Oops She Did It Again

My mother, that is.

To say that my mother and I have a long and tortured history together doesn't even begin to cover it. She left when I was 8, came back when I was 18, left again when I was 23 (with 3 days' notice and 1,000 excuses), I found her again when I was 32 and now, after several years of intermittent communication and myriad excuses she's preparing to leave again with only 3 days' notice. (I'm now 38.)

The problem isn't simply that she left those last 2 times. She moved for work when I was 23, but I have to believe that you generally get more than 3 days' notice that you're moving cross country. She had a bunch of excuses for why she didn't tell me sooner and promised to call me with an address as soon as she got settled. Six months later I got a call from her because my grandmother had died, but still no address.

We patched all that up 7 years ago, and I do mean patched. The wounds are obviously still there, but there are many Band-aids slapped over them. We do a delicate dance most of the time and pretend that she hasn't abandoned me repeatedly during my life. Until she drinks and then she alternates between telling me I need to grow up and stop holding grudges and offering weak excuses for why she left me when I was 8 years old.

So today, after not hearing from her for 6 months, she called my husband's cell phone (not mine - can't wait to hear her excuse for that one) and left a voicemail telling him that she and her husband will be leaving for New Mexico on Friday and that she'd love to see us all before they go. Then she sent me an e-mail stating pretty much the same thing, but also adding that the move was very "last minute". I should mention that she lives 4 blocks away from me, so this all could've been done in person if she really wanted to see us that badly, but she will avoid confrontation at ANY cost. I'm not sure what type of job requires you to move thousands of miles with less than a week of notice to secure housing and such, but evidently that's how this is all going down.

When and if I ever get a chance to actually confront her about this latest abandonment, I am sure she will make me seem like the bad guy, since technically she did try to get hold of me. And she'll be completely unable to see any parallels between this time and all the others.

Happy Mother's Day.