Mother Lion

Two year olds and teenagers aren't all that different. Both  lack sound judgment, can be incredibly emotional, and often demonstrate a deep fascination with car keys. While I watch M testing the boundaries of her independence in our baby-proofed living room, and learning that it's fun to ignore her parents -- especially when we tell her not to play with the electrical sockets -- I experience flashes of deja vu as I remember my recalcitrance as a teenager. My poor, beleaguered parents: I never listened to their advice, no matter how well-intentioned or sound, and sometimes (ok, most times) I payed a hefty price while learning from my mistakes.

While I think breaking away from your parents may be a universal phenomenon, from my experience, the tension in my family was primarily between my mom and me.

Case in point:  On the first day of "living in the dorms," I watched my dad pull the mock-Tiffany lamp out of a cardboard box, and I saw the familiar worn brown fuzz of my childhood teddy bear which my mom must have packed when I wasn't looking. Tucking in the green blanket, my mom patted the bed, "when I first went away to college, my mom made my bed!, " she said as she looked up at me with shining eyes. Supposedly, our eyes never get any bigger than they are on the day we're born, but beneath her blue bandana which covered the skimpy patches of her chemo hair-do, those brown eyes seemed larger than I had ever seen them -- it was as though she were desperately trying to signal me without words, while knowing that I would ignore the meaning of her message.

The sadness I felt scared me, and hot anger roiled in to block the fear. I don't know where my rage came from, but it had grown familiar and comfortable. I had behaved like a caged wild-cat whenever I was with my mom since her diagnosis a few months before, and I wanted her to leave my dorm room and let me start my new life.

And she did. But as we said our goodbyes, she bent down and bit my arm. Hard. I yowled in pain as I felt her teeth sink into my flesh. Later, after she and my dad arrived back at home and called to wish me goodnight, she explained, that 'thats just what mother lions do when their young leave the pride." Her teethmarks left a scar that I still wear to this day.

My mom died just as I was learning how to crawl out of that bitchy, breaking-away phase of young-adulthood. But before we could forge a new relationship based on tolerance, mutual respect and understanding, she was gone. And I was left wounded, afraid, and metaphorically curled up in the fetal position once again, not quite sure how to finish finding myself in a world without her. I never imagined being a mama without my mom around, and sometimes -- ok, oftentimes -- I feel her absence, raw and gaping, more painful than her sharp teeth tearing into my skin.