Happy Mothers' Day

The phone rang and an excited eight year old voice announced that his team had won at soccer.

‘I scored a goal!’ he said, and I could feel his smile glowing with pride.

How many goals did your team score? Three. Who won the other two goals? Nathan and Jake.

He bubbled along, full of success and happiness.

‘You should have seen me Gran, I was up near the goal and I just tapped it in. The goalkeeper completely missed it!’

It was his second ever game, as part of the first soccer team he had played for. Until now he had only played practice games and learned soccer skills at the local sports arena. He was now learning the win and lose thread of real games played each Sunday morning.

Today was Mothers’ Day, and also my granddaughter’s fourth birthday. I interrupted Tyson’s happy gabbling about soccer to say Happy Birthday to Evie, and Tyson primed her to say Happy Mothers’ Day back to me. His delight was infectious, and I can’t wait to see him this afternoon. We are having a Happy Mothers’ Day for myself, and my daughter Belinda and daughter-in-law Bridget, a four year old birthday for Evie, a forty-third birthday for Belinda on Wednesday, and an eleven year old birthday for Cohen on Thursday – Bridget and Craig’s oldest boy. I can just hear the bursts of exuberant happiness as Tyson tells everyone about his win at soccer. It will overtake Mothers’ Day and Birthday excitement- at first, until Tyson realizes he has to curb his own joyful story.

I don’t understand. I never experienced that enormous surge of pride, that happy phone call to Gran, that wonderful congratulations from Mum and Andrew. ‘We Won’.

At age eight I was not part of a team, not successful at any sport. At Primary School sports were very ‘boy’ and ‘girl’- football and netball- and I was too short to be considered for netball. In fact I was too invisible to play anything. I wasn’t part of anyone’s group, I wasn’t wanted. All the other groups were tight and unwelcoming, so I wandered away to the library and helped the librarian. Every recess and lunch time for the six years of Primary School.

My father was enormously proud of my academic success and announced each new win, all the way through Primary and Secondary school, to all the customers in his toy shop.

“My eldest daughter came top of the class. My eldest daughter came Dux of the school. My eldest daughter won a Scholarship to University. ‘

I did have achievements at Physical Culture, and won several badges, but those successes paled beside all the academic ‘firsts’. I loved Physical Culture. It represented my control over my own body, the exactness of Marching and Exercises. It was a forewarning of the self-control, years later, that was exemplified in the years of weight loss and exercise of Anorexia Nervosa.

This morning, many decades later, like every Sunday morning, my friend Di and I spent two hours together doing craft things. Sometimes we draw or paint, today she was crocheting and I was glueing paper flowers onto cards I was making. I didn’t feel like talking, and she chatted happily about the coming visit of one of her sons and his family this afternoon for Mothers’ Day.

She was also interested to hear my opinion about a new group she is proposing to set up for her ACA meetings. ACA is Adult Children of Alcoholics. Our conversation turned towards one of the Twelve Steps discussed at her meetings, and her own fear of authority figures, and her sense of being a victim.

‘Do you feel like you are a victim?’ she asked, innocently.

‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. But then my mind drifted back fifty-five years and I knew my answer should have been ‘yes’.

I had never had the happy success at sport, that eight year old Tyson had experienced this morning, I had never been part of a happy group of children at play, I had never had a friend at Primary School, at High School, or at University, and, when I did need help, the person I turned towards abused his position and made things worse.

I was depressed, and very conflicted about my belief in God. I was trying so hard to be GOOD, and yet, because I was unable to be joyful and trusting, I felt I was BAD. Everything was two-dimensional. I looked THIN, I felt FAT.

Because I had no friends, I was alone with my thoughts and wasn’t able to learn all the adolescent tasks of testing out the world, learning who I was, and forming relationships.

He was a respected Physician. Professor Steinbeck saw me every week, and I poured out my distress. He gave me two things every week – a tract of scriptures to learn, and a prescription for tablets. The tablets were barbiturates and sleeping tablets.

Yes, his presents to me each week had an awful consequence. My BADNESS grew worse because the Bible told me so, and the tablets accumulated, until the inevitable overdose. A depressed, starving isolated teenager, the beginning of my future as a psychiatric patient.

I have come so far since that time, and no-one who saw me today could have believed that that teenager would ever reach where I am now.For an hour or two I have been sitting in front of the computer, gradually trying to pull all the pieces back together.

I said I didn’t understand Tyson’s joy at scoring the winning goal at soccer. That glorious success will help to build a healthy young boy, able to balance out wins and losses in his life. It has taken me a very long time, but I can now see that now I can balance out wins and losses in MY LIFE too, and I can stand up after I’ve finished writing, and happily join my wonderful family for the celebration of Mothers’ Day. It was becoming a Mother, forty-three years ago that was the biggest win.

I hope every mother has a Happy Mothers’ Day.