For more fun with packages from Momsy, clicky clicky.

I got two packages yesterday, for no particular reason. I opened them tonight while I was on the phone with a friend, so – in real time – I told him what was in the packages. Then I washed, rinsed, repeated with two of my girlfriends and they both laughed so hard I’m pretty sure they stopped breathing for a few minutes.

There were several good, totally unnecessary, nonsensical gifts therein. Gifts such as:

- A mini handheld vacuum
- A hose for the vacuum
- Attachments for the vacuum
- A handheld sewing machine (I actually just typed “sexing machine.” Whoops!)
- Spools of thread and a pattern for said machine, though she knows I don’t sew
- A handpainted rock
- Blender magazine
- A purple velvet pouch (ahhh – there had to be something purple)
- A book called, “The Transition to Adulthood; A Bridge Too Long”
- ” ” “The Doctor’s Book of Home Remedies; Thousands of Tips and Techniques Anyone Can Use to Heal Everyday Health Problems.” Which is how my Mom deals with bipolar disorder, but whatever . . .

But the best parts of these packages really would be better shared through photos . . .

I present to you the most glorious Mom Package Extravaganza ever: Of Douchebags & Wedding Rings

First, I found this enormous silver ring. Engraved on the outside was the word, “Amore.” On the inside, it says, “Love.” I slipped it on to find that it was too big to fit even my thumb. Deeper n the package was another smaller silver ring. It fit. It matched the other ring exactly. My mother sent me fucking cheap MATCHING silver wedding bands. But that’s not all, kids. She sent me a little advice on how to find the guy who’s supposed to wear the other one!

Then, there’s the brochures. Very informative. Because there is some information no 28-year-old child should ever be without. God forbid I don’t learn about this stuff early enough to benefit from the knowledge:

And if douching and “No!” and diagrams about getting my tubes tied don’t keep me from having sex, there’s always this:

However, my mom does retain a sense of humor. She knows how to keep it lighthearted.

As funny as this all is, each package I get from my mom makes me kind of sad. These brochures she sends me are from about 1991. There’s one in there from 1982. She hasn’t seen me since I was 14 – that’s half of my life. She’s still operating on a vision of me as an adolescent. How is she supposed to know how to relate to me? She got pregnant with my brother when she was 15 . . . she”s been talking to me about birth control since I was 12. It’s really sad, if you stop to take it seriously.

But I can’t. Not all the time. I mean, how can you not laugh when your mom sends you booklets on how to find your soul mate AND matching wedding rings? And if that doesn’t work out . . . well, there’s always the douchebag to wash the memory away.

Mom recently moved and didn’t give me her new address. Which is fine, because I do the same thing to her all the time. If I wait too long to tell her where I am, she sends the police to my “last known address,” which, in her mind, is the home of my ex-boyfriend’s parents. From five years ago. They always enjoy those visits.

When it came time to think of sending a card or getting in touch for mother’s day, not only did I not have her address, but she had also shut off her cell phone and discontinued internet service at home.

No matter. I still heard from her today.

For a little background, you need to know that my mother sends me the most bizarre, themed, color-coordinated packages. For years – maybe a decade, everything in each package was purple because that was my favorite color during high school. Last year, she finally got with the program and sent me a package containing nothing but pink things. Pink erasers. Pink lace skirts to put on top of lamps. Pink plastic jewelry. Oh, and I guess for the following to make sense you should also know that I’m biracial, and my mother is white.

Today, I got possibly the best-themed present ever. And I’m not even a mother. I just got back from being out of town, and had a package from her waiting for me. I opened it up a few minutes ago to find just two things: The current edition of Vibe Magazine, and the current edition of Interview Magazine.

On the cover of Vibe, to the left of R. Kelly’s head, scrawled in my mother’s flowery handwriting, “Mostly Black Folks in Here.”

On the cover of Interview, to the left of Emily Blunt’s hip, my mother has written “Mostly White Folks in Here.”

Above the address sticker on the Vibe, she has written, “Do you know who to trust?”

What. The. F*ck.

This is the best Mother’s Day ever.

For me, it’s not quite like that. I hate to skip over chapters in the story to give you this piece, but it’s timely because it’s October and this month depresses the sh*t out of me for a number of reasons. This is even more weird to write about because, as I type this, my very best friend in the world is going into labor with her first child.

