Above: The collage of butterfly wings on my mother’s photo that launched my personal mythology.
M
Y MOTHER, the 44-year-old woman I sat next to on the couch that day in 1973, had finally left her troubled past behind. My mob-connected step-father, who in 1962 forced her to return to him under threat of violence, died not long after in 1966, and a few years later she met and married the love of her life, Paul, and they began a new life together in Cleveland, Ohio.
She was ready to move on.
I, on the other hand, felt the need to pick up where we left off, and so I would spend the next twenty years trying to build a bridge back to the relationship we’d had in another life.
Perhaps it triggered in her a kind of cognitive dissonance. The eleven-year-old boy she’d been forced to abandon now sat beside her as a young man starting a family of his own. It was like we were acting out a scene from a science fiction movie with time-machines: me the figure from the past wanting to take her back with me, and she, the present-day protagonist who could see the dangers inherent in getting on board. Either way, I think that eventually a wall rose between us.
Somehow my sister was able to let it be, but I couldn’t, and it wasn’t until I was in my forties that I was finally able to begin processing my feelings about our mother. My first effort took the form of the collage above, titled “Before She Got Her Wings.” I cut out an old snapshot of her as a teenager, glued on actual butterfly wings, and poured out in scribbling pencil exactly how I felt. It was self-absorbed and narcissistic, but I couldn’t help myself.
From there other collages played out the theme, then writing became my outlet. Essays, short stories, and even a screenplay resulted, finally evolving into the early manuscripts of my novel series, The Butterfly Myths. But somewhere along the way, I came face to face with the realization that the narrative I’d settled on could only be my side of the story, and soon after I met someone who brought a different perspective to the tale.
