the mirror and I see a shapely young woman whose stance explains her nature, I get scared and nervous and excited. For I know the time is nearing where I am becoming you.
I missed your call again today; I will try and call you back tomorrow.
Lauren
Born and raised in Chicago, Lauren Scott is a third-year student at DePaul University majoring in Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse. She also minors in both French and Philosophy and works as a peer writing tutor at DePaul’s Writing Center. In her free time, Lauren enjoys writing by bodies of water.