Motherless: Part 3 - Karen

My dad met Karen when I was maybe 13 or so at - surprise! - a group therapy session. (You'd think he'd have already figured out that group therapy wasn't the best place to pick up women, no?) She was much younger than him - I think not even thirty years old at the time. I didn't meet her until they'd been dating for a few months, and I really liked her from the get-go. She was young, and energetic, and fun. She was into all sorts of things I'd never been aware of before, like folk music and contra-dancing and vegetarian cuisine and Quakerism and feminism. She was so free-spirited and spontaneous, the polar opposite of my quiet, habit-centered, serious father. Their relationship didn't last long (I'm pretty sure from things both of them said in the years that followed that they never slept together), but they continued to be friends, mostly because she and I had formed an attachment. She was like this cool older sister I had never had. She enjoyed helping me buck my dad's rules - I'd go to bed at my 8PM curfew, jump out my window, and hop into her waiting car to go to a contra-dance. Of course, she never let me do anything really bad - just pushed around the edges of the discipline I lived under, which was starting to feel really stifling at that point.

She never had much money, but somehow that all became part of the fun. I'd help her throw spur-of-the-moment yard sales to raise cash to go dancing that night. One time we scrounged up change all through her apartment, hitting a grand total of $6.32. She treated us both to ice cream cones with it, because if you've only got six dollars to your name, you might as well get ice cream with it, right? A few years later she started a natural-foods catering service which I helped her with - unpaid labor, but more than worth it to me for the many wonderful natural foods I learned to cook then that I still make to this day.

She was very New-Agey, both then and now. She especially hated modern medicine and everything associated with it. She saw naturopaths and took herbal supplements and weird crap like shark cartilage instead of seeing actual doctors and taking real medicine. At the time, I just thought it was this endearing quirk to be tolerated. Looking back, it's clear she had some sort of an unaddressed phobia. But it wound up costing her dearly.

When I was in my early twenties, she mentioned that she was having blood in her urine. My dad and I both encouraged her to see a doctor for help. She didn't. Instead she started making the rounds of every non-traditional alternative "medicine" practitioner in the New England area, and spending boatloads of money she didn't have on bizarre natural supplements. The problem remitted for a little while, and then came back worse than ever. She finally broke down and admitted she needed a doctor. I went with her for moral support the day she went to have a CAT scan of her bladder. The technician let me come into the control room with her, I don't know why, thinking it would be interesting for me to see, having no idea anything serious was going on. I remember seeing the image come up - fully two thirds of her bladder was dark, the edge between dark and light shaped like a sea horse's profile. The technician went suddenly silent. I knew not a thing about medicine, was a junior in college majoring in poli-sci, but it was obvious even to me that her bladder was full of cancer and needed to come out.

The surgery and recovery period was awful. I was there as much as I could stand to be, but the degree of her need and her terror and her misery at that point was terrifying to me. It was a rough period in our relationship, but I hoped that she'd soon be better and things could go back to normal for us.

She did get better, mostly. If by "better" you mean "pees through a tube inserted through one's belly button." And of course, she had all the normal sequelae of cancer treatment, including hair falling out, fatigue, weakness, etc. In retrospect, it really was no surprise that she wasn't the same person post-cancer as she was before. But it was *how* different a person that was the surprise.

A year or so later, I graduated from college. Karen threw me a backyard graduation party, which was a great success. As we cleaned up afterwards, she segued into a conversation about our relationship and how much it meant to her, and how much she thought it meant to me. She said that it was clear she'd never have a child of her own (she lost most of her reproductive system in the surgery) and I obviously didn't have a mother, so why shouldn't we fill those roles in each other's lives? It sounded like a good idea at the time, flushed in the happiness of the moment, so I agreed. I wished for many years afterwards that I had put more thought into that decision.

As she continued to recover, she became weirder and weirder. She left Quakerism behind, going through a variety of alternative religions (shades of Alice!) until finally settling on something called MasterPath, that involved sending money regularly to somewhere in the Southwest for cassette tape lessons and meditating to a photograph of "Sri" Gary Olson who looked like a garage mechanic to me. Her circle of friends changed, eventually containing almost exclusively women and all of them with some bizarre-o twist to them - one was a cat lady, another made a living as some sort of a psychic/astrologer, etc. Her view of the world, of people, of how people should act changed until eventually (years down the line) I realized she was living in some sort of alternative reality that had nothing to do with how things/people really were.

Example: she decided she didn't like my hubby - then just my boyfriend - because shortly after we got together he came over to help her, at my request, with some stuff around the house. He was just being his guy self, doing physical things without complaint. Karen was tying a rope around something but Colin noticed her knot was inadequate to the task. Being a Scoutmaster at the time, he offered to teach her the proper knot for the job. She agreed, and he taught her the same way he taught the boys in his troop - put his arms around her from behind and manipulated her hands in making the knot. Afterwards she told me that she didn't like him because he was way too "macho" and had tried to come onto her by putting his arms around her. My hubby was never "macho" - in fact, he's one of the most sensitive and enlightened men I've ever met. This brought home to me the point, proven to me many times over the following years, that Karen simply didn't like men who had the masculine traits of assertiveness, physical surefootedness, a deep voice, and an unwillingness to accept female orders.

