Little Lord Fauntleroy's Mother

Late one night a few weeks ago, my Mom caught an old movie on one of those classics channels. It was all she talked about for days afterwards. She told me that I had to see this movie, Little Lord Fauntleroy, that there was a lesson in it for me. So we bought the movie and watched it together yesterday.

I won't go into the play by play, because this isn't a movie review. But the basics of the story go like this: In New York, father dies, son is summoned by grandfather in England to carry on legacy, son and mother move to England, mother gets to live in a fabulous house, but not with son who lives in castle with evil grandfather, son is so amazing because of his mother's love that grandfather adores son, and at the end of the movie the grandfather realizes that the reason he adores the son so much is because of the mother, even though he's pretended that she doesn't exist.

It's strange for me to be affected by a movie. Usually they're just entertainment for me, and I don't take away much. (unlike books that will haunt me for weeks and years afterward)

I haven't sorted through all my feelings, and I can't seem to figure it all out, so this is really rough of how I feel. So please excuse my ramblings. I hope to someday make sense of this and I've been fearful to put it on my blog because I'm afraid of how crazy it will make me seem.

So here it is: Nemo and his parents have treated me like I was the slave girl who gave birth to their heir. They have under minded me from day one, telling me that I'm feeding or bathing or dressing Lucian wrong, not enough or too much. They have in general made me feel unimportant and just the vessel that brought Lucian here - needed for the nine months of pregnancy, but obsolete now.

Admittedly, I gave away a lot of my power. I felt threatened and confused and suffered low self confidence. Nemo's parents would make some demand, and I'd have to follow through, as Nemo had rights and at the time, he was very unstable for me to deal with. It was easier for me to bite my tongue than start more arguments or get Nemo involved.

Even after the divorce was settled, after all my therapy, I've still felt threatened. Like I've needed to spend every waking hour of Lucian's life with him to prove to everyone that... what? He's mine? I'm the mother? I'm in control? I don't know and I can't seem to articulate it, even now. I've pushed myself into almost unreasonable motherhood - even women with ten children get more breaks or feel less burden and guilt than I do.

I feel like I worked so hard and so long to get pregnant ($30,000 + 3 years), stay pregnant (diabetic and stressful pregnancy where I was virtually alone, arguing and fighting with Nemo all the time, not understanding anything my life was becoming and then lying about it to everyone else), and have the baby (again alone, filing for divorce with a 2 month old, taking care of a newborn almost entirely by myself) that I feel like I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor and good luck that has been bestowed upon me. A baby! It's my wildest dream, and I'm living it. I don't want anyone taking this away from me. Especially crazy in-laws who thought it was okay that their son ran off with a stri*pper.

Even as I'm writing this, I realize that a good portion of this sounds unreasonable, or unrealistic. I know what you're thinking: you've had the great fortune of having a baby, one who's healthy and beautiful, and you're threatened by a non-sperm donor father(?) figure and his insane family by the few hours they spend with him a week? And my answer would be yes, crazy as that sounds. Irrational as even I know it sounds, I can't help feeling it anyway.

Okay, back to the movie. It really should have been titled Little Lord Fauntleroy's Mother because she's the reason her son is who he is. In it, the mother never speaks bad of the grandfather, and in fact does the opposite. What happens is not that the son realizes that the grandfather is an evil man, but the grandfather realizes how evil he is and changes. I want to strive to be like that mother. I want to not speak poorly about Nemo and his family (except to the whole internet of course!) I want Lucian to not be stuck in the middle of my drama. I don't want him to know my true feelings about Nemo's family or why. And when he eventually hears our story someday, I want him to know that his mother's love has carried him through.

I've got such a long way to go.