Are You My Mama?

By Donna Surgenor Reames
Web Exclusive

The worst part of having a brain tumor was not the surgery, the medicines or the seizures. It hasn't been the confusion, the fear, and the nightmares. The worst part was having to send my three children 400 miles away to their grandparents. I'm back with them now, at my parents' house while we await the first of my disability checks so the girls and I can live on our own again. I haven't worked in seven weeks and I have no more sick leave. We're basically broke. But none of that matters as much as all of us being together again.

I didn't realize how confusing my absence would be for my girls, in spite of the stability and nurturing they have received at the home of Nana and Papa. So much has changed in two brief months. Sometimes each of my three daughters will start to call me "Nana" and I've heard each of them also call my mother "Mama." In an odd sort of alliance, my girls have begun to link my mother and me together as their maternal unit.

"Mama, you do it for me," urges six-year-old Caroline repeatedly throughout our days now. When she went to Nana and Papa, she had already been dressing herself for awhile. She could tie her shoes, read simple books, sing more songs by heart than I can. She knew how to make chocolate milk, how much milk to put in her cereal bowl without spilling any, and how to fall asleep in her own bed with the lights out. Now, however, she asks for help with all these things and more. When I look at her, surprised, she shrugs. "Nana helps me all the time," she explains firmly. "Nana says I'm only six and I still need lots and lots of help." I do not argue. My mother's way is different, that's all, and I am grateful for her willingness to spend the time with Caroline. It is just unfamiliar territory for me: helping my daughter slide her small feet into slippers and spooning cocoa into her milk feels like we are moving backward instead of forward to me.

Chloe, 9, has begun to cling. She sidles up to me as I fix supper plates, comes up behind me to hug my waist, gives me kisses every time she walks by. She reaches out in church for my hand and holds it from opening announcements till the benediction, letting go only long enough to sneak a piece of gum from my purse or a pen to draw pictures with. Last night, I snapped at her and felt bad immediately. I was helping to feed one of my sister's 11-month twins and didn't know Chloe was right behind me. When I turned to get another spoonful of carrots and peas, I jumped and yelped. "Chloe, don't scare me like that!" I said irritably. "Why do you have to follow me around?" The hurt in her beautiful brown eyes shamed me and I drew her close and hugged her. "I'm so sorry for being mean," I whispered into her straight blond-brown hair. "It was wrong." She hugged me back, hard, and said it was okay — but she didn't come near me the rest of the night and my heart ached.

Why wouldn't Chloe want to cling a little? My hospitalization had brought abrupt changes: the person who has been with her for nine whole years, her mother, suddenly wasn't there one night to tuck her in or say prayers with her. In one day, the world as she knew it changed drastically. Mama didn't wake her up the next morning: Nana did, and the morning after that and the morning after that for 62 whole days.

My oldest daughter, Zoë, is going to be 13 in March. It is too embarrassing for her to admit need for me. But I see the effects on her as well. She says she loves me a hundred times a day but she goes straight to Nana or Papa for advice, help with homework, and permission slip signatures. It is as if she doubts that I will still be there by the time the dance rolls around or the library book is due.

I find myself stumbling through uncertain terrain. This is the house of my parents. It is their food we eat, their rules we follow, their routine I must join my girls in keeping. There is an alliance and it doesn't include me.

I feel left-out at times and then I feel guilty for being so childish. I remind myself of why this had to be, and I realize how fortunate the girls and I are to have my parents do this.

My daughters have things they've never had before with me as a single parent: they each have a dresser, a bed and a desk in – joy of all joys, a room of their own. Socks and panties lie folded (yes, folded) neatly in top drawers, with tee shirts and shorts and pants placed just as properly in their own individual drawers. Little dresses hang from small-sized hangers in order of size, color, length of hemline…just like mine and my three sisters' did when we were young. Mary Janes and Nikes line up in perfect rows, with every pair intact.

After-school hours have been given specific, timed roles: there are snacks for 30 minutes, homework for an hour (this includes my parents checking folders and agendas, and is usually extended for my oldest daughter, whose work seems interminable now that she's in middle school), and free time till supper, which happens promptly at 6 p.m. every weeknight, a "flexible" 6:30 on weekends.

My first few days of this routine found me staring wide-eyed in amazement. Were these my daughters? My girls, whose former routine after school meant a mad dash to the kitchen for whatever we had, followed by haphazard stabs at homework, with one eye on their books and the other on Nickelodeon ("Mama, we can THINK better with the TV on!"). How many hours have I logged nagging them to "turn off the TV and DO THIS HOMEWORK!"?

There's been a trade-off: our old lifestyle (spontaneous, a little bohemian) for a newer, improved one (structured and stable). A slow sadness creeps up inside me. I know we won't be here forever and I am in awe of what my parents have accomplished in two brief months. But I feel I've been replaced as my daughters' parent. And after having been their primary parent for so many years, I am lost.