My mom gets uncomfortable when I do things differently than she did. This is unfortunate because most of the things that I have ever done differently are all related to parenting, and this parenting thing is going to last the rest of my life. That’s a long time for her to be uncomfortable with me. To be fair, I probably made her uncomfortable right at birth, coming out looking exactly like my dad while her older daughter had the good sense to look exactly like her. I also made her uncomfortable when I didn’t become homecoming queen. She was queen 40 years ago and, let me tell you, when you meet her for the first time it will come up in conversation. I’m a huge disappointment in so many ways, not just as a parent to her granddaughters.
My mom doesn’t come right out and say that she has a problem with my breastfeeding, co-sleeping, homebirthing, and homeschooling. She does other things like write in the Grandmother’s Book of Memories that I gave her:
“Dear Lena and Liberty, It sucks that I didn’t get to bond with you more because I didn’t get to feed you. Your mom is so hateful for hogging up the feeding. Love, Grandma. P.S. I didn’t nurse her and she turned out fine. Except for the hateful part.”
That’s a paraphrase, but I definitely captured the spirit of the sentiment. I know that these choices I’ve made have left her feeling insecure and I know better than to bring up homeschooling, breastfeeding, and co-sleeping, but those are on-going things so I can understand some on-going touchiness. Maya’s homebirth was just a one-time thing so I didn’t know it carried the emotional triggers for her until I was chatting on the phone with her the other day.
I called her just to chat and after a little bit our chit chat turned to the subject of movies. I told her we took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who, and she said, “I wanna see Baby Mama so bad!” and I told her how funny I think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are. She especially agreed about Amy and said she just loved her in that tv series, what was it?
Me: Saturday Night Live?
Mom: No, she’s not in that. It’s the one about the pregnant people. Something about Underbelly.
Me: Oh, I know who you’re talking about; that’s Rachael Harris. I love her! She is not in enough stuff.
Mom: That’s right, I get them confused. I just saw Rachael Harris in a Lifetime movie with Ricki Lake.
(Screw you guys, I am not googling that shit to find a link for you because, not only do I not care what Lifetime movie that would be, I would also be embarrassed for google to see me googling that. And that’s saying something because I google a lot of weird shit.)
Then she went on about how much she likes that Ricki Lake and she saw her on The View and she’s just so sweet and lovely and whatnot. And I’m rollin’ with the conversation and my brain’s trying to focus on keeping the happy vibe going and the closest thing to my brain’s surface about Ricki Lake is that documentary she just made, so I said, “Yeah, she has a documentary out that I want to see called The Business of Being Born.”
“Oh, I know! You know, she had her baby in a bathtub,” she said with what I interpreted as a good-for-her type tone.
I replied, “Not only in a bathtub, but in a bathtub at home!” In my own good-for-her tone, with an underlying tone that said, “You love Ricki Lake and she had a homebirth. You can love me in spite of my homebirth. Right Mommy? Right?”
Silence.
Silence.
“Yeah, well, now she’s a single mother.”
Aaaaand we’re back. There’s that flat, curt tone I’m used to! Let me just snuggle up to it…Mmm…that’s one sharp blankie. Feels like home.
*sigh*
It’s just so rare that we have an actual conversation that feels like 2 grown-ups talking to each other, so I was seduced by the normalcy and I forgot to never, ever, ever bring up anything that is in any way related to the myriad ways in which I slap her in the face with my different choices. Having a normal conversation with her just makes me feel like we’re grown-ups, you know? With different ideas and just different differences that don’t have anything to do with how we feel about each other or what we think about each other. Because we’re mother and daughter. And normal conversation makes me feel like we know that we’re mother and daughter and that’s pretty important, and no differences of opinion or action or dreams can ever change all that. And then when it turns ugly out of the blue, I’m lost again. And I stay lost for a bit because I like to beat myself up over it and wonder when I will learn.
She has told me before that I never remember anything good, but the truth is, I remember the good. I remember because there is nothing like the joy of connecting with this all-important person and then having that awful panic set in when you know that the connection is lost because of some unforseen change in her mood. I remember the good being constantly besieged by the bad. I remember the eggshells and I remember exactly how it felt when they cracked under my feet.
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