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:::by amanda:::

Me at five years old

"Mama?"
"Yes?"
"Where is my dad now?"
"He's in heaven."
"Oh." A pause. "And when you die, will you go to heaven?"
"Yes."
"Okay. And will I be in heaven?"
"Well, I don't know. Right now, no."
"Why not?"
"Because you haven't been baptized yet. You have to be baptized to go to heaven."
"Can I get baptized this Sunday?"
"Well, what does baptism mean to you?"
I think. "It means I'll go to heaven and I get to take communion."
"It has to mean more than that to you for you to get baptized. You have to truly know the meaning of it and believe."

I was baptized when I was ten years old. According to my mother, I suppose, if I had died between the ages of five and ten, I would have gone to hell.

-|-|-

It's easy to blame everything on your mother. She and I worked hard to put it off for a long time. First we put it off on my grandmother--it wasn't my mom who was the critical neat-freak, it was my grandmother. But when my grandmother died, my mom continued to nit-pick about cleaning habits. And it wasn't my mom who was the bad parent, it was my stepfather. But when she divorced him and he left the state, she burrowed deeper into herself and stopped talking to me about anything more substantial than a new recipe she tried or something cute the birds did.

Even though it's an entirely different situation in many ways, I always get teary-eyed when I hear the Tori Amos song "Playboy Mommy." The song has a little bit of each of us in it, I guess. The baby came before I found the magic, how to keep her happy. I never was the fantasy of what you want, wanted me to be. Don't judge me so harsh little girl. I never was there when it counts. I get my way; you're so like me.

No matter the circumstances, can our mothers ever live up to what we expect of them? Or can we ever be the ideal children they've dreamed about? I look forward to having children, but it also scares the hell out of me.

<< 2002-04-23 @ 11:41 a.m. >>