Entry #689256, added on 03-03-10 @ 7:09 pm EST
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| how's the weather? how's my father? | Entry #689256 |
A conversation with my mother always has the potential for quick ignition. Tempers, tears, threats and insults. They come alive with her, as though my words are laced with accelerant and her tongue, a match ripped across asphalt. Trouble. Normally, I know when it's coming, I can feel it even from all her miles away, but today I wasn't ready for it. I called, I talked about funny things, then sad things, then useless things, and the whole while she was waiting, like a spider.
'I would like you and your sisters to stop talking about me,' she said. She'd made it seem as though she was answering a question.
'I haven't talked about you with anyone,' I replied, surprised.
'Like hell you didn't!,' she roared.
'What would be the point of me lying to you? I don't care enough to lie to you.'
And from there it went.
I didn't shriek, and I didn't yell. I calmly laid out all the reasons why she doesn't deserve respect from me or either of my sisters. I was detached from myself as I spoke, unemotional and impenetrable. Nothing she said was going to get through. It had been decided without me knowing. I actually heard myself at one point compare her to a 'knuckle-dragging, mouthbreathing, asshole bully on the playground, the kind of person people avoid because there's no value in trying to make friends', and her response?
'I don't breathe through my mouth!'
'Oh,' I said, 'sorry'.
The whole thing had to do with my sister P. not speaking to her for the past two months, how my mother has no idea why there has been no communication, despite everyone, except said sister, telling her why. It was a small problem that had a huge backstory. It was the straw on the back of the camel. I shouldn't have to explain it, I'd said, because it's not my fight. But, she wanted to fight. She needed to yell at someone, and I'd called, you see. I was the kid on the playground who didn't see it coming.
I know I should feel some shame at having been so disrespectful to the woman who birthed me, but in all honesty, I don't feel it. I don't feel the respect or the shame. I told her this. You were an okay mommy, I'd said, but you were a terrible mother. A good mother doesn't make her daughters feel ugly, or stupid. A good mother doesn't tell her suicidal 11-year-old daughter, who has ingested several Tylenol, that 'next time, I'll pour the goddamn pills down your throat! How could you do this to me?'. A good mother doesn't take delight in causing her children pain. A good mother doesn't.
'I'm not interested in being another moaning depressive,' I'd said neatly, 'but it's like this: I have trouble with things from time to time, and you have to know that you were the number one topic when I was going to therapy.'
Because she told me I was fat, and ugly, and spotty. Because she hit me, with an open hand and a closed fist, and she broke the skin, causing blood to run from my scalp down my neck on onto my collar. She embarrassed me, and she tore down my hope, and even now, I have trouble believing I'd ever been any different than I am now, a woman in her thirties who can't let go of all the distant yesterdays.
'How can a woman look at her daughter,' I started, 'and not feel complete and utter sadness when thinking of her daughter crying, particularly if you know you were the one who caused the tears?'
'I had mental problems!' she fired at me.
'Did they magically disappear?' I asked.
'Yes!' she shrieked.
All evidence to the contrary.
I soon came to realize that I hadn't wanted this exchange. I didn't want another red-eyed day. I very calmly laid out the facts: if you don't change your act, you'll die a lonely fool. She said she's too old change. I asked if there's a law somewhere that when you pass the age of fifty-five you have to be selfish, narcissistic arsehole.
'Look,' I said, 'it's quite simple. You have nothing over us, anymore. If we are to be a part of your life, we need to see a dramatic improvement in your behaviour. You will be a grown-up or you will be on your own. I don't want any more of these ridiculous phone calls. You know the score. None of us deserve your accusations. You're not a victim. What you are is an abuser who has just figured out that the power is gone.'
There was more, but I can't remember verbatim.
She was angry, livid in fact, but eerily calm. I didn't know what that meant.
'You should consider calling Paula and apologizing,' I said, having decided to end the exchange. 'Even if she doesn't respond the way you want her to, you owe her that.'
'I don't her a goddamn thing!'
'Yes, you do, and then some. Otherwise, you may never speak with her again. You know her, she could easily live the rest of her life without you.'
One last valiant attempt on my mother's part: 'I'll remember this. I don't forget a goddamn thing!'
'What you're not getting,' I said, trying to sound bored, 'is that you can have a huge pile of grievances stored up, and none of us will care. We don't have the slightest interest in what you're banking.'
I ended it. I needed to get away from it.
Five hours later a call to my sister revealed that my mother had called and left a message on her answering machine.
'Hello, this is your mother. I'm calling to apologize for whatever it is that I did that made you angry with me.'
It's a start.
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Content Rating Notice: Recommended for Readers 18 Years and Older Only
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