by Matthew Kosinski

Created on: June 01, 2008

I've had two mothers in my lifetime. There was no divorce, nor was their a fatal struggle with mortality that led to my situation. There was no hit and run birthing, no mystery woman dropping me onto this earth and into the arms of another to act as my maternal guardian. Rather, my peculiar situation is the result of the sharp edge of a vodka bottle, which has the amazing power to cut a woman in half, producing two completely different beings with nothing in common but their eyes.

For the first thirteen years of my life, I knew my mother as a kind, loving, caring, gentle soul. She was your archetypal stay-at-home bride, the kind who was always waving from the window as my two brothers and I would step onto the school bus, and would sure enough being waiting for us when we arrived home from our tiring day of multiplication tables and awkward, pubescent crushes on girls (who, it seemed, were no-longer carrying the dreaded "cootie" scourge as the years advanced. I always just assumed some doctor somewhere must have finally created a vaccination, and carried on with my silent yearnings and strange urges for skin-on-skin contact) with a freshly-baked tray of oatmeal cookies for us to replenish our depleted energies with.

I grew extremely close to her during these years. She was my confidant, the only person who knew everything about my life, my playmate, always willing to pick up a Playstation controller and lose to me in Capcom Vs. SNK, and my biggest fan, despite the fact that my first literary endeavors were mostly fumbled, jumbled, affairs, tales with plenty of skin but no soul.

This proximity to my mother made it all the harder for me when, during the summer between seventh and eighth grade, she began to hit the bottle with all the force of a raging bull. At the time, it seemed like a radically abrupt change, as if, one day, she woke up with nothing but alcohol in her veins. Looking back now, though, I realize that it was anything but sudden. The signs were always there, all along. They were hidden in her big, brown eyes, which always seemed to carry a hint of sadness like Christ carried his cross.

For the reader to understand my mother's addiction, an explanation of her childhood is needed. Michelle Kosinski grew up under the watch of her parents, Mildred and Michael, and alongside her sister, Bridget. They lived in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a rough area, especially for young girls. On more than one occasion, my mother was chased home from school by men; men

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