I love my mother. And I know she loves me. But she's the one person who taught me more than anyone about how I never wanted to be.

The woman never liked me.

She can't help it. It's not a travesty, but it is a fact.

Oh sure, she has in bits n' pieces for maybe... a few months at a time, (liked me that is) but then whatever relationship I thought I was beginning to develop with her would be gone in a flash for no reason, no warning, whatsoever.

Like the time she sent me a letter when I lived in the U.S.

We had been getting along, talking on the phone and writing amiably, for almost a year (a welcome miracle).

Then one day, a large envelope came in the mail...

In it was a magazine article on the Taliban that she had clipped out and highlighted just where she wanted to emphasize THE EXTENT OF MY EVIL AS ONE OF THEM.

She had linked me with the Taliban organization and somewhere in the mix managed to throw in the fact that I had slept with her counsellor.

It was a helluva conspiracy, only I couldn't get a handle on WHAT.

At the end of her note, crookedly written, she had scrawled the words:

I CURSE YOU

...across the page in big letters.

Great. My own mother just cursed me. Like I didn't have enough problems.

To this day I still don't know what triggered it and I'll be damned if I know who that counsellor was (except I heard he was a soft-spoken, kind man from India - poor bastard).

My brother seems to think it all started when I was about twelve.

Before that, it was him she couldn't stand. But when I hit puberty, a switch went on. And I'm not talking my hormones, I mean in her. She made 'Mommy Dearest' look like the good fairy in Cinderella.

And if you think I'm kidding, fast forward 30 plus years to a lunch my brother and I were invited to in her apartment long after my parents got divorced. She was in good state then but with her you never knew because whatever it was that lay beneath was only dormant. Could be the nuts in the torte she bought for dessert that brought it out.

She was impossible to predict.

So when she put our plates down, smiled, and turned back to the kitchen to procure the other dishes, my brother looked at me and said:

"Go ahead. You try it first."

"Like hell I am!" I whispered, "You go first. She hasn't liked me in twenty years. Chances are your food's okay."

He just shook his head. We both looked at her plate, looked at each other knowing we had the same idea and just as I was reaching to switch my plate with hers, she turned back from the kitchen to sit down and my plan was foiled.

Thankfully she got up again, but only to get the salt and pepper shakers this time. All we could do, was wait for her to take the first bite.

"You don't have to wait for me." she said, smiling sweetly and plunking the salt n' pepper in the middle of the table.

I said a Hail Mary and dug in.

Now I have to admit, the scenario played out more like an Elvis n' Costello bit as my brother and I slapped each other on the arm when the giggles started in case she caught us poking fun at her, but the truth of the matter is, the only reason we would even harbor the notion that she was capable of such madness is because on some level, she was.

When she switches from her jovial self to that other person, it makes the goosebumps on your arm so big they look like ski moguls if only you could add snow.

Put it this way: my mom would scare the crap out of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

My mom wasn't just manic depressive, she was also delusional and MEANT IT.

The police called my house one day to check if I was alive because she had told them I was the dead, unidentified prostitute on the front page of the local paper. When I chuckled and said:

"Uh, no. I'm not dead and I'm not a prostitute. I'm in school though. Is that close?"

"I take it your dad is not part of some... prostitution ring?" they asked almost embarassed.

"Not the last I heard."

And that was the end of that.

But the worst part is she made no bones about the fact that she never wanted kids.

She would have preferred to remain single like her sisters because as she would tell us, they have no responsibilities and no one to answer to, and can do what they want, when they want.

Now I'm not saying she doesn't have her good points.

She's highly intelligent - she reads psych journals like some people read the paper - and she's got pretty much everyone she's every known pegged as falling under some really twisted psychological condition which must make her conversations with other residents at her assisted living housing really interesting.

Except she doesn't talk to any of them. She's alienated everyone she knows with her standards.

The last time I saw her there it was the day after Christmas and she was sitting at a table by herself facing the wall and eating alone while everyone else kept each other company (for the most part).

Peasants no doubt.

But she was all dressed up from head to toe in her finest jewels, silk stockings, high heeled shoes and hair done up. And she's 83.

That's my mom. She could speak three languages, play the piano like a champ, is an avid reader, but was also an alcoholic, manic depressive, delusional, suicidal and mean as a snake when the mood hit her.

Sometimes her meds work and sometimes they don't.

But there is one thing my mom has that I (and my kids) admire.

Energy

You'd have to have lots of it to spend most of your time as an angry person whose pastime is to wreak havoc on people's lives and seek vengeance for all the wrong everyone has ever done to you (or think they've done to you)... and alienate every friend you ever had in the process.

But I get her. And I'm going to use my hero Cesar Millan's (The Dog Whisperer) philosophy to peg her problem.

My mom is like a pit bull that doesn't get exercised on a daily basis, and doesn't have boundaries or have a good pack leader to follow.

Or like an Australian shepherd that doesn't get to embrace his true nature and herd sheep with his energy.

Or like a spaniel that has been denied his tracking and bird retrieving skills and is stuck inside all the time and so displays destructive behaviour.

So her anger is simply hiding the frustration of not having done what she wanted with her life. She never accessed her true nature.

To go to school and excel. To use her intelligence to be somebody. And whatever respect and fame that would bring her.

The thing is, she could have.

But two things prevented her.

1. She has spent most of her life clinically depressed. But staying on the right pills and having a program of therapy would have helped her tremendously.

2. She's lazy. By her own admittance.

She told me the reason she doesn't exercise is because it's too much work. The reason she didn't go back to school is because it would have been too much work. The reason she didn't like having children is because they were too much work. Same with marriage, cooking, you name it. She hated all of it.

Everything you really want in life requires structure, sacrifice and vulnerability - as you will be subject to the expectations and judgment of others.

It meant she had to make a commitment to be healthy. She chose not to. It meant she had to answer to someone else who would judge her essays and give her a grade. She chose against being evaluated. It meant she would have to open her heart to children in whom an emotional investment never guarantees a return...

Life involves risk, guts, sacrifice, committment and vulnerability.

Everything worthy in life, does.

And for all her energy, intelligence and potential, she was not willing to give up any of those things.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that I was.

Like I said, almost everything I learned in life about what not to be, I learned from her. And for those of you who think it's all very sad, I just want you to know, that I don't.

It simply is what it is. What you do with the hand that is dealt you, is what separates people.

As the saying goes:

No man is my friend, no man is my enemy, every man is my teacher.

That is, if you choose it to be so...

NEXT - Kicking shadows and lightening the load