In an attempt to find a picture for my MIL she has requested, I came across numerous old pictures. At first, they are just pics and I'm focusing on my baby toes and eyes, but, then, the inevitable, Mother's hands touching mine and smiling an inch away from my cheeks. Hard not to start to go there w/ the emotions. I start to think, "O sweet Mom, You really wanted a baby didn't you...look how sweet you look holding me, just like I look holding my newborns"
I choke by tears, still am, eyes fill w/ liquid, and then my fight to keep them at bay dries them. Then the dam starts to peak over the levvy. Don't do it Candice! I hate crying. I don't know why. Well yes I do, but that is another blog. Tears are good for us, this I know. Perhaps before I close down the laptop I will have a good cry.
The above picture is my mother, Suzanne Lee, pregnant with me. There I am, beneathe the layers of my mother's wombs, five inches down from her heart. I was once there, and what I wouldn't give to get that close again.
I said I'd do some soul searching but dang yall (in my best Britney accent) this is hard!
So I'd like to start the first of a few photo/stories....I scanned in about 6 tonight.
So the story goes, she was 20, pregnant, married to my biological father, who shall remain nameless. I have no memory of him. I have met him and it was awkward and sparked such anxiety I could hardly stand upright. I was 17.
In 1978, they were just married folk w/ a baby on the way. Baby Candice. We lived in a single wide in east Ft. Worth, again, no memory, or very "few" of this home. She had me c-section, I was breach and it was hours before she got to hold me. She didn't breastfeed and get this, I was still bonded to her, like GLUE. I was a mommy's girl. She liked to put me in frilly dresses and had me out in the sun a lot with her. I think the day she gave birth to me was the first time she understood the concept of unconditional love. I can say that b/c I have often said that myself. How sad one might think, but it is what it is. This was her journey and I am speculating since she isn't alive to ask. However, since I saw her go through more pain than the average human being, I think I can safely say that her children are what brought her true joy. When you live a life of hardship, struggle, and mental illness and addiction, you lose sight of love. She had a hard time believing others when they said things like "love you forever". I think she called B.S on that every time but still hung on in hopes people would love her authentically. At the end of the day, I just wanted to spit in the all of the mens' faces who ever hurt her, b/c it was me who had loved her so hard so real so genuine, so completely unconditionally. Of course she had to feel it from her own mother, I hope that goes without saying. Grandma was her anchor. I just tried to keep her afloat for my own needs. A teenager should never have to watch your mother go from human on a Wednesday and a few days later, reduced to a box of ashes. Grief is something that becomes your friend, because if you betray grief, you might end up falling down and never getting up. Faith cannot be an after thought. Faith is what gets me to my mother via butterflies. Faith is what will place me back in her arms, one day.
