2d • ✍️ Daily Write
Prompt 3
(I missed last week, and I think I'm late to this week, but here goes...)
Dear Pam,
I know you would like me to call you Mom or Mother, but in the time we’ve gotten to know each other, I still am not comfortable with that. Maybe if we had met sooner, or if our ideologies better aligned, I could find that spark of connection they say mothers have with their children from the nine months in the womb. Or eight, in my case.
As it stands, the only thing you and I have in common is one half of a DNA strand, and while I cannot deny the test results, when I look at you, I see none of myself there. Maybe, when I look at pictures of you at my age, maybe there is a hint of the eyebrow, and I cannot deny that I have your sister’s nose, which must have come from an ancestor because you do not have it. Possibly the darkness of my eyes, one of the many things about me that proves I do not match the family I was raised with.
Everything else must have come from the other half of the DNA strand. Just some man, not the one you named, for DNA doesn’t lie, and though I spent my whole life believing the lie you told the people who arranged my adoption, and learned a heritage I thought was my birthright, I now know that the one part of myself I was sure of was nothing more than a lie.
A lie I have believed so long, it makes me feel lost to admit it isn’t true. A lie that I have told so long that it shaped who I am even though it wasn’t true.
And while you have fought with your own mother for over 40 years over her part in your giving me up, the truth is, you wouldn’t have recognized me had we met on the street.
For that matter, I am sad to say, we wouldn’t have anything to say to each other if we had met randomly on the street as strangers. You cling to your faith with anger and vengeance. Yours is a vengeful hateful God who judges instead of loves, and only punishes, while mine exists in the light between heartbeats and is felt most in the kindness given willingly to those in need.
We are strangers, you and I. You were not the one who kissed my bruised knee when I fell from the peach tree in the backyard. It was not your arms that held me when I was scared of the light in the pool while swimming in the moonlight. You were not the one who talked me through my first period, or my first heartbreak.
So, while you may have given birth to me, and while in your heart you may think of yourself as my mother. I cannot call you that. That title has already been claimed and fought for. The woman who wears it earned it through years of arguments and tears and homemade birthday cakes.
I hope one day you will understand.
Sincerely,
Me
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Prompt 3
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