At the Mercy of Your Choices

For the longest time, when I thought about who I was, I could only see you. When asked what I wanted, I would turn to ask you. Sometimes, I still do. I wouldn’t be where I am without you, and for that I am grateful, but those ties that once bound us have frayed and snapped and will never be what they were.

I was your obsession, even before I had a heartbeat. My existence was pre-plotted by you—you who consulted the calendar and mapped your cycles like stars in the sky, then aligned those nights for bodies to collide, and the seed of me took root within the shadowed depths of your womb. From that moment on, I was at the mercy of your choices.

When I was born, my little life was instantly set to the rhythm of the ticking of your internal clock. You were the sun, and everyone revolved around you. My days and nights played out according to your researched methods and schedules. You decided when I would eat, when I would be played with, and when I would rest before my needs and preferences could be voiced into language; I was helpless to do anything but accept your care.

And you did care. It was evident in the extraordinary lengths you took to regulate every facet of my life, all of which went unnoticed by me in those first few years. But Dad was there through it all, a silent observer barred from uttering any word in opposition to your designs. I’ve heard him hiss—scattered, under-the-breath comments of the rigorous expectations you chained yourself to, how you set a series of timers to rule our days together, how you snapped at anyone who dared suggest you relax and relinquish the vision you had of your new life with me. But I was your first and your last, and you put your whole self into my upbringing.

When I was old enough, you chose a school for me—the best in the area—and we relocated to a district where tuition cost almost as much as our mortgage. I remember walking into that big empty house, where you’d already taped labels onto every door. Master bedroom. Office. Jenna. I lay on the floor of my new bedroom, watching the fan blades spin, and I dreamed of flying to a land where clocks didn’t tick and mothers didn’t tsk at every misstep and mistake.

I remember you and I going to a department store together, the week before school began. I had found a pair of pink sneakers covered with sequins and I was enamored with the way they caught the light and glittered. Fairy dust shoes I called them. I clutched them to my chest and begged to have them, but you made me put them back, and I did. You had already filled a cart with items, and “shoes” had been checked off your list. You curated a new wardrobe for me, decided my whole look. I wouldn’t be plain, but I wouldn’t stand out. I needed to fit in here, you’d said, and make an impression as a good student.

And I was an impeccable student. I followed the rules, and you praised me for it. Teachers told you I was a joy in class, and that made you smile. I was bright and brimming with potential, and you proudly told the world I was your daughter. You laid expectations before me, and I never stopped reaching for them. When I was good, you loved me, and so I wanted to be the best.

As I grew older, I watched the children around me spread their wings and explore new territory. I tried to test the limits of my own nest, but my tether to you was short, and I couldn’t even see over the edge. From day one, you told me what to wear, what to eat, when to rise, when to sleep. You told me who to be, and eventually the lines blurred between what you wanted and what I wanted.

But I never broke your rules, never bucked against your wishes. Mostly, because at the end of every day I didn’t have the energy to fight you. You filled every hour of my life with productivity, stimulation, and extracurricular activities. When you signed me up for dance classes, I squeezed into a leotard and practiced my stretches. When you drove me across town to take piano lessons with old Mrs. Weiss in her too-hot house, I brought my sheet music and my best manners. When you showed up at my school and signed me up for math competitions, I didn’t release the steam that had been building. I kept my mouth shut, afraid I would explode. 

Dad used to fight for me, used to stand up to you and insist you were putting too much on me. But he grew tired of losing, tired of being caught between the woman and the girl he loved, and tired of you turning that icy look on us both. When you were angry, the whole house felt cold, and so we tried to keep the peace.

When I grew taller and began to change the way young girls do, you would watch me with a squint that stayed for every year my age ended in “teen”. You’d walk by my room, peek your head in to check on me, then leave the door half open, as if I’d had demons, or drugs, or god-forbid a boy hiding in my closet. I would catch you looking over my shoulder at what I was reading and who I was messaging, always with a pinched look on your face as if nothing was good enough.

You didn’t approve of any of my friends; they were bad influences—too brazen, too outspoken, and you did not want me to associate with them. And so I saw them at school, in those brief windows throughout the day when my time was my own and I could breathe air that hadn’t already been exhaled by you. But when the bell rang and I walked down those stone steps, you were always waiting for me out front, where we’d drive home in silence to our mausoleum of dead dreams.

Family dinners became quiet affairs. You’d stare as I talked about my day at school—about new friends I’d made and where they were from—interrupting me to ask if “Taylor” was a boy or a girl. Dad would turn to you with that look of his own, the one where he shot one eyebrow up and cleared his throat, the look we both knew meant, “just leave her alone.” You’d stop asking questions, and I’d stop talking altogether.

During the summer, I wanted a job, but you set a stack of scholarship applications in front of me and said that was my job. You told me you and Dad would help with college, but only if I went to one of the schools on the three brochures in front of me. I was only a freshman then, but you wanted me to aim high and get an early start. 

When my classmates began to drive, first in their parents’ cars, then in vehicles of their own, I asked when I could get my license. You looked offended by my question, but simply said “not yet.” That was your answer every time I asked, and so you continued to drive me to school. You liked those words: “no” and “not yet.” I sometimes wondered if you even heard my requests before refusing them.

One ride to school turned into another and another until the day came when it would be my last ride. I cleaned out my locker and walked down those stone steps for the very last time. I donned a black cap and gown and delivered the valedictorian speech to my entire graduating class—something sweet and inspiring about spreading our wings—and then I was gone, and I didn’t look back.

I would choose my own path. I didn’t want your money, your stipulations. I didn’t want your talons in me for one more minute.

My flight from the nest was not graceful. I crashed into trees and tore my face on sharp branches, and no one was there to pick me up and point out the way. I embraced every freedom that had been withheld from me, and my arms couldn’t hold them all. I made mistakes, I took risks, I found out the hard way that not everyone is who they say they are, and not everyone wants to see you succeed. I learned how big the world is, and how very small I am. I learned what it felt like to be used and deceived, lost and alone.

I questioned everything I thought I knew about myself, and I realized how angry I was with you–you who held me so closely that I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see the world beyond the pictures of it you’d painted for me. I sometimes wondered if maybe you’d been held too tightly too, if suffocation was all you knew. But I stumbled through life, seeing things with new eyes, and eventually I figured it out and I made it to where I am today, all without you. 

And then, I found love—a wonderful, resilient love, the kind of love that doesn’t squeeze you so tightly it crushes you. The kind that embraces my ugly with my beauty, my failures with my successes—a love not dependent on constant perfection. It is real and raw and everything I never had.

We eloped on a Thursday and built a life together. And when I thought my joy was at its fullest, that love welled up and spilled over and created something pure and new—a seven pound bundle of happiness we couldn’t take our eyes off.

She is everything we could have hoped for, and nothing we could have prepared for. She tests our patience and makes us laugh all in the same breath. She’s beautiful and messy and sweet and sour all at once. She’s good and kind, strong and smart, and she has your eyes–eyes I haven’t seen in a long time.

Her name is June. I want you to meet her, and I want you to love her for exactly who she is.

And I want her to know you because you’re my mother, and I’ll always love you.