Page 57 of Breathe Again

Gardening! Gardening was mine. Truly mine. I shared my bounty with my friends and family, I liked to show it off, I enjoyed helpingthem with their gardens, but even if no one else existed in the world, I would still do it. I did it for me.

I am a gardener.

I recorded what I knew of myself in my journal. This was a good start.

Raising boundaries would stop others from encroaching on my space, my time, and stealing my peace. I needed boundaries against one person, and one person only right now, my mother. I snorted to myself, of course she’s the one person in my life who would never accept them.

In fairness, over the past year I’d pulled away quite a bit. My mood had been so low when I wasn’t angry, that going to visit her usually resulted in binge-eating when I got home, while I processed her criticisms and her praises. The energy required to survive a visit with my mother, which meant leaving without fighting or arguing, was more than I’d had to spend. Cutting back on visiting was a natural progression, a bit of self-preservation I didn’t know I had in me to give myself.

I was, finally, at the ripe old age of forty-five, separating from my mother and finding out who I was going to be apart from her. Something I should have been allowed to do in my teens and twenties, something I should have insisted on doing in my thirties, but I wasn’t dead yet, so I guessed it wasn’t too late.

For the first time, I began to understand that my mother’s treatment of me was not an annoying quirk due to an insensitive personality, or the result of being less than smart, but was abuse. Abuse that robbed me of significant developmental milestones, abuse that negatively affected my relationships, especially those with my husband and my daughter, abuse that cheated me out of my own sense of self. It wouldn’t hurt if some of my endless reserve of anger was directed at the source of the problem, or at least, toward gaining a solution to neutralizing the source of the problem.

I’d done enough emotional labor for the day, and it was just past nine in the morning. The good news was that it was Thursday, animal shelter day and girls’ night. I had the afternoon to myself, and my girls would be here afterwards.

Olivia was happy to go, and she got ready with no fuss. Once she left, I turned my music up as loud as I could stand it, filling up the space inside me with its heavy beats, mostly listening to Staind, but Breaking Benjamin, Hinder and Saliva made appearances in my playlist as well. The afternoon was well spent polishing the manuscript that had given me such trouble. A bit of space and an uninterrupted stretch of time worked wonders.

When Olivia arrived home with Bex and Willa, I’d just left my sunroom to start preparations for dinner. Olivia burst into the house full of stories. Usually when she got home she was quiet and mellow, fatigued from socializing. Today she was chatting away asshe walked through the door, both Willa and Bex with her, nodding, smiling, and interjecting a word or two.

Seeing them all together, Bex so petite and sassy, flitting about, Willa tall and oh so curvy, her face split by a wide smile, and Olivia, sweet Olivia, her hair a messy halo of curls, her hands contorted into little flying birds as she chattered, I was struck anew by the beauty I had in my life. My girls. My beautiful, vibrant, funny, complicated, perfect girls.

“Mom!” She saw me and switched her focus. “Today I worked with Loulou and the pocket pets!”

Her face lit with excitement.

My own smile stretched wide across my face to see her so animated. “You did? Was it fun?”

“It was very fun,” she stated firmly, “and they are quiet…” she scrunched her nose slightly, “a bit stinky though.”

Bex and Willa laughed, and I hugged my girl.

“You want a snack?”

“No thanks, Auntie Bex took me out for ice cream while we waited for Auntie Willa to finish her shift.”

Just then Sirius made her presence known by winding around Olivia’s ankles. Olivia scooped her up in her arms.

“I’m going to my room with Sirius.” She started heading toward her room. “I’m going to lie down on my bed and let her sniff all over me. I’m full of new smells today!”

I looked at Bex. “Ew?”

Willa scrunched her nose and nodded in agreement. Bex just laughed.

We chatted while I put the rosemary chicken in the oven and chopped up the broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts for our roast veggies. Laughter made the work fly by. I was just putting the potatoes into the boiling water for the mashed when Olivia stomped out of the bedroom, her eyebrows scrunched low, her face red, eyes welling with tears.

“Mom!”

She stood in the middle of the family room. Her arms rigidly straight at her sides, ending in hands balled into fists. As soon as I saw her I turned off the stovetop behind me and moved toward her, giving her my full attention.

“What’s the problem, little bird?”

She shook with anger. “Netflix isn’t working!”

“Okay.” I began my fact-finding mission. “Did it just stop?”

She’d been in there for at least forty-five minutes.

“No!” she screamed. “It wouldn’t work! I’ve been trying, and trying, and nothing I’m doing is working!”

---