She started to become very demanding of me. Karen wanted me to come with her to all the many things she was afraid of for moral support - doctor and dentist visits, long car trips (this set off her panic attacks), anything requiring her to use an elevator (same). And she demanded my help on things around her house. She had a pool which she insisted I do the maintenance on. Like I knew anything about pools. Anyway, around about this time I began avoiding her phone calls because she always wanted something from me. We fought innumerable times because I didn't return her phone messages for long periods of time.

I also didn't like the way she "used" me, as her daughter, to up her status in her own family. She was very competitive with her sister, and would compare me to her sister's daughter, and rub her sister's nose in my accomplishments. Her sister's daughter, tired I guess of being made to feel second-class, avoided anything where I might be present. I don't blame her. Wherever you are, Kristen, I'm sorry, and believe me, I told your aunt how much her behavior upset me and how unfair she was being to you.

I went to law school, one state over - far but not too far. It was a blessed relief to put some space between me and her. Then, when I graduated, I made a decision that I still feel the effects of today. I took the bar in the next state over, but not in my home state. Not in the state where Karen was. Because if I was a lawyer at home, as far as she was concerned, she would be entitled to unlimited free legal representation for the rest of her life. And she has tendencies to get into trouble - minor car accidents, failure to pay contractors, etc. It is her fault that I'm locked into 2 1/2 hrs./day commuting time, because I can't practice law in the state where I live.

My boyfriend and I got married and bought a house - in my home state, where real estate was within my reach. This brought us back into Karen's orbit. She was there all the time. Demanding things of me. Demanding that I do things to make her life easier, do things to make her look good to her family and friends. Always demanding. Anything she did for me always had an ulterior motive. She never just gave to make me feel good.

She turned 50, and demanded that her sister, her best friend and I throw her a huge, expensive, weeklong getaway culminating in a huge party. My piece of it was paying for the catering, which had to include lobster. I hired the best caterer on the Cape to throw a clamboil cookout, complete with more lobsters than everyone assembled could eat. It cost me damned near four thousand dollars. I had been at the vacation house for almost a week by the time the party came around, surrounded by Karen and her crazy friends, drowning in surrealism. I did my duty at the party, slept for a few hours, and burned rubber driving away at 4AM the next morning.

I became pregnant, and then miscarried. I had wanted that baby, had been trying to get pregnant. I was absolutely wrecked. When I turned to her, looking for comfort from my mother figure, she said "well, it's not like it was even a baby yet." SOOO not what I wanted to hear. She never understood why I got mad at her and didn't talk to her for a month.

I became pregnant again, this time with Esther. Karen was psyched to be a grandma. She fussed over me non-stop, which was sometimes nice and sometimes annoying as all hell. Then she insisted on throwing me a baby shower. It wasn't like anyone else was going to do it. I was just uncomfortable with it, because by this time I was a practicing lawyer making way more money than any of my friends or nearby relatives/in-laws, so I felt I wasn't entitled to ask for their help in getting all my baby things together. She insisted that I needed the help, and as it turned out, she was right.

The baby shower was mostly wonderful. Everyone came, and I got everything I needed for Esther's arrival. But as usual, her doing this nice thing for me came with a price tag. She never let me forget that she had done this for me, that I owed her for it. I couldn't express enough gratitude to satisfy her.

Other things, weird things, were going on at the same time. She had been friends with a co-worker and her husband. That couple divorced and the friend moved far away. The ex-husband was exactly the kind of man Karen liked to have around - tiny, effeminate, entirely non-masculine and non-threatening, entirely willing to be bossed around. He was also much younger, just a few years older than me. Karen took him in as a housemate, and essentially made him her servant/errand boy/whipping post. Every time I looked at him, I felt like this was how she wanted me to be as well - part of her crew of adoring servants.

Housemate had a best friend. Ed was a big, soft, geeky guy who worked in the tech sector. He had no experience with women to speak of, was more or less a total social misfit, and shared with his friend a total lack of masculine energy. Karen thought he was wonderful, and basically relentlessly pursued him until, befuddled, he entered into a relationship with her, this strange woman nearly 15 years older than he. And she bossed him around and used him for all she could get - both domestic support and emotional crutch. I cringed looking at them together, they were so dysfunctional. They were so icky together, flaunting public displays of affection, acting like teenagers in the flush of first love. Poor Ed - I think that's what it was for him.

