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November 12, 2006
Mama thinks she spoilt me rotten
Had a great talk with my mom this morning. That's not the most surprising thing in the world for most folks, I suppose, but we're talking about My Mom here, not the Platonic Ideal of Mom.
It's particularly surprising because she was Crazy Bugfuck Furious with me just a few days ago. But we sorted it out.
Okay, now that I've made it all dramatic, I'll tell the story properly. As my most faithful or newly obsessed readers will no doubt remember, my mom was dreadfully sick last year. She's been much better, but never quite what a healthy person would call well, in the year since. The last couple of months she's been suffering from urinary tract infections, and her doctor's been putting her on various antibiotics to combat this. However, none of them really worked, and he finally told her that if she had another positive urine specimen, he'd have to hospitalize her for a few days to try a regimen of IV antibiotics. We talked that day, and she said that if she didn't call back that night, she was in the hospital.
Well, I *intended* to call her in the hospital. I swear I did. But every time I thought about her (and I thought about her a lot those few days) it was first thing in the morning or last thing at night, and even with a one-hour time difference it was still too late to call. She wasn't in for *very* long, three or four days, and I'd just that morning had another round of "Oh crap, I really ought to give Mama a call," when that afternoon I saw her on my caller ID. I picked it up and gave her a cheery, "Hey! Mama! You're home!"
Nice try.
She was so mad at me, oh man. She was doing her full-on impersonation of a stereotypical Jewish mother, which I always find comical in her wild idiolect/accent. "It's okay. I'm fine. I don't care. I know you're busy and you don't have time for your old mother. I could've been dead in there. But it's okay." Sigh.
However, what I chose to do this time was very different from what I've done in the past. Instead of arguing with her about how really I don't suck ass as a daughter and why does she have to be such a martyr and honestly, she could have called me -- instead, I said, "Wow, you sound really upset." So she tried again to guilt-trip me, and I said, "You really wanted me to call, and I didn't, and I hurt your feelings -- I'm really sorry." So she tried again. And I answered again. "You feel like I don't care about you, and I wasn't thinking about you, and that's really painful."
And she gave up. And she told me how she felt terrified and alone in the hospital, and how much she'd have liked to hear my voice, and that we're all each other has left now, and she'd been scared and sad. And I told her how sorry I was that I'd made her feel that way, because I'd been thinking about her lots, but she just had no way of knowing if I didn't call. And she laughed and said, "No, honey, I can't read your mind." And then she started telling me about the endless party that her hospital stay had been (because of her work with the Mexican immigrant community in Gonzales, she is actually never at a loss for hordes of loving friends and chosen family and toddling cherubs). Flowers, food, children, her pastor, too many people for the hospital room and the nurses complained.
But what she wanted was me, and I let her down, and so even in the midst of plenty, she felt totally abandoned and alone. I feel like a heel, but I also feel like we've had a breakthrough. Because I acknowledged how she felt, she gave up on just being explosively angry, and talked about her feelings -- something she's historically been really super bad at. And I'll do better next time.
Gee, I wonder where I get my emotional pathology from?
----
This morning, I gave her a call because it was my dad's birthday. He'd have been seventy-six today. She was sad, but appropriately so, not a basket case. And so I told her something I've never mentioned to her, because she and I had grieved for Daddy so differently. I told her that sometimes in my dreams I hang out with Daddy, and we chat and drink coffee and just shoot the shit, and I always wake up from those dreams really happy. (Honestly, that happiness is both profound *and* a little bittersweet, but my mom's not one for emotional nuance, so I left that out.) She loved hearing that, and went on about how those we lose are never really gone, and I found myself not-irritated with her, because even though we have thoroughly different beliefs about what happens after you die, I'd just said myself that I feel my dad's presence continuing in my life despite his death. So I kept my big trap shut and let her talk, and it was nice. Familial.
Maybe she and I will work this whole being-related thing out before one us dies. That would be *so* cool.
Posted by Rose at November 12, 2006 10:24 PM
Comments
your tactics in talking to your mom this time sound straight out of a certain book i'm still benefitting from... am i right?! :)
i have been "spending time" with flannery, too - if i'm walking down the street, i just sort of, well, grab hold of the leash, and she's there. it is bittersweet, but it's better than not.
Posted by: amber at November 13, 2006 08:31 AM
What an amazing thing. I'm going to try your methods. any peace with mothers is good, eh?
Posted by: caroline at November 13, 2006 02:15 PM
Congratulations. Nice save!
Posted by: I. at November 13, 2006 11:00 PM
what book? ! I MUST KNOW! please please please, my mother and i cannot talk for more than fifteen seconds before she's all disappointed in me about something. i've tried the aikido thing like you're describing but apparently not right because i've never gotten anything like that from her.
if you can email me the name of this book, i would be a very grateful woman. and did you still want more morning glory seeds? i've got 'em for ya!
xoxo, katje
Posted by: gotcha at November 14, 2006 11:30 PM
So, the book Amber and I have read is called [Feeling Good], and it's about Dialectical/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Actually, though, the mom-fu that I used was more from the book [When Things Fall Apart] by Pema Chodron. They're really similar in a lot of ways, though -- the book on CBT is based in Buddhist teachings, just kind of distilled and made into a therapeutic regimen.
The specific things I was trying from that book were to meet her anger with "loving kindness," and also to "lean into" the thing I wanted so badly to run away from (my mom's distress and disappointment). I still can't quite believe it worked.
I have a whole 'nother mom entry I've been writing in my head -- sounds like there's an audience for it!
Posted by: Rose at November 14, 2006 11:48 PM