mommy dearest

motherless me, compensatorily caring. i have mamaed my entire life, providing maternity and love for everyone who lacks it, from them just years my juniors to he whose mother threw him to the wolves to her whose body i produced to he whose mother couldn't put down the pipe long enough to help him walk, later watch him, in cap and gown, walk, to he whose laundry i now dutifully fold.
and i mothered him, who was ostensibly my parent. and her, because she couldn't do the same for me.
and him, who i handed over to his rightful mother.

he described my personality perfectly this morning, and i sat wondering if it pricked their ears as it did mine, knowing they'd be diagnosing themselves behind me, each of us pathological in our own right.

she exclaimed to me this morning that i must be the world's best mother. and all i can do is laugh. my own would have me thrown in jail for my lacking maternal behavior.

but she of all people sent me a card on mother's day, telling me that she thought i was a fabulous mother; for all her disdain of what i represent, for all her sorrow at her son's having selected me over the harvard-educated neurotic, she stills wishes she had done some of what i'd do.

still, mass-sitting skills aside, there is so much for her to disapprove. and so much for him to dismiss.

i wonder what fatherlessness did to him.

and how the two of them mesh, having complementary losses.