Peggy

It is mother's day, or it was when I started this post. That is a picture of my mother when she was 21. I now see her so differently than I once did. I understand her and respect her in ways I never did when she was alive. But I remember trying, trying so hard to break through her walls and get to her, but I never really did. She was different from many other women of that time..I think she was always trying to fit into a world in which she felt very insecure in many ways despite her large and in charge personality. She fought. She drank. She had strong political opinions, and they were a rebellion from her parents conservative opinions. She lived at a time when the roles for women were very limiting and oppressive. I will never know what her unhappiness was really about, what happened to her as a child or a young woman, she never shared her unhappiness...just her anger.  My father would try and tell me that she loved me that she really cared, that she worried about me. I didn't believe him, she had been so cruel so mean and so angry and could be really abusive that is was impossible for me to comprehend that she could be both at the same time. I now can see that she did love her children as best she could. She cared for us the best she could. I still regret that those walls of anger kept us a part. I know now that what she wanted most, like for most of us, is right there within reach but we do not get to it. We lament and regret and wish...like I do now.