Things got worse for me on the Karen front once Esther was born. Karen wanted to see Esther constantly (not like I blame her for that). But it meant I had to deal with her drama, her dysfunction, her million little crises constantly. She would come to me with her problems and try to dump them in my lap to solve. Then she'd get pissy with me when I refused to get involved beyond giving her advice how she might deal with her own problems. She accused me of being ungrateful.

Fast-forwarding through much bullshit - another birthday party approached, July 25, 2005. She planned her own birthday party at an expensive, beautiful restaurant in Maine. Such typical Karen - requiring everyone who loved her to drive 3 hours and spend an assload of money to celebrate her birthday. As the date approached, it became something else as well. She and Ed had decided to get married, so this became a combination birthday/engagement party. I held my tongue and tried to look happy for her.

The party arrived. All her guests were there, waiting, but she and Ed were late. When they finally arrived, clearly something was wrong. Turns out, they had broken up in the car on the way there, so there would be no engagement. But she insisted Ed stay for the party, and that they open up all the presents. Then she engaged in this horrible tradition from her family of passing all the presents around for everyone to see. Everything, including the engagement presents. Everything, including their engagement presents to each other. She felt free to tell everyone how much she spent on Ed's gift, a piece of jewelry that clearly had nothing to do with his tastes. She felt free to denigrate his gift to her. Then she opened up a set of lovely silver his-and-hers champagne flutes from her sister, engraved with their initials. Her sister offered to just return them. Ed suggested, quite nicely I thought, that he and Karen should each keep the flute with their initials as a memento of their relationship. Karen flipped out, started yelling, and said the set was hers. OMG, the awful, awful drama.

Colin and I paid our tab ($160 plus tip) and left.

I didn't call her. She called me, three days later, to harangue me for not calling to wish her happy birthday. I told her that I couldn't do this anymore, that I wasn't her daughter no matter how hard we tried to pretend I was, that I just wasn't like her at all. She hung up on me.

I drafted her a letter telling her everything I'd been holding inside for years. It was 32 pages long. Of course I couldn't send that to her, but I felt she was entitled to know why I was stopping the farce after so many years. So I boiled it all down to a 7-page letter and sent it to her. She responded, in writing, trying to get me to go to therapy with her to salvage our relationship. I didn't agree. Having cut it off with her, I felt healthier than I had in years. I felt, and still feel, that I have no need for therapy around this - it's all her dysfunction, her issues, that need to be dealt with. I wrote her back, stating that if she wanted any relationship with me, she had to read my original, 32 page letter. I didn't care if she enlisted her own therapist's help in processing it, but I wasn't going to hold back my emotions and needs to protect her feelings any more.

Fast forward another year-plus. She sent Esther a birthday card with a note to me inside. It said that she respected my decision, but wanted to hear from me - she didn't want to look back on our lost friendship when she got old and wonder what happened. She included her email address and asked me to write. I didn't, because she still wasn't willing to read the 32-page letter. I didn't respond at all. Two weeks later - just two weeks ago - she called my dad at work and harassed him for an hour over how ungrateful I am, how she was so unappreciated. He called me and asked me to email her with something placating so she'd leave him alone.

So I responded. But I couldn't say anything placating or soothing. I emailed her, telling her not to harass my dad when her problem is with me, because he's not my boss and hasn't been able to tell me what to do for years. I told her that I hadn't responded because she wasn't willing to read my letter. I told her I was unwilling to have a relationship with her that was built on her unwillingness to hear what I had to say. I told her I didn't want to hear from her again unless the first line of her correspondence said "Send me the letter now." I told her I wasn't going to look back when I was old and wonder what had happened, because I knew exactly what had happened and was comfortable with that.

Ultimately, it was Esther that gave me the strength to break out of that difficult, draining, dysfunctional relationship. I couldn't let her grow up with Karen's needy, people-using behavior as one of her role models. I couldn't let her see me take abuse, and be used over and over by someone who supposedly loved us. I do feel bad about yanking this lovely little girl away from Karen after a year - after all, Karen had no children, so Esther was as close to a grandchild as she'll ever get. But I did what I had to do, for myself and for Esther. It was self-defense as much as anything else.

So that's where matters stand with Karen. Not precisely resolved, and certainly still loaded with emotion. I still care about her, and want her to be happy, but I cannot be part of her orbit any longer. I cannot accept the responsibility she imposes on me to make her happier by making her life easier. I don't know if her story will end happily or not. I hope it does, but I take no more responsibility if it does not.

Well, this was the longest post ever. Thanks for staying tuned and reading through to the end. I think it helped me, just a little, to write this. I could have written so much more - 32 pages worth, to be exact. But you get the gist. I had to learn the hard way that I can't just select a woman and make her my mom. I only ever had one mom, and I lost her too early. Nobody could ever have filled her place, no matter how hard I tried to squeeze other women into the mold. I am, and will always be, motherless. Karen, I'm sorry I ever agreed to play your daughter - all I did was lead you on and then dump you on your ass. I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for.