Mudder

My muse is my family. Although I haven’t seen them in about four years, the life they left me with constantly gives me inspiration. My mother in particular is one of the most interesting people I have met, including the family who born her. “They are a bunch of crazy fucks,” my Mother would quote over a cigarette.

Meta – which is an East Indian word for friend – was my mother’s name. She is a 5 foot tall woman, with rich, dark hair; she possesses the mouth of a sailor, and could out smoke and drink with the best of them. When I was younger, she was a great part of my life. My father worked away so it was her wing I fell under for six months of the year.

I’m not sure if she wanted kids, and to this day, I wonder how many regrets she had raising my sister and me. “You we monsters, you don’t understand how much you have done to your mother,” would be a common phrase she would throw at us. “Spoiled brats, I don’t know where your father and I went wrong.” The cigarette in her hand would be nearly finished, and at the same time she was scrambling to look for her pack.

There were a lot of times in our lives, when we seriously questioned whether or not she liked us. There were times when I wondered if I was the person who depressed and disappointed her so much. I think when you’re younger, you tend to look at the smaller pictures, and you are unable to factor in everything else. The pattern of guilt and shame I experienced was common to many families who were self-destructive.

We would go for drives into the nearest settlement – Gander – took nearly an hour and a half. My mother’s sisters all left the small out port we grew up in and moved to the town. There they enjoyed a grand life of video gambling, working at airport restaurants, hair boutiques, or local bars. They were all beautiful women. They were black Irish with blue eyes that would sear your eyes out if you looked at them for too long. They were all thin, pale skinned, quick, and strong women. You would never cross a Blackwood daughter, for their tempers were known all around the island communities.

I once saw my Aunt Amanda who was four years older take down a 180 pound woman. Amanda herself was about 5 foot 5 and barely 110 pounds. We would hang out on occasion and either smoke drugs, drink beer, or do even more corrupt things. I loved her rebellious soul, I loved her unpredictability. In once instance, there was a classmate of hers – Kirk – who teased her as a kid. I remember her telling me one night Kick destroyed her bike that Pop had bought her, and would get together with a group of boys and call her “dog”. All the while I was thinking how could such a beautiful women be mistaken for a dog?

I remember being about 12 and seeing my Aunt attack him, punch for punch, until someone pulled her off of him. She was a beautiful woman, and I knew my limits after almost losing a tooth when I teased her for having a boyfriend. It was a wedding held at my other grandfathers club, I was on a date with a lesbian to be, and had free reign of the drink menu’s that night. My lips were loose and she was very disappointed.

On the trip into Gander, my mother would have the odometer up to about 120 or 130 KM per hour, a cigarette in her hand, and all we would see were the fragments of cars left in her reckless path. Her eyes would intensely view the road for moose. They were abundant in Newfoundland, and we were always on watch. The scatter time when we did see one, we would scream MOOSE! And depending on where the large beast was, my mother would make the right corrections.

The car itself would be filled with smoke; all the windows would be up and we would be sitting in the back of the vehicle persistently clawing into one another. By the time we were eight we knew most every curse word you could imagine. All you would her coming from the back seat was “Bitch, you fucking bitch” and a reply of “Fuck off you Goddamn faggot.” Mom was very good at dazing off into her mind, and leaving us to fend for ourselves. The only time she noticed us is if we did something to affect her personal space. Putting down the windows to air out the cloud of smoke would generate a bark, “Put up the Goddamn windows, you’re blowing ashes all over the place.”

“Mom, we can’t breath, the car is filled full of smoke,” mind you in the early eighties, smoking still wasn’t proven to be as dangerous as it is now. After five minutes of screaming and shouting, the windows would go up. The threat of being left on the highway like our Aunt Cassie was once was too hard to bear.

“Your poor mother didn’t have it easy; I was Cinderella. I had to be the caretaker of the family,” pleading with us at the grocery store, and trying to guilt us into being good. My sister and I would have the grocery cart filled to the brim with useless items. We would open bags of chips and leave them in isles and than kick our mother if she disagreed with us.

Ethel and Gerald were good grandparents, for what they had. They had six daughters and three sons. My mother fit somewhere in the middle. I remember mom looking back on her childhood with such hatred. She had to wash the clothes, cook for the family, and clean the household. I never asked where the other sisters and brothers were…Looking back some had jobs to help support the family like her parents. My aunt Charity would clean houses, Pam would work on the plants, and Larry would fish, and so on. Looking back, she wasn’t that unique; she worked much like everyone else in her family.

Cinderella actually married well. She married my father, who works for Halliburton, who saved this young woman. Now instead of scrubbing dirty pots and pans, she spends thousands on a monthly basis on needless things. They dine out regularly, buy expensive ski-doos and vehicles, and well, money is no object. Their world is very centered on materialism and self-improvement.

Sooner or later she tired of it all, picked up one day with my little brother on the way and announced that she was having an affair. An affair! For four years my sister and I were shipped back and forth to our half-uncle house. The funniest part was they only lived about 5 minutes away – just down the road.

Our high-school years were a lot different than the kids in the neighborhood. Our mother was the first women in the community to have an affair, and she proudly stated that fact. Soon, we started hearing of other families having affairs and splitting up; all the while my mother would smile and say “See kids, I started that.” She was convinced that the women in the community would always follow her lead. When her house was redone, she would point out the other community members who copied her style; when her garden was redone; the same; her dress and hair; and the list goes on.

The affair lasted for four years, and in that time, she took my father back. I was than in grade 12 and just praying that I would soon be away from it all. I prayed that this wasn’t the world I was going to live in, and I made sure I took the appropriate steps to get away.

I don’t think she ever found what she was looking for. She’s 45 now, and still searching for something. I mean, we are all still searching for something, but I haven’t encountered as many people who are that restless and full of regrets. And, I always viewed ourselves as inconvienences, as kids who stopped her from having that life she always dreamed of. I’m sure it consisted of trips to Paris, romancing the deserts in the Sahara, tracking through unbeknown forests in South America; it’s funny though she can’t even get on a plane by herself, I can’t imagine how she could have done all those things.