sobre mi madre
The clouds looked like river-stones this morning.
One of the only times I wished I had a Twitter account, so I could tweet that.
A couple of posts by fellow bloggers, plus my own situation lately, have gotten my chin to visit my hand in order to contemplate my mother. I still have not found it in my heart to forgive her for the ridiculously bad visit I had with her back in July. It’s the lies that are really sticking with me, the fact that she was so untruthful with me, over and over again. She told lies that made me wonder if she’s been truthful with me much at all in the last five years or so.
I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this here before, or not, and it’s too vague for me to try and look it up in my archive. I read and see a lot of business out there in the world about mothers, about the holiness of mothers, about how grateful we should be to our mothers no matter what, about how much is lost to daughters when their mothers die and how you never really get over it. To put it delicately, I have never found much that is familiar in all of this talk.
Beej and Mrs. Chili have each written posts in the recent past that are about this, and to both I have had the reaction of feeling sad and a little alien. I am missing whatever it is that causes me to crave my mother, her and only her, whether in conversation or physical contact or just knowing she’s there. This makes me feel cruel and compassionless and like something of a freak.
Mrs. Chili wrote a moving, matter-of-fact post about her mother’s things, and about her clothes, and she talked about how she missed that she wasn’t there to talk to about the things of life she wanted advice on. I do not know how this will shake out for me after my mother’s gone, because there’s almost nothing that I need her help on, her and only her advice. Anything that I need to know where I immediately think of her, first, could generally be found with some persistence on the internet – almost always academic-related things. She never taught me how to knead bread, or how to put on makeup, or how to end a friendship. I rarely trust her advice, as it’s rarely been good.
My mother was never abusive to me, and she did teach me many other things of worth, but I think I can say truthfully that I learned more about how not to live by watching her. And in the past few years, I have begun to get the feeling that she doesn’t really respect me. There’s such a yawning crevasse between how BF’s parents treat him (and me) and how my mother (and, until recently, my father) treats me, and one of the most prevalent differences is that they are genuinely interested in what he has to say, no matter what it’s about. My mom just doesn’t really care. She also doesn’t seem to believe that I could have much of anything interesting to say about what she wants to talk about. This is not something I could footnote and explain to you with examples, it’s a feeling, but it’s a feeling I have most every time I talk to her.
Beej has written two posts recently about her mother’s death in 2001: one that so thoroughly gave me the shivers that I couldn’t even stand to read it again in order to savor its excellence, and one that nearly made me weep for her loss. She has also written comments to me on this blog telling me that she regrets not somehow straightening out her relationship with her mother before she passed away. (Beej, if I am getting you wrong here, I am SO SORRY and please set me straight.) I often think about this knotty issue, because my mother’s health makes it likely that she will pass sooner rather than later. The doctors told her in 1998 that she had ten years to live, so in theory she is on borrowed time as it is. Whenever I argue with her, or get so frustrated with her in my own mind that I cannot see my way to talking to her for a few weeks, I wonder if this will be the time that I can’t take it back and make amends before she’s gone. I wonder whether I should be more forgiving, more understanding, just so my time with her – however long it may last – is more pleasant and more bountiful.
This has been much on my mind lately, because she is not getting any healthier (kidney issues are very serious this year), and I am no closer to forgiving her now than I was on my flight home from Florida in July. I do not see my mother as holy. She is special to me, truly, but not the madonna of love that mothers are so often painted up to be in our culture. She has genuinely wronged me, in my opinion, and I think I deserve to be treated better. I am finding it impossible to see beyond this incident, to a time when I will regret acting this way towards her. I am doing the best I can with the information I have right now, which frankly includes the knowledge that one day she will be gone. The best I can, somehow, is still not enough to forgive her. How can I find regret in doing the best I can?
Right now she’s like a friend who has seriously fucked up, one who is too emotionally stupid for me to talk through the issue with her and try to explain so we can mend fences and move on. What can I say? “I have realized that you lie too much for me to spend time with you”? “Start listening to what I have to say, and then we can talk”? No. She is an old dog, and she really does not understand the ways of humans.
With all of this in mind: she has been trying to Gchat with me a lot lately. The most recent occurrence was on Monday night, and instead of ignoring her and going to bed as I wanted to do, I chatted with her briefly. She asked me yet again about the details of my yoga teacher training trip, which I have already talked with her about at least three times, and when I pointed out that we had already talked about this, she asked me what was wrong. I said I wasn’t adjusting to my job very well and was quite tired, and she said she’d leave me alone so I could finish up my internet stuff and go to bed. Then she said this:
“almost asked why are you so mad at me these days, then decided to say, you seem mad at me these days and I cannot figure it out. But right now you are tired; if some time when you are not tired you want to talk that over please let me know.”
As much as I don’t want to discuss this whole subject with her, I want even less to discuss it over Gchat. It’s difficult for two people who spent their adolescence chatting (as I did) to get emotional subtleties over Gchat; with someone who only learned how to IM in recent years, I am just not willing to go there.
