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| Renoir, Maternite, 1887 |
On Mother’s Day, May 13 2018, I attended the graduation of
my youngest daughter from medical school. While this is surely an occasion of
joy and pride for all families, in this case it is especially so. Rose had a
long, hard struggle through her adolescence and teen years. As her (single,
working) mother, I couldn’t wave a magic wand and make her problems go away;
what she needed was patience and love, especially my unwavering belief that she
was resourceful enough to cope her challenges. One of the things that helped me
during those difficult years was hearing from another mother about the rough
time her son had gone through, but that he had come through those times,
rebuilt his life, and was now a successful emergency room physician. (Both our
kids becoming doctors is an interesting coincidence.)
For quite a while, I blamed myself for Rose’s difficulties.
She’d been an intense, fiery toddler, than an easy-going child. When my mother
was murdered, Rose was only 3 months old, so she grew up with me struggling
through initial PTSD recovery. It was sheer awful luck that her puberty and my
crisis (after the first parole hearing of the man who did it) and subsequent
breakup of the family happened about the same time. She and I ended up moving
to a different part of the state, both of us trying to restart our lives. Marion
Zimmer Bradley had invited me to collaborate with her on Darkover, so my
writing career was getting started again. I was dating the man I eventually
married, so many aspects of our lives were happier and more stable. Except, of
course, for adolescent hormones.
After doing well in middle school, Rose starting having difficulty,
including self-harm. It was clear to me that if I got on her case about it, the
only result would be that she would stop talking to me and I could not help
her. So I took my worries elsewhere, including to the friend who told me about
how her son had overcome drug addition and other serious problems, then
finished college and went on to medical school. Another story I heard involved
a kid who was living at home and not doing much. When his parents issued an
ultimatum to either go to school or get a job. the kid moved out, became a drug
dealer, and ended up in prison. The friend who told me this story was at a loss
to do with her own son, who had dropped out of college and moved back home. Her
thought was that at least she knew where her son was, and he was in a safe
place until he could figure things out.
