A 6 Year Old at 61

 I tell myself to stop whining, just shut up already.  That I am 61 and not 6.   But the 6-year-old me, the one who had become so recently aware of Mama's lack of love, is hurting.  And she won't be quieted off.

When did I first become aware that I, in and of myself, was not chosen, was not wanted?  Was it when I learned my dress size was less than ideal?  Was it the increasingly determined attempts to make my stick straight baby fine hair surrender to her desire to make it curl?  Was it the sharp and hateful "I've never been so ashamed of you!" when I was returned to the hospital room following the tonsillectomy?  Why was I marked for shame because I cried as strangers in gowns and masks rolled me suddenly from the cozy little hospital room into a hallway frighteningly bright...  Was it the day the whole classroom laughed because I was told my Mama said I was too fat, so I wasn't to have afternoon milk with everyone else in my class at school?   Or when I chose to befriend a  little boy and girl whose mother had left them?  I'd felt compassion for their dirtiness, sorry for them because they had no mother, but my mother assured me I had low taste indeed if I was friendly to such as those.

It wasn't jealousy.  I loved my brothers dearly, maddening as they might be at times.  I hadn't yet been negatively compared to her friend's daughters who were all more helpful, less selfish, thinner, prettier, more popular, better dressed,.

But I knew.  I knew.  Even at six, I knew that Mama didn't love me.   So why on earth am I still whining inside that Mama doesn't love me at 61?

Were I to relate the latest incidents, Mama would shine like a star and I'd come across as a whiny, unappreciative mess.  But that's the way it's always been.  Her cruelties so subtle that no one else catches the full meaning of her words, her actions seemingly so generous yet her reason for giving it   never told.  Sometimes to shame me for not being in a position to provide  for my family, sometimes to shame my husband for his unwillingness to seek higher pay in a place he liked less to work.  Sometimes to remind me that she had an education that netted her a higher paying job but also never mentioning that she'd denied me access to a higher education, even a vocational one because she commanded my father to forgo filling out financial paperwork.

As an example of her subtlety, she always complained over my grandmother's cooking, most especially her cornbread dressing.  She went on and on about how much she hated it, how she couldn't stand it and how she dreaded having to face a holiday meal because of it.  Mind you she always managed to put a good sized portion on her plate...but that's neither here nor there to this example.  She would go on for months before and months after a holiday meal complaining about that stuffing.  

Last year, as we ate the meal I'd prepared, she looked up at me and said quietly, "Well...this tastes just like your grandmother's stuffing."   She smiled at me sweetly and went on eating, but I felt a cold chill go through me.  She would, all throughout that meal say things that sounded so innocuous to anyone not initiated in family knowledge, but each one referenced, in some way, my own inadequacy. My enjoyment of the meal was completely cut off.  Later my husband asked, "Weren't you hungry?  You didn't eat very much...Was it just that you were overtired?"   

I tried to explain to him what had been going on but he just shook his head.  "Why do you let her get to you?" he asked.   

Why does she get to me?  Why does she choose those subtler forms of reminding me that I am not enough, that what I do is not enough to ever make up for the disappointment of having me as her daughter?