When I was 24, I made the most difficult decision of my life: I left my two daughters with my mother. The eldest was five, the younger only three. I was working twelve-hour shifts, had nobody to leave them with, had no money, and their father had vanished into thin air leaving me utterly clueless as to how we were supposed to survive. My mum told me she’d look after them “until you get back on your feet.” I was young, scared, and desperate, so I agreed, telling myself it would only be for a few months. Of course, those months stretched themselves out into years, as months are prone to do.
At first, Id go to see them every Saturday and Sunday. They were so little, they didnt really grasp why I wasnt sleeping in the same house anymore. Each visit was a jumble of hugs and questions I couldnt answer without falling apart:
“Why arent you staying?”
“Why do you sleep somewhere else?”
“When will you come back?”
My mother managed to soothe them with, “Your mum’s just working lots,” but the honest truth was, I was watching them slowly start to call her “Mum” and they didnt even realise they were doing it.
By the time the oldest turned eight and the youngest was six, they didnt look for me the way they used to. Theyd fling their arms around me and, within seconds, be off running towards my mother. I stood there, stock-still, aware that I was just a visitor in their lives, no longer their mother. One afternoon, the little one fell over while she was playing. I rushed to pick her up, but she pulled her hand away and shouted, “I love Mum!” meaning my mother. At that moment, I realised something had snapped and there was no mending it.
The years rolled on, and I tried every possible way to “win them back”: new clothes, toys, sweets, days out whatever I could manage. Each time, it was a brisk “Hello,” before they’d drift back to their games. My mother, without meaning any harm, made all the decisions: which school they’d attend, doctors appointments, chores, permissions. I turned into the woman who brought stuff, not the woman who counted.
They grew up seeing me as “the aunt who brings something nice,” not the lady who happened to have given birth to them.
When they started primary school, it only got more painful. At parents evenings, the teachers would direct all their attention at my mum. If they acknowledged me at all, it was, “Are you the aunt?” And my daughters never corrected them.
One time, I tried signing a form for a school trip, and the eldest whispered,
“No, you cant. Mum has to sign it.”
That day, I locked myself in the school toilets and cried as quietly as I could didnt want anyone to hear, after all.
As they got older, I tried to tell them why I hadnt been around. I told them how Id lived, what Id been through, how Id fought to keep going. They listened in complete silence but nothing changed.
The eldest told me she had no idea whether to thank me or be angry, “because I dont really feel anything anymore.”
The younger one was more blunt:
“You werent there. I cant come up with a feeling that doesnt exist.”
Im 61 now. My daughters talk to me, come at Christmas, give me hugs but never call me Mum. Im in their lives, but not in the space that should have been mine.
And even though I know I cant change the past, it still hurts. It hurts to see how their lives went on just fine without me.
