Chapter Three

Chapter Three of my memoir

Chapter Three

I was a nervous child, always on the watch for whatever catastrophe would next befall us. As I grew older, I began to resent the fact that I never seemed to have anyone to care for me. I battled that issue well into adulthood. I have yet to completely shake the feeling that I alone am responsible for the universe (well, my little part of it anyway), and that is a heavy load for a child to carry on her back. As I’ve mentioned, for the most part my parents were at best, aloof—at worst, abusive. But there were those golden times when the sun came out and shone on all of us and we had a brief moment of being a happy family—smiles all around.


My mother could be the funniest, brightest, most charismatic soul and those are the times I remember most clearly. When I think of her, I picture her with her head thrown back in laughter, her eyes dancing, and pure joy shining from her eyes every time she throws a glance my way. In those moments, she was magnetic. Mike and I gravitated to her as if we were on the dark side of the moon and she was our life source—the sun, with the power to bestow life-sustaining warmth.

In those brief and all too infrequent moments of lucid, happy existence, I believe my mother let us glimpse her true self—the Mom who wasn’t damaged and defeated by the inner demons that plagued her throughout her life. How glorious would it have been to have that mother all the time! That part of her personality was so compelling that Mike and I both embraced it to such an extent that it was difficult for either of us to acknowledge that another side of her existed. Our mother taught us to laugh and showed us how to find humor in the world around us. If only for the briefest of moments, she taught us how to rise above the world we lived in—to pluck the happiness from it and tuck it away in our hearts for the times we needed it the most.


The darkness always claimed her again, but we never stopped looking for, hoping for, and jealously guarding the next time our mother’s laughter broke through the clouds to fill us with the hope that this time it would last.