I don’t usually enjoy talking to my Mom. It sucks. I say,”I love my Mom,” like most people say, “I love long weekends,” or “I love Sam Adams beer.” Just doesn’t have that emotional ring to it. If you haven’t read up on previous chapters of my life, I suggest starting with “Slow Piroutte for the Dancing Girl,” and perhaps check out my conversation on Mother’s Day.

I didn’t have that chemical bond a child forms with his/her mother those first few seconds, hours and days. I was taken away at birth and placed in another woman’s care for three years. Four years after my mother got me back, I was “taken away” again, this time to live with my grandparents – who I view as my true parental figures because they were my custodians for longer than anyone else.

This thing with my grandparents taking care of me caused a great deal of pain for my mother. She thought that they’d have me for a year until she got well again and then maybe she could get the mommy thing right. Problem was, I wasn’t having it.

At seven years old, I knew I never wanted to live with her again. She didn’t understand that for years, until I was 14, actually . . . but we’ll get to that story later. I haven’t seen her since I was 14. And she thought it was my grandparents’ fault that I didn’t want to live with her anymore.

So ever since I was seven, Mom and I have had to rely on a series of phone calls and the annual two-week visit during summer months to cultivate some sort of closeness. This is just fucking weird to talk about – but that experiment never really worked. I listen to her talk about all of her problems and it’s just . . . click . . . disconnect. I can’t feel anything.

If anything, I’m proud of her. People have gone through less than she has and backed out of life. She’s lost both her kids, received not a whole lot of support from my family and has fought tooth and nail to gain some sort of education in Jamestown.

She’s also the source of so many things about my character that I treasure. Her ability to speak her mind, regardless of the consequences, is inspiring. I care about hurting certain people, but for the most part I let people have it – and bluntly – when I am not happy with something they’ve done. My mother has been arrested because of her mouth several times. She refuses to become a kinder, gentler version of herself because that’s just not who she is. I love her for that, too. And without her DNA, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be a writer. My brother writes, I wrote poetry before anything else, and that’s what she’s been doing since before I was in the womb. If our story makes us rich some day, God bless her, but keep her far away from me.

But so many of her problems, like anyone’s problems, have been of her own making. My grandfather has tried and continues to try to help her. It’s hard for me not to be biased towards him because he helped to shelter me and give me the environment I needed to become who I am today. I haven’t talked about him here a whole lot, but I absolutely adore him. He didn’t owe me a single thing, yet he took me in as his own flesh and blood and raised me. I know what he’s done to reach out to her, and he is repaid by my mother lashing out at him and his wife because they are the Evil Ones Who Took Me and Wouldn’t Give Me Back.

Consider this though: Every holiday after I was seven years old (the year I moved to live with my grandparents), I played the dutiful child and talked to my Mom. Every holiday, she is the one who told me that it wasn’t fair that both of her children should be taken away and that I should come back to live with her. Every holiday, my grandparents were the bad guys, and who were we to enjoy the family and the love and the warmth that everyone should have on holidays? Who were we? Why should we be happy, and not her? And why did I get to be close to her father when she never really got to because her parents got divorced? Why? Answer that, Emily.

I don’t know the answer to most of those questions. All I know is that she made me miserable every f*cking time. Take that one bitter, manipulative, mentally-ill character away, and I had a fucking made-for-TV family. After all the turkey and the mashed potatoes and the Christmas cookies, I’d be there in the dark in the formal living room talking to Mom, listening to her literally sob on the end of the line . . . while the sounds of my cousins opening presents and aunts and uncles clinking glasses of wine came floating in from the family room and the kitchen. No one else had to deal with her. She had shut all of them out and I was the only one she was concerned with winning back to her “side.” I fought those battles alone.

If anyone wonders where my diplomacy and stupid sense of loyalty come from, it’s from those years tethered to phone calls in the dark.

I searched out words that wouldn’t unravel Mom’s sense of entitlement to technical maternity while at the same time struggling to explain that I was doing the right thing by living with my grandparents. Diplomatic to Mom, loyal to Grandma and Grampa. Diplomacy. Loyalty. My out-of-whack feeling meters for those two emotions color everything, and I’ve had a hell of a time trying to wrestle free.

Why should I feel ashamed of my detachment when it wasn’t my fault she couldn’t mother me? It’s not that I do feel ashamed; it’s that every time I hear her cry when I call her on her birthday, my birthday or some other happy day, I feel like I should feel ashamed. Like I’m feeling nothing where there should be some weighty sense of grief for what I lost.

