Static Swag

"Bed" by J. Holiday

...watch the sunrise peak over the horizon / the sun ain't the only that's shinin' / now I'ma send you out into the world with my love...

I used to watch a show called Absolutely Fabulous on BBC some years ago with an aunt of mine. I loved that show because the two female main characters were dysfunctional, alcoholics, inappropriate, socially retarded, embarrassing, and other bad adjectives.

One of them had a grown daughter that was intelligent and was the keeper of her drunken mother and best friend. They were constantly humiliating the poor girl.

And they were absolutely fabulous. Sometimes I wish I could live their totally useless and reckless life. They do not care about anything whilst I fret of everything.

I also used to wish my mother was like one of the women on the show when I was younger. At the time I didn't understand the implications and complications of having a mother with a disease such as alcoholism. I just wanted to have a mother who I could be close to. Despite their dysfunctional behavior, the fictional mother and daughter pair were quite close.

My beautiful Mommy was just this person that I did not really know nor identified with. She was like an old camp counselor that gave birth to me almost but we had no real connection. It never occurred to me to go to my mother for help, advice, conversation, consolation or anything of the ilk. She bought me things when I needed them and punished me and that was the extent of our relationship.

But I always wanted more from her. I tried to get her attention in many stupid ways. It ended up backfiring on me when she couldn't stand me at all and we basically lived our separate lives.

This situation is how I learned how miraculous and inadequate language is: dealing with my mother. It was always interesting to see what she garnered from something I said and what I actually meant. The discrepancy sometimes would be amazing.

I just wanted an affectionate, playful mother. And she kind of was but not as much as I would have liked her to be. My father is. I always wanted my mother to be just like my father. It wasn't that my father wasn't enough, but it was because I was a girl and I wanted my mother. And all my friends and cousins throughout my life have had such great relationships with their mothers while we have tried not to kill each other over the last decade.

Then one day, I was watching an episode of Celebrity Rehab on VH1 (isn't Dr. Drew Pinsky so fine. Make me wanna get right). Rod Stewart's son was a patient in the program and was explaining the pain of not having his rock star father around enough and their family not being the normal, nuclear American family he wanted so.

Dr. Drew said something that hit me hard and even made me choke up a little bit. He explained to Stewart that our parents are human beings too. They are people with flaws and shortcomings who do bad and wrong things just like we see ourselves do. The image of our parent that we have created and the person that parent actually is are two different things. They parent according to the person that they are as well as what the have seen.

My Mommy is an introvert, quiet, pensive, serious and mature. Therefore, she probably wasn't going to be the bubbly, playful, sunshine-all-the-time kind of mother. Life wasn't all that good to her and it continues to bother her and here I was making trouble in her house trying to make her be the mother I thought she should be which was oppositional to the person that she is.

It made me cry, I think, because I realized that I had been fighting a futile fight. And I haven't been fighting my "mother". I have been fighting this woman with feelings, with tragedies, with sorrows, with insecurities. An actual person. But I thought she was just my Mommy: this empty person who just collected my insults and disappointments and remained unaltered.

Kids are such idiots. And it's a lot harder growing up than they said.