Also, a tip for moms out there: the thing to do if you want to know what’s up with your daughter is to call her. She wants to know that you care enough to try and talk with her, not that you only care enough to drop in a mention of her distant behavior at the end of a chat conversation. In my mother’s case, this was done with intention, to try and guilt-trip me, to treat lightly something that is truly bothering her, and to manipulate me into talking to her further when I didn’t want to…but still. Just call your daughter if you love her.
The thing is, as I told BF, I’m not sure I would respond even if she did call me. I’m still hurt, and I know, I know, down to my bones, that trying to be straight with her would only lead to more lies and lack of understanding and mess and pain. If she called me I would probably say things like “I’m sorry you feel that way” and “I’m not sure what I did to make you think that.” I’m ashamed of myself for it, but there it is.
I don’t see a resolution for this right now. BF advised time, which I think is wise indeed, but I don’t know what’s going to make me want to be “friends” with my mother again. Even thinking about the fragility of her life, about how her specialness will be whisked away with the mortality of all things, does not motivate me. I’m not saying I won’t be sorry if she dies, I’m not a monster, but I think I’ve accepted that it’s going to happen whether I treat her like a goddess or like the flawed human being that she is.
October 7, 2009 at 9:12 am
Wow. I had to put this down and come back and re-read it later, and I’m still not sure I have much of use to say other than to emphasize my agreement with Margo’s stance that family is accidental, and if people hurt you that you are within your rights to limit their involvement in your life.
But HOW??
That said, I think I’ll email you a book recommendation. It might not help, but then again, it might. Whatever happens, I hope you can find some measure of peace within whatever relationship you choose to define with your mother.
October 7, 2009 at 10:56 am
As I’m constantly swamped and not getting out to read much – and currently preparing for the landing of my own alien pod people, oops – parents, this evening, TB sent me this link, knowing that I would certainly be able to empathize with some of your feelings. On the one hand, I do have some very wonderful memories and attachments to my mother, and on the other hand, she has wronged me (by accident and intent) over and over and over to the point that I am normally anxious, sleepless, and irritable for weeks before I know I am to see her (/them — my parents are a unit of hell).
From one perspective, a tiny part of me irrationally envies you that you do not have that attachment that brings craving. I spent a very many years hating myself that I seemingly could never get my mother to love me enough or value me enough to stop hurting me. It was bloody and brutal, and I have the best husband in the world for being there with me through all he has seen and supporting me 150%. It is still extremely difficult at times, mostly now because of having a child (read: her grandchild) and the insanity of guilt and control attempts that go along with that. Back to the main point though, I grew up desperately wanting her seal of approval – for her to give me validity. As a small child, I was praised by her for my intelligence, and I very quickly equated praise with love. It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that I learned that praise, even when delivered with good intent, ends up often being just another form of judgment. And it turned out that what I really wanted was to be judged by my mother as being ‘complete’. Lo and behold, that isn’t her judgment to give.
Whoo sister, does that ever sound familiar. It took me a long time and lots of heartache to discover that my parents’ opinion does not have to matter to me.
My parents together are, as I’m sure you’ve read me stating before, an emotional black hole. They swallow everything in their path. I’ve stood up to them in recent years and demanded civility for the small amount of time they are required to spend with us, and for the most part, that has really paid off. But the very best thing I’ve ever done was to stop caring what they thought of me. Yes, I wouldn’t get a tattoo while they were helping us financially with the boy’s tuition, but that was out of my own sense of respect for their contribution and not because I knew they wouldn’t like it. I ultimately figured out just how important I was to myself and to follow the paths that mattered to me without giving them the weight in my life to which they thought they were simply entitled.
I once said that if my parents died, I’d feel a sense of relief. I’d be devastated too – they are my parents – but it’s true and undeniable that there will be a sense of relief of not having to listen to them argue ever again, not feeling anxious ever again at the thought of spending time with them, etc. The first time I had this thought, it devastated me. At this point, I understand that it simply is, and that it is a perfectly natural response to the turmoil they’ve created in my life. It doesn’t make me a monster.
Before I could get to that place, though, I had to forgive them. Doesn’t mean I don’t still get angry at them for what they did (and didn’t do), and it doesn’t mean they’ve changed a bit or have carte blanche to do/not do any of it again. It simply means that I’ve made my peace with it on my end so that it doesn’t just eat at me. TB’s book will definitely help, and I actually have a recommendation that I’ll forward too that helped me to think about things a little differently and to center back on myself during that time I was trying to figure it all out.
Sorry for my long-windedness. Suffice to say, you’re not all alone, and I wish you peace.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I don’t know what else to say, other than thank you. I will look into those books.
October 7, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I’m not sure I’m going to be able to say this right, but I’m going to try. Sorry if it comes out wrong, I only mean it to be positive and supportive.
Perhaps “forgiveness” is not really the right word? I mean, to forgive implies that you accept everything that has been done to you by that other person, and that it no longer colors your feelings toward that person. I think that you’d like it to also mean that your mom understands what she’s being forgiven FOR, and will try not to behave that way again. However, that’s a difficult thing to expect of yourself, and of your mom. She is who she is, she’s done what she’s done, and she still doesn’t want to claim ownership of it (from what I’ve derived from your entries, anyway, sorry if I got it wrong) (ed: no, you got it exactly right) or change her own behavior. So perhaps, instead of expecting of yourself a whole and entire forgiveness, of completely letting go of the legitimate hurt you feel, you should just expect of yourself that you continue to have as positive of a relationship with your mom as you can manage, during the time you have left, without expecting perfection. Without having any expectations from HER at all, really.
