Praise For All Us Sister-Mothers on Mother’s Day
When Motherhood is foisted on your childhood
Many of us grew up in families with a Mother who, for one reason or another, could not be “present” to her children. Maybe she had mental illness, or wasn’t into maternal actions. I was one of the older sisters and there was a huge age gap between myself, and my two adorable younger sisters.
Around the age of 11, I realized that these two blonde-headed tots needed me to step in and be their Sister-Mother. I bathed them every night. I taught them how to ride a two-wheeler. I helped them with their homework and put bandaids on their boo-boo’s. I checked their temps when they were sick and cleaned up the messes.
This extra responsibility took up a huge chunk of my “childhood.” As a child with parental responsibilities I was too ashamed to tell anyone about, I didn’t have time to stay after school and play with friends. I had to get dinner started. Trying to enlist my actual mother’s help sometimes paid off and sometimes didn’t. She spent alot of her time talking to herself at the stove, boiling water to make her instant coffee, using the stove’s burner to light her cigarettes.
And so it went. Up through telling my two younger sisters the facts of life, and later showing them how a condom worked by making them put it on a carrot. I don’t know WHERE I came up with that one, but we laughed alot, and neither had an unwanted pregnancy.
Today is that bittersweet day for me. I still call my Mom every year and do the cards and flowers obligations with no anger or bitterness. She did the best she could. I see her tendencies in myself and always get into therapy or a women’s group or whatever it takes not to slip down under the covers of real life.
Happy Sister-Mother’s Day to all of you out there. It was not a stolen childhood, just a different kind. One that made us grow up fast and proud that our little sisters grew up to be normal, respectable successful wives and mothers of their own.
To all you Sister-Mothers out there: Ya did good, kids! XO
