Ever since the movie Mommie Dearest came out in 1981, I’ve associated this term of endearment with cruel, abusive, psycho moms.
If you will remember, this was a biographical movie about the actress Joan Crawford, and the two children she adopted to ease her loneliness. Eventually she became a cruel mother to them. She was depicted as abusive, controlling, manipulative. It was a terrifying movie for me. I’ve even erased it, quite efficiently, from my memory.
Many of us probably never met an abusive, cruel, psycho mom in the flesh. My mom was pretty sharp-tongued when she was angry, but that was about it. She never lifted a finger to hurt me. I was never slapped or even pushed roughly in a fit of anger.
The worst thing my mom ever did to me was when she put me outside the door of our house, at night, while I was having a tantrum that lasted for maybe an hour. I think I was five years old then. She was rather detached – not a demonstrative or affectionate mom.
But she was generous to a fault. The best of what she had, she gave to me – without my having to ask. I think that was her love language: gifts.
When I was already an adult who could easily pick fights with her – and win – she’d back off to end the verbal debacles. We’d sometimes have these incredibly long, heated arguments while doing our afternoon walks in our village. Or cold wars while traveling abroad together.
One time, one of our fellow passengers noticed that my mom and I weren’t sitting together.
So he asked, laughing, “Are you girls having a fight?!!” My mom glared at him – and at me. But that was about it. I never felt abused, controlled, manipulated, demeaned or belittled by my mom. Even when I was at my “disrespectful best.”
That’s why it was such an earthshaking, shocking thing for me to discover, when I was in highschool, that there were cruel mothers. Goodness gracious.
Moms who slapped their children in front of everyone. Moms who threw big phone directories, or even heavy telephones at their kids. Moms who ran after their kids with a waste basket or a kitchen knife. Or who walloped them, and hit their kids with broomsticks.
Or hangers. Leaving bruises and scars and broken bones.
The thing about cruel moms is, more often than not, they raise broken children who grow up to be cruel, broken people who also break and abuse others. They become like their cruel mothers.
Or these broken children become victims of other abusers. It’s like they’re looking for replacements of their abusive moms. A vicious, heartbreaking cycle.
If you end up marrying one of them, you’re in deep, deep trouble. Not only you but also your children.
That’s why on Mother’s Day, one of the things I really thank God for is that I had a good mom. She was a far-from-perfect mom, just like me, but she was a good mom.
She didn’t do anything malicious or hurtful to me. We may have hurt each other deeply, at times, but it was never out of cruelty, nor to intentionally do harm. So I really thank God for my mom.
No wonder, when I was being wheeled into the delivery room to have our first baby, I remember shouting to the top of my lungs: “Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!!!”
Thank you, Lord, for all the good moms. As for the bad ones, we commit them into your hands.
