My Mother

I promised that I would tell you about my mother. So, for better or worse, here goes. The first thing that I want to tell you is that I love my mother. I love both of my parents. The two most important things you need to know about Sylvia, (that's my Mom's name), is that she is very religious and that she worked extra hard for our family.

I was an only child. So that put me squarely in the spotlight. I felt like everything that I did was under a microscope. My parents are Catholic. New Zealand is a majority Anglican country, but they somehow manged to stick to their guns and be different. As a result, my mother especially defended her faith ferociously. Even to me. Now I never felt connected to the Catholic faith. I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

When I was 14, my mother discovered me reading a book about Wicca. She hit the roof! Being such a strict Catholic all of her life and never learning about other faiths, she was sure that Wicca was the same as Satanism. Nothing that I could say or do could convince her that she was wrong. My father was bit more willing to listen, but not much. I was forbidden to read or talk or think about anything other than Catholicism.

How do you forbid someone to think about something? Ha! Ask my mother! I think she must be able to read minds. At least she could always read mine. Seriously! I could not get anyway with anything around her. Maybe it's because we are so much alike. In many, many ways we are the same. The only real difference I see now that I am adult and can admit such things to myself, is that we have chosen different spiritual paths. At the time, however, I thought we were from different planets!

The more she tried to pull me away from Wicca, the more I ran to it. I decided to go to University in The States which made my mother really sick. I don't know if it was because I was so far away or if it was because she couldn't control me if I was that far away. But it really hurt her, I think. I don't think she has forgiven me yet.