Modern Women – Jenny Wren

All the Things My Mother Never Knew

No parent is so blind as the one who refuses to see.

My mom wasn’t home over the weekend, but no one would believe that if they were listening in on her phone conversation. It was a Monday morning, sometime in the fall of 1993, and my mother was on the phone with her sister, rewriting the narrative of my life.

Every weekend since we had moved to this god forsaken desert three years prior, she had flown back to our old home in another state. It was my dad’s gift to her, a promise he had made when he took this new job in New Mexico. His wife would continue to spend her weekends playing soccer with friends and visiting family.

I don’t think I minded too much, really. My mom and I did not get along. Somehow, I knew I wasn’t the child she had really wanted. I wasn’t a boy, I wasn’t sporty enough, I didn’t live to compete.

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Navigating the Mama-Drama Without Losing My Mind

Sorry, this isn’t my battle anymore

“Mom, they fought until after midnight. I’m so tired.”

I reread the text, my stomach clenching with anxiety. My 24-year-old son, Will, was my man on the ground at Mom’s house. He was staying there along with my sister and her two young kids.

I was so, so sorry, and I let him know.

I had booked a hotel room for myself, my younger son, Andy, and his girlfriend, Jess. It wasn’t in the budget to book a room, but a gut feeling told me it was the best option.

Always trust your gut

This trip had been planned for months. We visit my mother every summer, but this year was going to be a big one. My youngest son, Andy, planned to introduce his girlfriend, whom he has been dating for two years, to his grandmother.

He was excited. I was apprehensive.

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I Remember In Flowers

A mother’s love isn’t always guaranteed

The flowers are the electric yellow of margarine. These blooms are the technicolor adverts in glossy women’s magazines telling me I can hardly believe they aren’t butter.

Momma collected women’s magazines and spread them across the coffee table like a bouquet, but I never saw her read one. Momma had no time for things like reading. Instead, they collected dust until years later an adolescent me peeked inside to decipher my own womanhood.

Yellow flowers made Momma happy. Yellow was the color of the sunflowers that made Momma think of her childhood home in Kansas. Momma loved that home and Momma hated that home. Even at three years old, I knew these simple truths.

I was always wary of Momma.

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Escaping the Tower She Built

My mother’s fears imprisoned me

The world, from my earliest memories, was made of forest paths that led to dark woods, full of wolves and witches. I knew that the glowing windows of the houses up the hill held ballrooms and gentlefolk being plagued by curses and intrigue. In the corner of every room lurked a Georgie Porgie ready to make me cry, or worse.

I was not yet five, but I had memorized nearly every nursery story my father read to me. Every damsel in distress, every rhyme, every Victorian moral that they contained. My impressionable young mind devoured each new tale as a guidebook to navigating the adulthood I was constantly reminded was my eventual lot.

Never mind that the forest paths that terrified and tempted me were little more than wooded verges separating tract homes from strip malls.

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