A Blog About Surviving Trauma

When I was three years old, I loved playing in the square wooden sandbox that my dad had placed in the yard of our small rental house. Surrounded by a quarter acre of green grass and protected from the hot sun by a neighboring grove of walnut trees, my sandbox was an idyllic place to be. I made highways and tunnels in the golden sand and ran my dad’s old miniature toy car all around, pretending that we were on a long road trip through the Missouri countryside. Birds twittered and sang in the leafy branches overhead. A gentle breeze tousled my short blonde curls. Life was good.

When I needed to go to the bathroom, I climbed out of the sandbox and ran across the yard to the back porch. As I walked inside the house I saw my mother, sitting in a dark green upholstered chair in the living room, staring at a book she was holding in her hands. My mom had told me to be very quiet when she was reading, so as not to disturb her train of thought. Quiet as a mouse, I tiptoed through the living room, past her chair and down the short hall to the bathroom, where I gently closed the door behind me. After I was done, I quietly opened the door and tiptoed back toward the living room.

As I was tiptoeing past my mother’s chair she closed her book, set it down on her lap, then looked at me and said “I love you, of course, because you are my daughter. I just don’t like you.” Then she picked up her book and resumed reading.

I didn’t know what to do or say. Mother was reading again, so I wasn’t supposed to talk now, in any case. Quietly, I tiptoed out of the living room, through the kitchen, and out the back door. Then I ran to my sandbox and threw myself into the warm golden sand. Somehow, my mother’s words had taken the joy out of the beautiful summer day.

My mother said this to me a number of times over the years, although she never said it when anyone else was around. We might be sitting in the car, Mom in the front seat, me in back, silently waiting for Dad to come out of a store, when I would hear: “I love you, of course, because you are my daughter. I just don’t like you.” I was never misbehaving when she said those hurtful words. They always seemed to come out of nowhere.

I believe I was ten or eleven when I finally worked up the courage to ask my mother: “Why don’t you like me?” I was hoping to fix whatever was wrong with me, you see.

“It’s just you!” she snapped. “It’s just the way you are.” Later she added, “It’s the way you think.”

How does a little girl, or how does anyone, fix that?

My mother died last month, five days before what would have been her 89th birthday. I hope and pray that she is in heaven with the Lord Jesus. And I also hope that now, my mother finally likes me.