But what did I lose? I step back and then the anger comes, because I realize she has put me in the middle of so many battles with her own father. For one to use one’s daughter as a pawn against one’s father is a type of behavior I can’t really stomach. So, I’ll leave you with this:

From Mom, postmarked May 9, 2003. Addressed to me, my brother, Grandma L. (not the one who raised me, but my Grampa’s first wife) and Grampa. (Ellipsis are hers, not mine.)

“Hello Everybody!!!

The time for celebration has come, at least for me.

For my Em who might not be able to make it to my graduation, I love you and just think of me walking up to get my diploma, just as I thought of you getting yours. I forfeited seeing you graduate so I could buy a computer to help me do the work it would take to get to this point. I’m almost there.

To Corey, my son, I love you . . . keep this memento so you can look back and see what a struggle life can be and what is actually worth fighting for. You and I and Em have accomplished great things . . . and better things to come . . .

Mom . . .hope you can be here for my graduation . . . but if you can’t I’ll be thinking of you and how you started college so long ago and decided to raise all seven of us kids . . . I’ll be graduating and trying to find employment just as you did when dad left and you were on your own still taking care of me, Steve and Tom.

Dad . . . I am getting my diploma from College just as [my aunt/her sister] did . . . I don’t think she had any family around to share in her accomplishments . . . You may not be there for my graduation but you were there for Em’s . . . you raised her? You raised me? Where did your heart go? I love you . . . your love is displaced. I have been on my own . . . now I’m on the road and in the running as far as what are deemed accomplishments in life . . . I am outspoken and honest . . . I’ll never change for the worse.”

Me as a kid, and my mom and dad

When the police and DCYF officials came ready to knock down the door of the apartment I shared with my mother in the projects, the real blow was to my mother’s psyche – not the metal frame as it shook on its hinges. She had already lost custody of one child. When they took me away that Easter day, I felt like I was the one disappointing her, not the other way around.

By nightfall, I found myself in a warmly-lit kitchen. My new foster mother was clucking her tongue, looking sideways at me.

“Poor thing.” she said.

I knew I looked a mess. My mother had hacked the hair off the left side of my head with scissor-wielding determination. I had raised red welts all over my back and behind, and I came only with the clothes on my body.

There was some sort of hullaballoo against placing me with a White foster family, though, and the next morning I was shuffled to my next foster home. That’s when I met Pearl.

Pearl was an old Jamaican lady. Her house smelled of moth balls, tissue paper, old carpet and spice. I had my own room there. She gave me a small, white, leather-bound copy of the New Testament.

Sundays were an affair. Her children – all grown – would come over and bring us to church. Baptist services were wall-to-wall Black people. The men came in handsome, well-cut suits with their hair trimmed tight. Women donned dresses in primary colors with big buttons. And the hats they wore! Afterwards, Pearl’s children would gather back at the house to share Sunday dinner. There was rice and peas cooked with salty ham hocks and hot, sweet plaintains.

I’m not sure why DCYF thought I would be more comfortable with a Black foster family. True, they had placed me with a Black foster family from the time I was born until I was three. And yeah, I spent ages three to six with my Italian mother and Black father.

But after my parents broke up, it was just me and my Italian momsy. And occasionally my Italian grandma (Mom’s mom) with the Chicken Cacciatore and wooden crucifixes all over her house.

When I arrived at Pearl’s house, I could pronounce “cacciatore,” and I knew that a rosary wasn’t a necklace. But I initially thought a plantain was a banana, and I had no idea why all the Black people were clapping and singing so loudly in church.

From that moment on, I was no longer half Black and half White. I was a little girl who was messed up in the head. And Pearl was amused.

First, there was the issue of my hair. I had to switch to Chittick Elementary School to finish out the rest of second grade, and Pearl wasn’t going to let me go looking a mess like I did. She wanted to put greasy stuff in it, but I wanted nothing to do with that slime. My mother didn’t slick me down like a sea otter with petroleum jelly. Why did this lady want to?

I had a new list of things I wasn’t allowed to do. Pearl taunted me endlessly, telling me that little girls who talked aloud to themselves were crazy. How was I supposed to know that? Momsy talked to herself out loud a lot. I saw nothing wrong with it. It was just putting the thoughts on the outside instead of the inside.

