Knocked Off Her Pedestal

Mothers. So many different words form in your mind when this simple word at the slightest utter. Mothers are the people who help shape the person that you become, or at least that’s what they are supposed to do. Until the time I was about fourteen, my own mother was my hero and I would have done anything to please her. She deserved all the love and appreciation that I could give to her. 1

I knew from many of my friends that mothers were not usually liked by their teenage daughters. In middle school, a reasonable relationship between a mother and daughter was a rare sight to see, but I supposed my mom and I were the exception of this unspoken rule.  I told her everything that was going on in my life; the fights, the boys, the grades, everything. We were so much alike, in all sorts of different ways, and it only made sense for the two of us to confide in each other. My parents had separated and I had moved away from the place that I had lived for practically my whole life, so I had no friends to keep me from going crazy. My only friend was my mom. 2

Eventually, it started to change. My mom had always been a good mother, staying at home to take care of my five younger siblings and me, going to various baseball games and making sure that we were able to wear our favorite shirt on the days we wanted to. However, when the separation occurred, even though it wasn’t technically legal, my mom took advantage of it. She immediately started to look for new men to date, she decided to go back to school and move us far away from where we lived and she started to act more like a teenager and less like a mother. She would go off to school in the morning and not show up till later that night, saying that she just “went out to dinner” with the girls. When the six of us would go away to my dad’s for the weekend, she would go out and meet random guys and then, because I was her best friend, she would tell me all about it when she came home. Mothers weren’t supposed to act like this. They weren’t supposed to put their daughters in that awkward position. 3

One night, my mom noticed that there wasn’t much to eat in the house and decided to run out to the grocery store to get a few things to get us through the next few demanding days. I jumped at the chance to get out of the house for even just a half an hour, to get away from the household that I had practically started to run all on my own. Halfway to the store my mom started to ask me my opinions on abortion. At the time, I didn’t question why she would ask about such a subject at that random time because it was not unusual for us to get into heated discussions on trivial matters. I immediately launched into my discussion on how I thought abortion was wrong. As I usually do when I’m voicing my opinion, I talked incessantly without stopping, my voice full of passion, emotion and vigor. My mom just drove directly, quietly, not saying a word, not even nodding or shaking her head. The hush crept around in the van like a ghost and it was haunting to talk to a silence that never responded.  Finally, she interrupted me.4

“ Sara, what if a woman had to?” she asked me. It appeared in front of me as a simple question like a balloon floating in the air and I, unaware of a simple answer, did not realize the words that would eventually follow. 5

I looked at her, completely dumbfounded, not really knowing what she meant. My face bore a bland, blank expression; a reaction seemed so far from grasp. She hadn’t said anything the entire time and I wasn’t sure I even understood the question. “What do you mean?”6

She had the strangest look on her face, like she had a really bad stomachache or an itch in the most unreachable and impossible spot. “ What if a woman had to get an abortion because she had no other choice?”7

“ She had a choice,” I pointed out to her, starting to get defensive. “ She had the choice to use protection and she didn’t. She needs to live up to the responsibilities of her actions.”8

“ Sara, I’m pregnant,” my mom blurted out, and even though her tone of voice was extremely serious, she was looking at me with a sheepish “oops” expression on her face.  9

If I had personally been driving, I know I would have slammed on the brakes and crashed straight into the brick broken wall. I didn’t understand how it was possible for her to remain a picture of composure, driving down the dark, dim streets of a bad neighborhood that I was forced to live in. It was a shock that made my whole body go completely numb. My stomach was twisted in a thousand knots and I felt my heart sink down to my toes. There was a total, tense silence except for the sound of my head pounding as I took in this piece of information. When I finally recovered, I managed to ask her if it was my dad’s. It seemed so impossible; either my parents had gotten back together at some point or my mom had been sleeping with other men. 10

