Rainbows and Unicorns

by Leslie Ferguson
As a kid, I would’ve loved to see one. Hell, I’d still love to see one. But unicorns aren’t real, so I wish for more practical things like reverse aging and zero-calorie cookies.

As a memoirist, I have spent countless hours contemplating my childhood and searching for truth and meaning in trauma. My birth mom was a paranoid schizophrenic who put my life in danger repeatedly because she believed she was protecting me, an irony that filled me with confusion, doubt, and fear. She uprooted my childhood, and we never got a chance to have a healthy mother-daughter relationship. I was too busy trying to win her love, and she was too preoccupied with navigating the terrifying and contradictory demands of her illness.

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I was a bad daughter. I hated her. Shouldn’t I have hated the illness instead? Had I known more, had someone tried to explain the truth, I might have been able to forgive her—and myself—a lot sooner. Forgiveness is like that ever-elusive unicorn. Except it’s not. Forgiveness is real. But why is it so hard to find?


In 1979, when I was five, my newly pierced ears had healed enough for me to switch out the posts for cuter jewelry. At Kmart, I’d picked out a card holding several designs: suns, daisies, hearts, and stars.


The next morning, the gray of dawn lingered in the sky before the sun opened its light fully onto the world. In Mom’s bedroom, that bluish tint of shifting color poured through the window. I dressed for kindergarten and opened the square jewelry box into which I’d emptied the tiny enamel studs. Aiming to grab the yellow and orange suns, my small, clumsy hands fumbled the box and dropped it into the plastic trash can next to my mom’s dresser.


She came running, but the rescue was not the kind I needed. I needed her to understand me, hug me, and help me save my shiny little earrings. As I stuck my hands into the bin, she swatted them and reprimanded me, saying I couldn’t dig through trash no matter what I’d lost.


A sun was within reach, perched atop a crumbled piece of paper next to peppery cigarette ashes. If only I could have lifted it with magic!


We argued, both adamant, torn in opposite directions by disparate goals. I was just a girl needing to be a girl. And she was a mother determined to protect me. The voices in her head must’ve been gnawing at her again, telling her horrible lies I could never understand.


Or maybe this was what any mother would have done.


Most memoirists will tell you looking back costs not only time but also physical and mental well-being. If combing through yesterdays strips us dry, why are we compelled to do it and to assign meaning to every detail? Why can’t we just let the past stay where it belongs?


The best answer I can come up with is that searching for unicorns gives us hope. Sifting through the past is the only way to understand it, and if we can understand it, we can come to know some semblance of order and peace.


So I am always looking for glimpses of my mom before she got sick, simple moments that reveal her sanity and her love for me. Because, if I can prove she loved me, I can forgive her for trying to kill me, for flipping our lives upside down, for abandoning me, for becoming my danger instead of my protector.


But those before-glimpses are unicorns too. And I can’t find them anywhere.


With my birth mother, I never achieved harmony in the ritual of the feminine—in cultivating that special bond between mother and daughter through girly activities and silly laughter. No. To survive, I had to let her go.


Many members of the adoptee community are angry about having been taken from their birth families. ”Adoption” often conjures images of babies being stolen and sold, secrets kept and lies told, and babies and mothers being robbed of the opportunity to grow together and love each other through an idyllic life of sunshine and rainbows.



None of us knows what an alternate life would’ve been like. We can only dream about possibilities. Perhaps, had I been adopted as a baby, my views on adoption would be different. However, adoption saved me. I know this because I lived with my birth mother for ten years. It was a privilege to suffer with my biological family because it taught me the necessity of separation. But foster homes did more harm than good.


Until I was rescued by my sixth-grade teacher. She became my mom, and I got a second chance at a secure life. If she hadn’t stepped in when she did, I am certain I wouldn’t be here today.


Last weekend, we celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday. Because she would rather eat sand than shop, I ordered twenty-five articles of clothing and had them sent to my house. In my bedroom, we had a one-model fashion show. We oohed and aahed over 100-percent cotton button-front blouses and soft, cozy long-sleeved tees as we enjoyed being together in this mother-daughter tradition.


Our at-home boutique session reminded of me of the earlier days in our relationship. After she and her husband took me in on an emergency basis (because I was in an abusive foster home), she did everything in her power to provide warmth and security.


And she took me clothes shopping, which was a dream fulfilled. This was what mothers and daughters did, right? They went shopping together? I’d come from poverty that clothed me in ill-fitting, mismatched duds and pants purchased second-hand from the Goodwill that were horrifically pee-stained, a fact I noticed only after I’d worn them to school. And when I lived at MacLaren Hall, a group housing facility, all the kids shared underwear. And in foster homes, clothes were bought for me cheaply and gifted with pride even though I had no say in what I got.


But this foster mother, my teacher, a woman who hates shopping, perused the racks with me, following me around and carrying piles of clothes for me like a sherpa. In the dressing room, she became a chair in the corner—head against the wall, buried in fast fashion, eyes struggling to stay open—as I tossed the discarded items at her like a teen Gatsby in search of the most stylish shirts.


We left the store with enough bags of fashionable outfits and shoes to make any Cinderella feel worthy. Wasn’t this as genuine a show of safety and love as any? And on the drive home, the warmth of the car and the silence between us allowed me to sink into relaxation, as if signaling to me: “See? You don’t have to try so hard any more. You can rest now.” Those days, and the clothing we brought home, came to represent something much more meaningful than colorful, sewn fabric. They were love, they were a selfless act, an effort to help me feel good about myself. Because I’d spent a lot of years learning how to feel bad about myself.


Any glimpse of life or love comes down to perspective. With my birth mom and her unpredictable, violent, and exhausting illness, I was never safe nor good enough because I couldn’t make her well. And I have spent decades trying to heal the injuries of the past in this body of mine that remembers the trauma it experienced and keeps the score like a bitter, vengeful enemy.


But for almost forty years, I have had a real mom who shows me honest, predictable, unconditional love exists. Now, I get to be the chair, the sherpa, the best daughter I can be, holding clothes for her. Here, Mom, try this love on for size. How about this one? Too small? Well, I got it in bigger size, too, just in case. How’s that? Perfect?

Indeed.

She is my unicorn. She always has been. I just didn’t recognize her at first—didn’t know the real thing could be so damn beautiful.



About the Author:

Leslie Ferguson is the author of the award-winning memoir When I Was Her Daughter. A board member of the International Memoir Writers Association, she earned her MA in English literature and MFA in creative writing from Chapman University, and her writing has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review, Tiny Spoon, Coffin Bell, and Shaking the Tree, Volume 5.

When she isn’t writing or helping others find their voice, she can be found listening to alternative music, making another cup of coffee, or reminiscing about her basketball-playing days.

For more about Leslie, visit https://linktr.ee/lesliefergusonauthor

Grab a copy of Leslie’s memoir, When I Was Her Daughter now! (Available in ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover): https://a.co/d/gHuNXrZ


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