See, that’s what I’ve been trying to do for the length of our relationship since I’ve been an adult. And I’m starting to feel sort of…taken advantage of. Having to constantly remind myself that she is who she is and I have to adjust for her behavior – all the time – is starting to feel quite unfair. Why should I be expected to do all that emotional work just because she’s my mother? And that brings me back to feeling as if I’m a rotten person for not worshipping my mother the way the culture seems to expect me to. In any case, trying to find the workaround for her behavior this time is proving a lot harder than in the past.
The only person’s behavior you can control is your own, so as long as YOU know that you tried as hard as YOU could, perhaps that will help mitigate the regret you will feel (there’s always at least SOME regret when a person dies, no matter how wonderful or horrible the relationship), after her passing, that you didn’t have a perfect mother/daughter relationship. Relationships are a two-way street, after all, and you can’t take all of the responsibility of the success or failure of that relationship on your own shoulders.
Now, my mom died when I was eight, so I never had to (got to?) experience the grown-up feelings I may or may not have had. She may have been wonderful, she may have sucked entirely – probably, it would have been somewhere in between. So, given my inexperience with the issue, I hope I haven’t said anything stupid, here.
Actually, I was looking forward to your perspective, because I remembered reading about how differently you viewed your mother once you found out your sister’s perspective on her and her illness. I thought if anyone could give me an even-keeled opinion, it would be you. And I was right.
October 7, 2009 at 2:50 pm
wow. right there with you as you described the relationship i am keeping with my mother. or not keeping. ignoring at this point. even if she does call, i can’t bring myself to answer. I feel like I tried to address some issues only to have it blow up in misunderstanding or her being hurt.
anyway, i wish you luck with your resolution. live in the now, you can’t account for the future. you will have to live with your decisions made now and that leads to pressure to make the choice that you won’t regret…but i have to say, I have made confident choices in my life, which I was even proud or excited about, only to end up realizing that I kinda regret that choice and why didn’t I notice that other glaringly obvious option at the time.
Thus far, it’s only the choices that I’ve made for the right reasons that I’ve regretted. The ones where I thought I was doing the wise thing rather than the thing I wanted to do.
it is important to keep your peace and that your energy not be stolen.
cheers
October 7, 2009 at 7:51 pm
We need to talk, Honey.
My mother wasn’t my MOTHER. She did not birth me. The woman to whom I am genetically related means literally nothing to me, and hasn’t since I was about 10. When she dies, nothing in my life will be different.
I understand what you feel when you read my mother posts, because at least half of my soul is where yours is now.
I knew this…but you still felt That Way about your non-biological mother. I’m wondering if I will ever have that feeling at all.
Thank you.
October 8, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Don’t listen to your brain, listen to your heart or your gut. You can have the family you want to have.
You can create that for yourself. Adopt BF parents, choose to be with people that know you and love you now and for the long term. They are the family you nurture and keep. They are worth the work.
Oh, BF’s parents are a whole other ball of wax. The rest of my readers will attest to that.
Easily said, but it is difficult to do. Birth family people are an odd lot of appendages, some you can just lop of, some you have to live with. The ones you have to live with are like the calf with a fifth leg. The leg is usless but it doesn’t interere with the calf’s life. That’s kind of agronomic, hope it helps, and it works for me and mine. Yeah, we talk. Unsaid and understood, is “no, you have an opinion about my life but you don’t have a vote”. Good luck , kiddo.
Thank you. I need it.
October 8, 2009 at 9:09 pm
You’re right, I did have things to work out with Mom. I was 27 when she died, and I was just growing out of the kicking-and-screaming-must-move-out-of-home phase. I never got the chance to view Mom as a fellow woman, like my sisters did. I would LOVE to sit down with her, have a beer and talk about life as two women do.
I mean, she was a typical Mom pain in the ass before she got sick. But I only thought that b/c I was the daughter and she was the mom. Not only did we have a generational thing, we had a cultural difference too. But she was brilliant. She had this great sense about people. She understood more than I ever gave her credit for. After all, she was once 27 too. And I would love to know what she thought when she was 35 like me.
But when we took care of her, and the denial robot took over, all I could to was to focus on making her stay alive. (Like I said in my post.) But I told her I loved her every night before bed–something we didn’t throw around in my house. (Also, I have NO idea how to apologize in Polish. Telling, yes?) But those 6 weeks were vitally important. And I’d do them again, no matter how painful that time was.
You are a grown up, and your relationship with your mom is up to you. What role is she going to play in your life? What role will you allow her to play in your life? You could lay it all out and say “This is what I feel, Mom.” Or you could let it go. What can you live with now? What do you think you can live with later? If you want your mom in your life, then there is no time like the present. But I think it will be difficult at first. Having a mom is hard work sometimes.
Letting it go seems appealing…thank you for clarifying and sharing this.