Epilogue: Approximations

The Perfect Teardop

I'm glad I began ice skating again. It helped me to channel the feelings of sadness and resentment I felt against my father. When I skated, I could glide across the ice and forget about the rest of the world. It'd be the only time that I could truly be myself. However, at some point, it'd be time to pack up my skates and drive home with Jerry.

I started ice skating again when I was around 10 years old. I remember because I had made the final decision just a few weeks after Jerry adopted me. I was 17 then, so I didn't need as much mentoring from him anymore, but he still did it often because we liked spending time together. Although, he wasn't around all the time when I'd go out to skate, which meant that I could be alone some of the times. My mother liked to come with me during those occasions in order to criticize my techniques. She would say that she'd be 'only coming for company', and to 'watch my elegant movements', but by the time we would get home she'd still be rambling about some minute flaw she made up about my form.

We always had arguments about those sorts of things. I used to be much more submissive and reticent when I was younger, but I was growing up and I wasn't going to let the control freak step all over me. When my mother and I did argue, Jerry was always there trying to break it up. I swear, he was the only other sane person I knew, at the time. When people ask you if you have a favorite parent, you're supposed to say 'no', but I did have one, and it was Jerry.

He knew me—who I really was as a person. To know someone, you have to trust them, you have to be nearly prideless with them, and they have to reciprocate those feelings and that comfort. I didn't share that with anyone I knew except for Jerry. I definitely couldn't be who I really was around my mother. She always had something to say about me—she wanted to control everything to the tiniest detail! She wanted me to be exactly who she wanted me to be and I was just supposed to sit back and let her take the wheel. It was all about her and what she wanted.

At one point, I just couldn't take her micromanaging anymore, and I decided to do something about it. My sudden change of heart was instigated by the most ridiculous argument. It happened during autumn—seven months before my eighteenth birthday. We had just come back from the skating rink, and it was one of those nights. I can't even remember what she was going on about—it was the most trivial thing—something about how my Biellmann spin was too "upright". At this point, she was just being nitpicky. She knew I had been working on that spin for ages, and she just had to find something wrong about it once I had finally perfected it.

"It's an upright spin—for goodness sake, Mother! What are you talking about?" I exclaimed in a paroxysm of indignation. We were standing in the kitchen while she was preparing dinner.

"Yes, but the Biellmann spin is supposed to make you look like a perfect teardrop. What you were doing was an approximation. If you want to be a professional, you aren't going to get by, by taking shortcuts." She said, in the most arrogant, pious fashion.

"I am so sick of you! I'm never good enough for your ridiculous, unachievable standards. You're just envious because your creaky, wizened body can't perform as well anymore." It had felt so good say that. I was sick of her. Just being around her made me disconsolate and dismal.

"Is that it? I guess my creaky body is too old to cook dinner for you anymore." She flung the spoon she was holding into the sink. "You know, you're just like your father—a complete disappointment—you can never do anything. All I ever wanted was for you to do your best. If this is your best, then you mine as well go live with your daddy."

"That's right, mother, I can never do anything the way you want me to do it. You're such an unsatisfied control freak. That's why you left dad and why Jerry will leave you." She slapped me. Right then and there—she slapped me.

"Don't you ever say something like that again. I'm your mother and I know what's best for you. If—if you could just listen to me," Her voice quavered and pleaded, "Melinda, if you would just listen!"

Jerry was standing in the doorway. I think his entrance was the only thing that halted that appalling wrangle. I will never forget the look on he had on his face when he witnessed my mother slap me. He looked as if he had just seen someone get hit by a car. My mother and I stood there with tears coming out of our eyes, so filled with anguish.

A couple weeks after that insane incident, I told Jerry that I wanted him to take full custody of me. I just didn't want to live in that house with her anymore, and I said that I wanted to move out. Jerry loved my mother deeply—he really did—but she was just so awful during my teen years. He admitted that he was fed up with her constant angry nagging and disparaging treatment. She treated Jerry the same way she treated me, maybe not as much, but she was still ugly to him.

It didn't seem like there was any point in staying around. Jerry tried to be with my mother and tried to make her happy, as I did, but she was just too caught up in what she wanted. My mother would always talk about how she deserved this, that, and the third after so many years of taking care of me. She acted like she was such a saint—such a hero. True heroes, are the ones who do their good deeds without seeking recognition, and that was definitely not my mother.

We moved out 3 months later, immediately after my dad won the court case.