And Happy Mother's Day to the mothers on this site.
My mother was an attractive lady who suffered from being her mother's least favorite daughter of five. She was a year older than her mother's favorite, my mother's youngest sister Lois. This need for her mother's approval, piled on with growing up poor in the Great Depression, having every adolescent dream crushed by poverty led to a lot of regrets and anger that made her an unhappy lady. She was a black emotional hole, demanding everyone's attention and affection but returning it only conditionally.
My father, who came from a broken home and - perhaps unwisely - would not let it happen to his family, suffered from her realization that she'd married for all the wrong reasons, and my brothers and I suffered from her passive-aggressive patterns of child rearing. I loved my mother, but I cannot say that I miss her.
