The Cinderella Whose Godmother Never Came

My mother is the strongest and the most vulnerable person I have ever known. I admire her strengths while I shrink away from her vulnerabilitiesin factI would say that I fear her vulnerabilities. Seemingly born a hidden child, shrunken small deep inside a shell, a chambered nautilus, she is an anomaly comprised of conflicting and colliding talents, character traits, and emotions. She is a stained glass window, a mosaic that is perpetually stratifying, leaving my mom is a perpetual state of decoding, constantly trying to understand herself. Yet, if one looks closely, they will notice that her incongruent pieces are simple. She so easily feels joy and contentment by an owls unexpected visit, or a notebook and a period of quiet alone time, or her fowls coarse reddish-blond mane being blow by a warm spring breeze. Watch this! my mom excitedly says as she opens the gate to let her three horses enter the big pasture. Watch! Watch! Her face is lit-up like the expectant face of a child witnessing something magical. Then she almost giggles as the fowl runs the length of the pasture and circles back only to repeat his crazy frenzied routine over and over again, half running, half bucking, throwing his head forward and back into the mad wind of his run. Isnt that just great? she half exclaims and half asks. I realize at that point that I am privileged to have been there at that moment with her; not just because I got to see the physical manifestation of a fowls joy, but because I also got to share it with my mom and witness the physical manifestation of her joy. If someone asked her, Who are you? so many things would run through her head; yet, she might not be able to immediately articulate. As she searches for the right labels and terms to attach to herself, she will grow proud and angry, sad and regretful, all at the same time as she proclaims, I am an artist, with her shoulders strong and bold, her head held high. Her statements might begin with proud tones, but slowly her head would begin to sink as it succumbs to the weight of regret and remorse, sadness and anger. Her shoulders fall forward as those thoughts slide into her bones and her muscular structure. Her mind wonders back over the years, settling heavy upon all the times when others did not support her or did not believe in heryears she spent not believing in herself. At sixty, she has found more peace than she had in any previous year enabling her accent into the greater and grander chambers of her shell. This peace has settled around her like a protective blanket that wraps around the thin, fragile, and vulnerable skin of a newborn, holding
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her and keeping her warm. Its soft fabric of gentle reassurance helps her to fall asleep and face the day. But, just as a blanket is modest protection against a storm of threats, her peaceful aura can be jostled and thrown from her by ever present financial issues, health issues, and jungle traps. Some of these jungle traps exist in part because of what lies in hiding within my dad. Conceived during his childhood, his persistent insecurities and chronic depression occasionally surface and threaten to leave my mom stranded and alone once again. They surface from under a cover of darkness, like lions on the hunt. Patiently crouched, quietly waiting in deep recesses, they pace themselves, seizing just the right moment when my mom is most vulnerable. My mom calls him Randy when this happens, which is her way of making a clear distinction between her husband, Andy, the man she admires, the man she loves and this nasty and mean imposter, created by rejection and disapproval, shaped by sadness, loneliness, and self-perceived failure. My dads parents gave birth to Andy and proceeded to create Randy. Suddenly, my moms sense of security and support is thrown to the ground as Randy pounces upon his prey: her vulnerability. Bouncing off tables edge, spilling books and plates and gardening tools to the ground, her joy is eclipsed beneath her. Her downward dejection finally comes to a stop only after pieces of torn-up manuscripts and broken coffee cups puncture her hopes and hit her hard stubborn bones. But, Randy has already sunk his teeth deep into the soft flesh of her neck. His anxieties push hard into her throat as his rejection crushes her, squeezing the air from her lungs. Strong, unyielding jaws press down hard against her efforts to rise up from beneath it all. Her last string of faith is held between his sharp teeth and poisonous tongue. My dad works hard not to fall into his own jungle traps, too. Sometimes my stomach twists uneasily when I look at my mom and I hear all her fallen tears echo in my head. I can see the sadness she has felt throughout her life sitting within the lines on her face and revealing itself deep within the pupils of her eyes. Her pupils are a mile deep. The dark and steep cavernous recesses repeatedly play back a motion picture of her life. A life spent trying to find happiness and belonging, fighting for acknowledgement, acceptance, unconditional love, support. To be adored. To have value. Pupils that go on and on, deeper and deeper, in a torturous tale of emptiness, loneliness, sadness, fear. Eyes hardened by a persistent and consistent flow of tears. Eyes hardened by hard gestures begging, pleading, yelling to get someones attention. LOOK AT ME! DAMNIT! Look at ME! I exist.
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I am a person, damnit i am a person I

am

. . .

. . . Nothing. Whether she was abandoned or being leaned upon too much, my mothers eyes tell of her loneliness and fear. They are proof that people can be invisible to others, that people can be hurt by others, and that our traditional sense of fairytale is something that dies early in some little girls childhoods, long before she has a sense of who she islong before shes had a chance to discover that she has value, that she is worthy of being a princess, a queen. My mom is a Cinderella whose fairy godmother never came. We grow up believing that fairy godmothers will always come. Our mothers teach us that every time they show us their undying support and love, every time their hugs and kisses miraculously make our injuries go away, every time their singing penetrates our sadness and reminds us we are safewe are loved. My mothers mom did not play the role of fairy godmother, she did not offer her unconditional support and love. My mothers mom looks out from deep dark recesses. Her mom was always an empty alleyway of potential hurt, a beautiful cat crouched ready to pounce, a broken furnace in the depths of wintera baby blanket riddled with holes. Yet, alone my mother tried to hold her ground. Alone my mother raged against society. Alone my mother sang inside her head.

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