False Start Friday

Suze over at Subliminal Coffee has started a new event, False Starts Friday.  The idea is everyone posts the beginning snip of writing that didn't go anywhere.  I think most people have a few of these on their computers and it's fun to pull them out.  Go here for the linkey list of others participating and it's not too late to sign up! 

So, here's one of my starts that didn't go anywhere. It's obviously not edited but have fun. 

I had two mother figures in my life.  Unfortunately, neither of them were my mother.  Don’t get me wrong, mother was there, gliding in and out of the house between charities, spa treatments, and self improvement.  She often told me that by making herself a better person she would be a better mother.  I could have told her to be a better mother she had to be a mother in the first place.  But I didn’t.  For one if she had hung around more it would have made my life much more uncomfortable. 

Not that she was mean or nosy.  We just didn’t get along.  I always felt awkward and uncomfortable around her.  Just as I felt when I got older and had to start attending charities and spas with her.  She never could understand why I wasn’t interested.  I like the ideas of her charities, but the reality was a bunch of rich women trying to buy the title of “most generous”.  And all of the causes were rich people causes.  They wanted to help( less helpful charities here)  I tried to explain that there were children without food, let alone a computer or cell phone, but they didn’t listen. 

So every month I would go with mother to another dinner or extravaganza.  Until I had spilled so much food or tripped over so many decorations that cleaning and rental costs were taking too much away from the donations.  So mother stopped taking me. 

I was happy with that.  All I wanted was to curl up in my window seat, which was a rather plush and comfortable thing with lots of pillows, and read.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  As a child I had bribed my nanny to bring me any book she could.  I had to pay her my allowance to do it.  She was scared my mother would find out and she’d be fired.  Mother had very strict ideas of what a lady should read.  I tried to explain that mother wouldn’t fire her.  She would give me a lecture.  Like she always did when I did something she didn’t like. 

We would go into the den so she could sit on a leather recliner.  Not that she ever relaxed in it.  I would be told to sit on the upright wooden chair and she would talk about deceit or lying, insensitivity or competence.  Talking on and on about how disappointed she was in me while I curled smaller and smaller into myself, saying yes ma’am and no ma’am all the while feeling no bigger than a fly.  Finally she would say, but you won’t do that again will you?  And I would agree to anything, including letting her name all my children with horrible names like Maxmillion or Ermintrude just to get away from the self loathing. 

It seemed that every time we talked she was telling me how I should be different some way.  She thought she was being a good mother, teaching her daughter.  But that’s why I never shared news with her, never shared my life.  When I was little someone else filled that role.