She told me it was some other man. She told me who he was, what he looked like, how he knew and would respect whatever decision she made. I was only fourteen; this information was too much. Earnest emotions showed everywhere, like a hot water pot bubbling inside of me and too many of them encompassed my mind and body that I was sure that I was going to burst at any moment. My astonishment and surprise surpassed any that I had ever felt before in my life. When I finally recovered, my whole body was shaking with anger and the only thing I wanted to do was jump out of the car and get as far away from her as possible. I felt tears form but the last thing I wanted to do was show her that she was affecting me and was making me cry. “ What are you going to do?” I was finally able to say. “ Are you going to tell Dad?”11

“ No,” she said slowly and carefully, as if saying it that way would make it easier on me. “ I’m having an abortion. You can’t tell anyone about any of this.”12

I couldn’t believe anything that was happening. Everything in front of me was spinning because I was seeing everything in a different light. My dad and siblings mean the absolute world to me and to keep a secret about an important person in their life from them was something that I was pretty sure that I couldn’t do.  She thought she could entrust me with this secret because she could tell me everything else and that I wouldn’t tell anyone. “ Why can’t I tell anyone?” I asked. 13

“ Sara, do you know what people would think of me if they knew I screwed up like this. What would your dad think? What would your brothers and sisters think? What would your family think?” I never knew she cared so much. She was doing it to save herself, thinking only of herself as usual. She kept this secret, and still is keeping this secret, from everyone. She thinks that I kept it too, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t let her fool my dad into thinking that she has never done anything that could possibly hurt him, so I told him, after it was hidden inside me for three years. Secrets aren’t always meant to be kept, especially if the secret could indirectly hurt somebody. 14

My mom turned out to be a completely different person than I thought she was and I knew I could no longer trust her. I knew no one could trust her. My whole world was spun off its axis in a declaration that took a mere five seconds.  I went from a carefree fourteen-year-old teenage girl to the matriarch of the family. My mom became a teenager, a child who made a mistake and found the easiest way to get out of living up to her responsibilities even if it was the wrong thing to do. I could no longer be the person I was. I had to grow up and become the mother that she could not be. People are so different than the mere outside images we perceive of them and they are constantly doing things to throw off our universes. 15

My true childhood, of innocence, bliss and ignorance, was over in one night. Childhood was supposed to be so much more and last so much longer.  A child should not have to deal with serious matters like that, and I was still a child at the time. My five siblings still have their childhood and are still living it, oblivious to what their mother has done to them and what I have done for them. 16

Because of this experience, I cannot stand to be around my mother because of the secret that I hold that I am supposed to keep from everyone. My whole opinion of mothers has changed. Mothers aren’t always the perfect pictures that the world paints. They aren’t always the loving and caring people that they are supposed to be and they aren’t always around. They aren’t always those people, those heroes that we want them to be and that we create for them. Sometimes they fall of their pedestal and can’t climb back up because they disappoint us. Mother’s Day has taken a whole new meaning for me. I still have to celebrate despite my desire not to, but the significance of it is completely gone. It is a day to show your respect, love and appreciation for your moms and all that they have done. It’s hard to respect a person who is lying and making you lie to the people that you love. It’s hard to appreciate the things your mom has done if she hasn’t really done anything at all.  17

There’s a part of me that hates this secret that sits in the back of my mind and is constantly there, reminding me of my new responsibilities and of my lost childhood. I wish that I would have never heard those words ever and that I just would have been better off not knowing. The other part of me, however, knows that it happened for a reason, to show me that people aren’t always what they seem to be and, in my case, my mom wasn’t the heroine that I thought she was. It showed me that the people I truly cared for and the most important people in the world were my brothers and sisters. They are the greatest kids in the world and they have the potential to transform this world. They know that they will always have a mom, even if it is a mom in the wrong sense. There is a difference between mothers and moms. My mother gave birth to me and gave me life, but as far as giving me something more, she doesn’t deserve the title as mom. I am a mom, from the time I was fourteen, and a part of me always will be to those kids. So where is my mom? My dad is my mom, in a way that really cannot be explained. He’s the one who has done not only the things a dad is supposed to do, but also all the things a mother is supposed to do. I will always be there for my dad for my siblings.  I want to be there when they succeed, knowing that I watched them grow and helped them mold into the people that they became.  18