Mother, daughters & ‘White Oleander’

It was a special birthday present, Janet Fitch’s White Oleander in its first paper-back publication. Its stark black-and-white cover had the orange and red seal of Oprah’s Book Club.

Francesca, my 19-year-old, handed it to me two years ago. It was unwrapped, straight from her suitcase as she unpacked from a 14-day university campus tour in the United States. Beatrice, my 16-year-old, completed our trio which had converged on the bed. I was truly touched but what came out of my mouth was... "You forgot to peel out the sticker price." "Just like you sometimes, when you give me presents," came the reply. Beatrice jumped right in with, "I was gonna buy that book in Vancouver last summer but you said, Not another of those dramatic books."

So it went...a daily dose of our mother-daughter repartee. I failed to raise them in affirmation and nurture. I was ensconced in my self-contained universe, devoid of parental sensibilities. I loved them fiercely but my emotional handicap divested me of the means to express it. Tension in our home was at a constant simmer. Communication was in its most primitive forms. Conversation was scarce and confined to logistics and transportation issues. The two girls were acting out their despair that was festering inside. Sarcasm was plenty as it was the only tool by which our frustrations could surface. Yet, even our sadness could not unite us.

The girls had spent too many years in parental neglect. My initial clumsy attempts at reconciliation and atonement either puzzled or annoyed them. It didn’t take much longer for our relationship to come undone. It was as its layers were peeling that I read the book.

There may not be a story more complex and flavorful than a mother-daughter relationship. The denouement of this universal saga creeps as the child reaches adolescence. Always, the mother holds the key to its resolution. Blessed are the few who, on the verge of destruction, stop in mid-step to forge a change of heart and soul to save a child. Mostly, negligent mothers just become runaway locomotives.

Janet Fitch tells this story beautifully. In White Oleander, the free-spirited poet, Ingrid Magnussen, is reluctant mother to 12-year-old Astrid. Passion rules Ingrid. Her self-absorption is locked on to her personal pursuits. She is a non-believer of morals and a non-observer of social convention. Everything in the universe exists for her gratification. Deprived since birth, emotional hunger rules Astrid. She craves concern, warmth and stability. Mother and child are adrift in Ingrid’s fluid world of art.

Reality only anchors them down when Ingrid murders an ex-lover. A lengthy prison term interrupts their ailing alliance. Astrid is shuttled across six foster homes with varied setups of abusive environments. She grasps spastically at anything which offers a semblance of hope or certainty or affection. She survives because she has no choice.

Janet Fitch’s writing is powerful. California is Fitch’s provenance. Her intimate knowledge of it provides the story with a flawless canvas. Her allegory of the white oleander is her subject.

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of paled straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves.

Oleanders could live through anything, they could stand heat, drought, neglect, and put out thousands of waxy blooms.

Ingrid is the dynamic California landscape and Astrid is the white oleander that survives it. Fitch uses the shifting weather conditions to establish mood. Weather becomes the harbinger of succeeding events. Accounts of heat, cold, fog, mist precede substantial twists in the story.

The book bursts with metaphor. She uses nature and environment to contrast human condition. She likens women to rivers "starting out as small girls, tiny streams." Then they are "torrents that later grew fat, the size of barges. Finally they gave out into a swamp that emptied into the sea." She describes hope as "the last match in a long arctic night" and compares neglectful parenting to a "drunk parking a car."

Fitch’s writing is opalescent.

Although I dislike that Astrid has no respite from the successive tragedies in her life, and that Fitch does not give her much consolation in her blind and endless search for a decent life, there is nothing that will negate the brilliance of her gift for the narrative.

White Oleander spoke to me and of me. Ingrid says what I could only think. She breathed fire into my maternal shortcomings. I confronted my failings through her character. I had dragged both Francesca and Beatrice through my divorce from their father when they were toddlers. This, however, did not make me a single parent. I became a 24-year-old non-parent whose main concern was to reclaim the lost teen years. I recaptured and lived those turbulent years with a vengeance. I held a demanding job and didn’t concern myself much with my daughters’ affairs beyond their basic needs. After work I would come home only long enough for a quick dinner to rid myself of that nagging maternal guilt, then I would just as swiftly leave them in the yaya’s care for a night with friends. I was sifting through parties and destructive capers with them when it was convenient for me and that doesn’t count. Yet they struggled to survive without even as much as a whine audible enough to have invaded my quiet.

Time neutralized my wandering spirit and age tempered my restlessness. I remarried after eight years and started another family. Francesca and Beatrice were adolescents by then. I had made myself available to them but rebuilding another family occupied my waking hours. Slowly, we slipped away from each other.

Astrid gave me a window into my daughters’ hearts and minds. I found in Astrid their voices, their pain, fears and dreams. On their shoulders laid the burden of sorting through the spoils of my capriciousness, vanity and selfishness.

It was in the thick of their confusing teens that I was shaken from this state of flagrant irresponsibility. It wasn’t a conscious awakening that I can credit myself for. I didn’t charge with a conquering hero’s cavalcade into their lives to rectify my misdeeds. It was more the deliberate process of my daughters’ spirits wilting that seized my senses. My negligence exacted a steep price from their well-being. They personally settled my debts to morality and social responsibility.

Even if the heavens smile down at a mother and grant her a chance to salvage a broken relationship with her daughter, it is only with the daughter’s mercy that this attempt might be consummated. Astrid chose to withhold mercy.

Janet Fitch says, "parenting skills are modeled. So if your model is flawed you don’t have the skills." I say this cycle has to stop somewhere.

I was 17 when I married their father, 20 when I had Francesca, 22 when Beatrice came. How can a child parent another? Yes, there is a plethora of books on parenting. Not that expectant parents bother to read them. The cliché says there is no school for parenting. I’ll say till I’m blue in the face that there should be one, or at the very least a seminar much like those discovery weekends requisite to weddings. We champion safe sex and anti-drug campaigns. We should enforce responsible parenting before our children come, not after they come home from rehab.

I have made it my life’s mission to make amends to Francesca and Beatrice. Their magnanimity has enabled our healing process to commence and flourish. I marvel at the beautiful individuals they have become in spite of what I did. I have repeatedly asked for their forgiveness and I labor so that I may eventually deserve it. I wake up every day proud to be their mother.

Why couldn’t I have realized then that the repercussions would be lethal to them? I offer no excuses and I embrace all the blame. The difficult acknowledgment of all these guaranteed my chance at renewal. Parental denial in all its forms is arsenic.

Four wondrous people are the moving forces that be. Dido Villasor told me in my darkest moment, "Behind every troubled child is a troubled home." She held my hand throughout the "walk back to myself and my children." Jon Jurill said, "Every child needs structure to thrive." He taught me about boundaries, how to erect and maintain them. Corbin Moro said, "What is most painful to a parent may be the most helpful to a child." She showed me that overcompensation for parental misdeeds can only do more harm. Most of all, their father Mike made all things possible. He is our Noah. He built us an impervious ark for shelter during this journey. His trust and steadfast support has propelled us downstream to peaceful waters.

I look back now with humor. It serves as an anesthetic. It affords me the luxury of examining the past minus the grief and guilt. I only look briefly to learn from it, never dwelling long enough for it to weigh me down.

I am grateful to Francesca and Beatrice for this golden chance. They will bear their children and love them well. This much I know.