A few weeks ago with some friends I watched a Finnish movie called “Äideistä parhain” (Mother of Mine). It tells the story of a young Finnish boy named Eero. Eero has a bit of a rough time through the course of the film. His father is killed in an air raid during fighting between the Soviet Union and Finland during World War II. Eero’s mother sends him away to live with a Swedish family in order to escape the dangers of the war, the mother in his adoptive family—Signe—is prickly and mean, and his own mother runs off with a German man and tells the Swedish family they can keep Eero forever.
Talk about abandonment trauma!
Eventually, Signe sees Eero’s need in his state of extreme vulnerability, sets aside her own pain, and embraces the boy as a member of her family. From the moment she first shows him tenderness and gives him a hug, I started crying and hardly stopped for the rest of the movie. But good crying!
Other tragedies befall the young lad and I won’t spoil how the film resolves things, but I want to say that I loved this movie. And I think there’s a very specific reason why.
Growing up there were many happy times when we were younger, but at some point things began to change. Apparently my mom began to remember abuse she suffered when she was a child, and the knowledge seemed to burden her. Sometimes she seemed to revert partly back to childhood, her ability to play her role as one of the adults in the family becoming seriously impaired. I don’t think she ever really figured out how to heal. And all this trouble arrived in my parents’ already struggling marriage and only complicated things. Mom didn’t trust Dad. Dad didn’t know how to help Mom and would burst out in anger over her incapacity. It was a mess.
Which left me and my siblings in many ways to raise ourselves. Mom and Dad were too distracted with their own problems. They probably figured that we were good kids and would do just fine. They did their best. But in so many ways they simply weren’t there for us. Mom was sick and Dad was angry, and there wasn’t a lot of room for us kids to be kids—dependent, in need of guidance and help, making mistakes, all those things.
That’s why the story of Eero touched me so deeply. It’s about a kid whose parents haven’t been there for him. His father was killed, then his mother sent him a way and ran off with another man, only taking her son back when her lover left her. But when mean and nasty Signe came to love Eero as her own, it seemed to make everything better. For me it was a powerful symbol of the wrong of abandonment being made right by love. How could I not weep?
Having parents who are too busy, too hurt, too distracted, too dysfunctional, too whatever to be there for you, to simply be parents to you, can leave awfully deep wounds. There’s a void within your heart that feels it will never be filled. It’s a terrible thing.
There’s still a part of me that yearns for someone to reach out to me in love to make it right. Like Signe did for Eero. Maybe someday that hole in my heart will be filled, but for now I carry the wounds with me.
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