Marie

Out with the old. In with the new.

I never knew how great it is to be alive until I gave birth. I didn't know how much I would love motherhood or how much I could love a child. We women are blessed with great power. Great, animalistic power. The power to give life and to sustain it. Even those of us who are denied the power to give it can protect it.

I've said and thought some awful things about my mother, but one thing is certain: Her miraculous life gave birth to mine. Her determination sustained and protected my life.

 In 1947, my grandmother was told she would give birth to a stillborn. When she did not, she was told not to expect her 2.5 pound daughter to live longer than a few days. My infant mother slept in her father's shoe box with a handkerchief as her blanket. My mother is now 65 years old and quite healthy.

Until a few years ago, we did not know my mom was Creole, but I grew up hearing the tale of my parents' honeymoon when they were denied a hotel room because they were a "mixed" couple. Growing up on the beaches in St. Petersburg, Florida, my mom was the envy of her friends because of her beautiful, tan skin. Despite her obvious beauty, and like most teenage girls in the sixties, my mom spent hours trying to iron the tight curls out of her jet black hair.

My great grandmother gave my mom her middle name. Marie. Bitterness. It is my middle name and my daughter's too. As a child, I didn't understand the word "bitter." What I did understand was that my mom was angry. She was angry with the way she had been treated as a female.

Her parents saved for her younger brother's education, but not hers. She was expected to take care of the family. She took care of her dying grandmother when her own mother was incapable. She wasn't allowed to have a car and had to rely on her little brother to drive her to work. She went from her father's house to her husband's without ever knowing what it was like to live independently. I grew up hearing these stories and much more, I can assure you. I took in her anger, every last bit of it.

I took it all in when she and my brother had screaming matches in the living room while my dad sat on, paralyzed with indecision. I took it all in when she screamed at me while I cried. "Why are you crying? There's nothing to cry about!"

I can still hear the scratchy, bleating anger issuing from her mouth when she screamed. I can still see the fury in her brown eyes and the fire in her red cheeks. After one such incident, I remember her crying all alone on the porch. It frightened me. I was accustomed to her screaming, not to her crying. She took off in the car that night. To this day, none of us know where she went, but she was there in the morning, smiling like nothing had happened.

That was her signature. She could somehow turn it on and off like a switch. It never occurred to me until I experienced it for myself that she wasn't in control. As much as her anger terrorized me, it probably terrified her just as much.

So, from age 12, I decided I would not have kids. I  feared I would be just like my mom, and I did not want them to experience the same pain. I did not want to be responsible for inflicting that sort of pain on another human being.

You could say that I have been more fortunate than my mother. She and my father both sacrificed so I could have a car, an education, a place of my own. They took me from one doctor to another to get me the help I needed. They took me to support groups, therapy, and even rehab. The world is such a different place from when my mom was a little girl. I pray it will be even better for my daughter. I hope I will have a hand in making it a better place for her, and that, should she ever experience a similar mental disability, that I will recognize it immediately and help her cope with it.

More than anything, I hope that she will never understand the meaning of her middle name, but that she will carry it with her as a reminder of how far we have come.