Redemption
I can see it from my mother’s eyes: the wretched little bitch I was becoming. At age seven I was already coming home past my curfew every day after staying at the park playing Cowboys and Indians or riding my bike all over town with the other neighborhood kids when it was time to practice violin or piano.
One summer evening I came home at six thirty – five hours after the time Mom told me to be home. She grabbed my wrists way too hard and pushed me into a corner so that the back of my head had a bump later and she yelled in my face lots of words that Moms should never say. I remember she was so close to my face that I felt her spit spatter my face when she yelled. Her eyebrows furrowed together so that she looked like a real live wicked witch. She spanked me hard and sent me to my room without letting me eat anything. “Don’t you DARE come out until you’ve practiced your entire lesson perfectly for one hour. Every mistake is five extra minutes!” This was cruel and unjustified torture. “…I’ll get you my pretty! And your little dog too!”
Six years later, I still never wanted to practice violin or piano, ever. Every day there was a fight. I had to practice for hours each day if I wanted to see my friends again. And let me tell you, making friends and keeping them was not easy in seventh grade. Never once did I feel proud after winning an award or the position as concertmaster in whatever orchestral audition I was dragged to. It was never my accomplishment, it was Moms’. I sure as hell didn’t want to be wasting my weekends and summers flying all over the country and sometimes even
For years I’d concealed the anguish that swept through our house like a fever from my friends and even from my Dad. He had some idea that I was suffering, but he didn’t want to undermine Mom’s authority, and anytime I approached him for help he would be too busy reading the paper in his armchair or filling out paperwork at his desk or playing basketball with the neighbors. On the rare occasion that he wasn’t too busy doing these things and found a few minutes he could spare to hear me out, he scolded me for whining or lying or disobeying my mother and it usually ended up in another screaming match. My friends asked me why I had to practice all the time since I was already so good, and when I tried to explain myself, they refused to believe that Gail Scarlett had a single mean bone in her body. I didn’t bother trying to convince them and excused myself every day when I was supposed to go home to avoid any humiliating scenes that would surely be the result of my defiance.
One day, after a particularly brutal battle, sobbing myself into delirium and feeling particularly resentful about my deteriorating social life and unsatisfactory parents, I did something that Mom never saw coming.
The violins hollow body made the most delicious cracking noise I’d ever heard when it hit the ground. Its smooth shape lay fractured and helpless in the middle of the room, like an injured antelope awaiting its inevitable doom. I’d died and gone to heaven, the joy of every kid wearing Mickey ears that day in Disney World combined was inferior to my own. My heart exploded with bliss while I destroyed pages and pages covered in thousands of black dots on lines and shredded my lesson books into snow. “I’m king of the jungle, hear me roar!”
I leapt across the field that was my room abandoning my prey to let it suffer in silence, and bounded down the stairs towards the front door with no destination in mind and no intentions of ever returning home. With the door handle just barely within my grasp, mom grabbed me by the back of the neck, whirled me around in a blur of kicking and punching and scratching, and pulled me to the ground by my ponytail. Kneeling on my stomach, she smacked both sides of my face with superhuman strength, shrieking the very words she made me scrub off the wall in my closet last Christmas, and forcing her eyebrows into that unmistakably satanic arch.
Although the violin was repaired, because I was forced to continue mastering a variety of musical endeavors in my high school years, the emotional gap between my mother and I was never bridged. Not having a relationship with my mom was one of the many factors contributing to my angsty adolescent era, but when my emotional instability consumed my life and my ability to function socially and academically, school counselors recommended me to a number of psychologists that could provide some assistance to get my life back in order. My mom, who had never before shown any detectable concern for my well-being, was supportive of meeting with my therapist and I upon the therapists request.
To my surprise, with each session she attended my mom gradually opened up about her experience as a child with parents who were far more abusive than she, and because it was how she was raised, she felt that pushing me to be the best was good parenting. “I was never as good as you are, and my parents hated me for it.” Tears welled in her eyes, and for the first time ever, I saw my mom as a troubled person with her own emotional issues as opposed to a heartless monster who enjoyed making me miserable. “I wanted you to be able to take advantage of all the opportunities that I never had… I couldn’t understand how you could hate it so much, when it’s everything I strived for growing up.” To me, it made sense. I’d been waiting for the moment when I had a reasonable cause for forgiving my mom, and could let myself pop the cork out of my heart and let the love I’ve always wanted to give her erupt and drench her to the bone.
My mom finally let go of her dream that I would become a distinguished musician. I wasn’t happy playing violin, I was passionate about other subjects, and she admitted to always having known I would be successful in whichever direction I chose to steer my life. After a few more years of therapy, the trust between us strengthened tremendously. I’m really proud of the person she’s become, and every time she apologizes to me or professes her guilt and regret, I hug her and remind her “You’re only human mom, we all make mistakes.”
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