“I’ve written a list,” my mother said as our session began in her therapist’s San Francisco office. “It’s called ‘the 40 most unforgivable things I’ve ever done to my daughters.’”
Fog flowed above the skylights as she fidgeted in her seat, twirling her blue chiffon scarf. I cringed. I hated the idea of therapy, but Mom loved it. She’d convinced me to go, even though I protested, telling her, “I don’t need any apologies.”
At 30, I was still frozen in fright as if I were 7 years old and hiding under my bed because I feared my next beating.
I sat opposite my mom while she smoothed her light powder pink matching skirt and jacket so no wrinkles would show, as if that would somehow help in ironing out our own.
My parents, who were Russian Jewish second cousins, met at a bar mitzvah and married at 19. Mom was 20 when I was born. She got addicted to speed trying to lose the baby weight and used barbiturates to sleep. When I was 7, my parents divorced. My father moved to Mexico while my mom, sister and I remained in New York City.
Mom had been seeing her psychoanalyst weekly for decades to process her pain of having been an abuser for the first 13 years of my life....
English (US)