The next few years were very hard for Kate. She started failing in school. She started withdrawing. She started hating me in little ways. But I deserved it. I behaved horribly as a mother. I was irresponsible and angry most of the time. I didn’t put her first. I worked too much and justified it as a necessity because I was a single mom. What a bunch of crap—I was just trying to escape.
But we had good times, too, when we were very close. Every Friday afternoon I picked up Kate from school and we either went to dinner and then a movie or we rented a movie and got a big salad bar at the gourmet grocer. Then we’d spend the evening lying in the hammock with the torches burning around us. We’d listen to Ella Fitzgerald and make up stories. We’d go shopping on the weekends and eat out. There were good and bad mixed together and we were swimming in it like amniotic fluid. We didn’t know how bad the bad times were, and we probably didn’t know just how good the good times were. We were both just trying to get through it without falling apart. We were survivors, clinging to each other in a battered life raft, our arms the only thing holding each other together.
Kate’s early teens were rough—for her and for the rest of us. She was angry. She was flunking all her classes. She was lying and getting into trouble at school. She was choosing BAD friends. And she may not have hated me, but she was sure letting me know how easy it would have been to hate me.
I was remembering being pregnant a lot. I was thinking about all the days in my early pregnancy when I was thinking about having an abortion. Remembering that helped me deal with how angry I was at her most of the time. I remembered all the cute and funny things she’d say and do. I remembered hating my own parents and wishing I could run away and live with another family. I kept telling myself, we’ll get through this.
