re·gret |ri'gret| {verb}:
feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over
(something that has happened or been done,
esp a loss or missed opportunity)
I looked into the eyes of
regret at a very young age. Regret rested in the eyes of my mother. She held all the moments of her life that she wished she could have, in half a second, returned to and done something completely different about it. At that very young age I would learn of my mother's one enormous regret. I remember asking her why she was always so sad.
'Mommy, why are you crying?' A 5 year old me would ask her.
'Mommy is just missing a big part of her.' She'd respond. I never understood exactly what she was talking about.
I'd watch her eyes well up and her lower lip quiver with heavy emotion over something I had no clue about. I didn't know it then but I was witnessing her regret swim about her heart and encapsulate her entire being. Her exquisite face eclipsed by her regret. I don't believe that any child enjoys seeing their mother cry. I wanted to understand her. I wanted to make her happy. I wanted her to smile but it was nearly impossible to attain such a reaction from her no matter how gently I'd try. Her eyes were always sad... But she was still beautiful to me, tears and regret and all.
My mom and I circa 1981
My mother would share with me that she had lost two pieces of her heart before I was born. Her first two daughters. My sisters. I still didn't understand. I wanted to understand but how does a 5 year old try to understand something this enormous?
'You have two sisters, Vanessa. My two babies before you.' She'd say one day as she was kneeling down to my 3 1/2 foot level, wisps of her dark curly hair sticking to her fresh tears and rosy cheek, her mascara running like black thin streams.
'But where are they?' I'd ask her. Confused. Dumbfounded. Sad too!
(As I write this, tears streaming down my face
for the regret and sadness I felt on that day along with my mother.
Her regret and her sadness transmitted to a five year old me.)
'One day you'll meet them. I promise.' She'd say crying while wrapping her arms around my thin torso and pressing me firmly into her breasts. The scent of her hair still familiar to me today.
I believe that it was that day I learned what empathy was. I believe that I experienced empathy in the rawest form and in the rawest moment of my mother's life. I believe that there was nothing I could have done to ease her regret or her pain or her sadness or her broken heart. I was simply there. I was simply standing in the shadow of two lost daughters. I was simply her little girl that wanted to understand her and hold her and love her no matter how much she was aching and regretting her loss. I was simply a catalyst to her broken heart.
As the child that witnessed this heartache so raw and so painfully close, I can only say that the one part of it that never escaped me was the overwhelming beauty I saw in my mother. Her beauty that radiated in streaks and specs of glowing light. Her regret, so heavy and so sad allowing me the window to peer into and walk beside her deepest emotion and my experiencing great empathy and oneness with her at the age of five. Oddly enough, there was a peculiar beauty to her regret.
Sometime in 1976 my mother abandoned her first two daughters from her first marriage. It was a typical case of a scared young woman (20 years old) that was threatened by her husband and her desire to flee from her life into the arms of another man (my father). There were more complicated issues but they're too long to mention here. My mother's plan was not well thought out and she basically created her own destiny the moment she walked out on her little girls (ages 4 and 2.) In the eyes of the law and several other clever legal individuals and an angry ex-husband, my mother lost legal custody of them both, as well as the right to ever see them again (until they each turned 18) and soon after the custody battle, they were adopted by her ex-husband's cousins. I was born in 1977.
Today I dedicate this post to my mother. Mom, I have been burdened with the enormous effect that your emotions have had on me since I was so very young. I believe that it was a gift of some kind. A gift, that even with its heavy and dark sorrows, has allowed me the ability to feel deep empathy and compassion toward you. It's allowed me to hold a space for you, for my sisters and for the love that you've always tried to attain within yourself. I see you. I see your pain. I see your heart. And I will always see just how beautiful regret still is... I love you...
