Dear Cali Chica:

“I looked at this child and his smiling face, kissing his mom all  over her face”- evolution had it that puppies and babies, animal/ human young,  look cute for this purpose: so that the mother will look at their cuteness and want to touch them affectionately and take care of them lovingly (“A beautiful young boy with curly hair,  bouncy curls that you just want to touch“).

Nature has given this boy his looks for the purpose of him attracting the loving attention of his mother. In addition to his looks, nature gave him the behavior aimed at the same: attracting the loving attention of his mother (“kissing his mom all over her face”).

How interesting, it occurred to me the parallel between this boy and you. When he fell on the floor, his reaction was to “crawl back into his mother’s lap crying, looking at her eyes for some sympathy. He wouldn’t receive it. I notice his face go from a sad frown, to quickly a happy smile as he would start kissing is mom again. He would giggle, and she would kiss him back… Then again, the same scenario.. Rising back up;”

– first he cried, just like you did, so to get his mother’s sympathy,  but it didn’t work, so he smiled instead, and giggled. But not because he was happy but because he is still trying to get her loving attention, in a different way, because crying didn’t do it.

First Cali Chica cried, but it didn’t work, no sympathy from her mother (she told you all you ever did is cry, since you were born..), so Cali Chica giggles, acts happy, makes friends, is engaging, charming to people so to get her mother’s loving attention, bringing friends home, pleasing her mother who values making friends so highly.

“I wonder if my own mother was seeking her mother’s love as well”- no doubt she did, just like the boy you observed, looking cute and reaching out to her mother with love again and again, crying, trying to look cute, and she is indeed “stuck in a childlike”, still trying to . She still tries to … look cute and act cute in that sickening ways you/ your sister described, that eerie quality of childlike voice, showing off her outfits, like a little girl. In Morocco, wearing the bright red lipstick and looking insane because in her fifties, she acts like a little girl playing with lipstick.

“Our mothers are filled with so much evil and hatred and animosity”- when angry and abusive, yes they are. At other times they are overgrown little girls doing a lot of damage because they are not aware they are powerful over the true little girls in their lives, their daughters. Similar to the guy in Mice and Men whose mental abilities were that of a small child but his body was that of a powerful adult man, and so he killed a woman unintentionally, not aware that trying to quiet her with his powerful hold can kill her.

Your mother stuck in her childhood, not at all qualified to be a mother, no  doubt. Not qualified except for her ability to get pregnant and her ability to prepare food and change diapers and such.

I will wait for your reply to what I wrote so far, when you are ready.

anita