‘Mom, how do I hand-wash my clothes? What do I
separate?’
I’m
frantically texting my mother; for some reason, we weren’t given a key to the
laundry room in our apartment building, and we won’t get one for at least
another week. The ever-growing pile in my laundry basket reminds me that I don’t have a week, in fact I
ran out of clean clothing this morning.
But it’s
seven o’clock at night, which means it’s two o’clock in the morning in
Vancouver, and my mother is asleep. I have vague memories of her in our
bathroom, gently telling me how to wash my underwear and jeans, and I brushed
her off with vague mumbles of understanding.
If my mother
was anyone but my mother, she’d be laughing at me.
My phone
lights up only twenty minutes later with a response from her; like some
motherly Bat Signal, she woke up in the middle of the night to get water and
replied to me.
‘Hi sweetie. Separate your underwear and use
a bar of soap on them, it’ll go faster. Soak everything else in hot water for
an hour and then rinse and repeat. Love you, going to bed again. xoxoxo’
I breathe a
sigh of relief; she hasn’t told me anything I couldn’t google, and yet her
instructions are clearer to me than anything I’ve ever read. It’s as if they’re
spoken in a secret language between me and her—like she knows I’d been staring
in defeat at the pile of clothing in front of me, unsure of where to start.
Not very
many people know this (not because I hide it or anything), but I was in foster
care when I was five until I was seven years old. My mother, a single parent,
couldn’t care for me for two weeks—my understanding is that she was having surgery
and needed time for recovery.
No one in
my family stepped up to take me. My father could have solved all of this with a
simple decision, but he said no.
But, as
usual, this isn’t about him. It never is or was.
My mother
turned to government care. It would only be for two weeks, she was assured, and
she rested easy knowing I was in a good home while she recuperated.
But when
the time came to take me back, something went wrong. I don’t know that I’ll
ever know the details—maybe they felt like they were acting in my best
interest, and maybe there was no malicious intent. But the result was that I
ended up in care for two years while my mother went insane over court documents
trying to get me back.
When she
finally did (and of course she did),
it was only up from there. I got back into francophone school and salvaged what
I’d lost of my native language, French, and had a good home and friends and
never wondered why my mother called the school about field trips sometimes, or
why some other kids got hot lunches but I never did. It was an unspoken pact—money
just wasn’t in my life, but that was okay, because I had my mom.
I’m not
here to tell you my life story, or romanticise my relationship with my mother;
the fact is, that took a toll on it. Of course it did. To tell everyone I have
this magical relationship with her would be a lie.
But to act
as if it isn’t a relationship founded on a fierce desire to protect one another
from the world would be, too.
Single
mothers have the most unique, powerful bond I’ve ever come across. It’s a bond
that comes from having the entire focus of your world in one thing: keeping
your child happy and alive. And you know what? That’s a hard fucking job. Kids
are hard enough with both parents, but if you take away the extra support and
income, then it becomes near impossible.
Before I
left I never imagined that I’d feel different about my mother—I’d already been
living away from her for a while. But, well, I guess I never realised how much
of my life I’d built up around her, and how much of herself she’d poured into
me to make sure I could do things like this.
I guess
this is my other open love letter to my mother: without her, I would not be the
person I am today. I can’t imagine it was ever easy to raise a precocious brat
like me on her own, and I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to work
full-time while doing it. I’m across the Pacific Ocean right now, and yet I
know that I could call her at two o’clock in the morning and she would be there
for me.
So here’s
to the single mothers out there: you, working two jobs, or a graveyard shift,
or maybe just barely getting by because it’s hard to do all of this at once.
And you making sure your child eats before you, and they have clothes, and
maybe they don’t have the exact brand name that’s popular right now but they
have one that’s pretty close.
From one
child of a single mother to you all: we don’t see the weathered hands or the
weary eyes, and we never see an empty fridge or care that the hot water got
turned off (that’s what kettles are for!). We see a full heart, and a smiling
face, and warm arms, and we know safety and love.
And let me
tell you, that’s what I hold onto when I’m away from my mother, nothing more.