Despite my crazy hair and my crazier self-directed dialogues, Pearl always praised me for being well-behaved. Other foster children had come and gone, some taking Pearl’s property with them. She described them as thieves and violent little miscreants who swore at her and wouldn’t show any gratitude for having a place to lay their heads.

I might have been able to get away with the talking to myself thing if it wasn’t for a little experiment gone awry.

I had a habit of taking a long bath and having a nice chat with myself while I soaked. When I was through, I’d throw a yellow towel on my head and pretend I had long, blonde hair.

I decided one day that, as long as I had the blonde hair going for me, I might as well see what I would look like if I were White.

I took the big plastic shaker of Johnson’s Baby Powder and covered myself. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Eyelashes, behind the ears (careful to avoid the mouth) and nose.

Michael Jackson may be older, but I did it first. I looked at myself in the mirror.

I. Was. White.

Nonplussed, I decided it was kind of boring being pale. Plus, some of the baby powder got in my mouth and it didn’t taste good. At least I smelled nice.

Pearl came knocking at the door to the bathroom.

“Emily? What is taking you so long in ther . . . chile! What are ya doin’ to yourself? What are you, crazy?”

I hadn’t planned on getting caught.

After I finished second grade, I moved from Boston to live with my maternal grandparents in Florida. My grandmother (Mom’s step-mother) made sure that I wrote Pearl often, and we kept in touch for many, many years. But after awhile, the letters stopped coming. I don’t know how old she lived to be. What I do know is that pearls and baby powder will always be two of my favorite things.

Who was at the door? It was my teenage baby-sitter, Jeannie. Jeannie had heard the crashing, yelling and screaming. My mother – she had one ear to the door and she was looking back at me, listening to Jeannie ask if everything was okay and holding a finger up to her lips as if to say, “If you don’t tell, no one will take you away from me.”

Then Jeannie’s parents were there in the hall. They wanted to hear my voice – make sure I was okay. They had heard about the time my brother was taken away. So my mother motioned me over to the door. I looked at it. It was like a warehouse door. Industrial grade. With paint you could scratch off with your fingernails. The door looked back at me.

I walked up to it. I said, “I’m okay.”

Next, my mother and Jeannie’s mother in the hall, screaming. My mother throws a white telephone at their door. Cord and all.
_____________________________________

My mother took me out of foster care at age three, after I started calling my foster mother Mommy.

I was in foster care for the first three years of my life for two reasons. The first reason is that my mother is bipolar. At the time of my birth her diagnosis was subject to debate, as most mental illness diagnoses are.

At different times, she has been labeled schizophrenic. She has had shock treatments. She has been drugged into and out of so many different realities, I’m sure she doesn’t know which parts of her life are fact and which are fiction. I do know that what I have told her of my seventh year she regards as fiction.

“I never did that to you,” she says. “And if I did, it was only because I loved you.”

She was taking Lithium before she discovered she was pregnant with me. Lithium and babies do not mix. She went off the psych drugs, in part for my fetal benefit, but mostly because she fucking hated being on them. The pattern would repeat itself several times over.
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I wouldn’t stop crying. My mother was cutting my hair. Why? It was so pretty. I had just grown it long enough to wear out of braids in my second grade picture. I remember I wore blue and feathers were involved in my hair somehow. I liked Indians in second grade. I always wanted to be Pocahontas. Mooky’s mom had hot-combed my hair especially for the occasion. I just couldn’t understand why mom would chop it all off with scissors like that when it was finally long. So I cried.

“The more you cry, the more I cut,” she said.

I couldn’t help it. She had just beaten me for no reason. It was Easter weekend. We were supposed to visit Grandma L. in Olean, N.Y., but we had come home from the Greyhound station because Mom had forgotten our tickets. We got home, and Mom just started breaking things.

First it was just her things. Things in the living room. Then she started breaking things I liked – like the little glass figurines that my uncles bought for her. Little blue glass penguins and elephants. And those glass animals – owls – from tea boxes. All of them – she swept them from the white plastic shelves in the hallway. She yelled. Really loud.

She bent me over and spanked me. I don’t know why she did it. I remember crying and I remember her putting me in the tub afterwards and telling me she was sorry. My skin was red. Then she was cutting my hair off. So I started crying again.
_________________________

My mother was skinny as a fishing line when she got pregnant with my brother at age 16. She was diagnosed with a variety of things in her early 20s, necessitating the use of a mishmosh of sundry toxins her doctors thought would fix her up. Lithium fucks with all of your body’s systems, including the regulation of your weight. My mother became obese. She went off those drugs when she got pregnant with me and, as you know, pregnancy does not make you any skinnier. By the time she gave birth to me nine drug-free months later, she had be hospitalized for her mental state.

She was in and out of the mental hospital for those first three years I was in foster care. The other reason the Commonwealth of Massachusetts didnt want me in her care was because they had to take my brother out of her custody after she beat him.

She was off her meds when that happened, too. I was in her belly, growing there, blissfully unaware of what I would be born into. I know my mother danced and sang and read and wrote when I was there in her belly. My brother was adopted by his father’s parents in California, where he moved for good before I was born. We’ve corresponded. We’ve spoken. I think he’s probably the best brother a girl could have. I’ve never met him.
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Mom went into my bedroom and started breaking all of my things. I haven’t done anything wrong. My mom’s not crazy. She told me she’s not and I believe her. She said they took my brother away from her and she was sorry, but she wouldn’t let them take me, too.

She’s in my room and she flipped my bed over when she was breaking things. I don’t have a lot of toys, but I have enough. Barbie dolls, my stuffed Gizmo doll that my brother sent me for my fourth birthday. But my favorite was my little jewelry box with the plastic ballerina. She did slow pirouettes when I opened the box. She danced just for me and played a song, too. I didn’t just want to be Pocahontas. I wanted to be Pocahontas on pointe shoes.

If I could make myself stop crying, I thought maybe she would stop breaking things before she got to the jewelry box.

I stood with my feet firmly planted in the middle of a mental breakdown. I was seven years old, there was broken glass all around me and half of my hair was cut off. My small body was red all over and my mother was at the dark green metal door to our apartment in the Beechland Street projects of Roslindale, Mass.

Jeannie is at the door asking if I’m okay. I’m sad. My little ballerina is broken now, but her song is still playing. I looked at the door. It looked back at me. I walk up to it and say, “I’m okay.”

Second: I am on the phone with my Mom as I type. She just watched “Save the Last Dance,” for the first time. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about a white high school girl who gets her dance on. Unfortunately for her, “getting her dance on,” means ballet. This does not go over well for her as the new girl in school in the ghetto. Then, to the chagrin of many, she has the gall to date a black dude. Her new black friends teach her how to bring it, “In Living Color” style, and she incorporates some of her newfound jiggy into her ballet.

Momsy’s thoughts? “Gosh, I never went through any of that when I was with your brother’s dad. Or with your dad. [Mom's white, our fathers are black.] It’s not that the white race created their problems. It went way, way back to slavery. But now, a lot of white people have just as many problems as black people. Oh, by the way, I moved again. There were thieves. They stole my lawnmower.”

Welcome to my life. Now she’s talking about the joys of living in Jamestown, NY. I’ve mentioned this before – Jamestown is about as uplifting as looking out my windowpane at the road, which is quickly flooding.

Momsy: “Erie [county] is just f*cked up. It’s not us. It’s depressed. It’s how this area is.” Ah, the delight. “Don’t set limitations on me, ’cause there aren’t limitations as far as I’m concerned. I said some things I shouldn’t have said, but that’s how I am when I get heated. I don’t need to apologize. I will write to my congressmen and senators and they will put heat on them, ” Momsy says. “Jackasses.”

I do love her.

[Edit: For people who live in NY, you know Jamestown is not in Erie County. But my family is originally from Buffalo, which is the heart of Erie. My Mom has no love for that whole side of NY. Everyone but her and my grandfather's first wife (Mom's mom) moved to Florida. We talk about it every time she calls.]

[Edit 2: Okay, I just got off the phone. Talking to my Mom is a 50/50 enterprise. Half the time, she drops gems that have me laughing so hard I practically wet myself. She is ridiculously funny and bitchy. She knows this about herself and does not give a flying f*ck. I'm pretty sure I picked part of that up in the womb. On the other hand, talking to me usually brings out the worst in her because she hasn't seen me since I was 14 and she misses me. That's half of my life she hasn't witnessed. She cries. It makes me sad. I'm not gonna take it any deeper than that here because some of my things aren't for public view. I hope those of you who are close with your moms had a great mommy's day.]