It's funny sometimes to think about where the line between child and adult is.
I am thirty-two years old. I'm married with two children of my own. I have a successful career, and I pay my bills on time (mostly). However, the mere thought of my mother coming to stay with us for four days while Pythagorus is in the South on business has me cleaning my bedroom in details that haven't been reached for ... oh, I'm going to say years. For some reason, my mother being in this house brings out the child in me.
I guess the reason for that is obvious. She lived in this house for almost fifteen years. What is now "my" bedroom used to be hers. The fact that it wasn't exactly clean on a regular basis when it was her room will no doubt be lost in her memories. Oh my God, the wainscoting is dusty! (I have a black lab and white wainscoting ... it's always going to look dusty).
What gets me, I think, is that you always want better for your kids, and I think that's why my mother is so quick to pass judgment on my (lack of) housekeeping skills. In a recent conversation with my sister, we came to the mutual conclusion that Kay (my mother) is "special", for lack of a better way to put it. She has a good heart and would do anything for anyone, but she has eccentricities that impacted us adversely when we were children and have made her the subject of many eye rolls and inside jokes she will never understand as we've gotten older.
I love my mother dearly. After the girls and Pythagorus, she is the most important person in my life. She knows this as well as I do. In fact, she was the first person to whom I e-mailed the illustrious first edition of the brand new school newspaper. In much the same way, I am the first person she comes to with things both good and bad. My mother, the bane of my existence for the first twenty-three years of my life, is now pretty much my best friend. Life is strange.
Which is why I can't figure out why I'm reeling on Klonopin as I clean my bedroom in anticipation of her arrival. This should be a photograph from earlier years, and I find it intriguing that it's still the case all these years later.
Is there some point in time where that magic parent/child role reversal takes place? Although I guess it's true, once a mother, always a mother ...
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ReplyDeleteI have always struggled with the mother/daughter thing. I thought it was pretty difficult when I was the daughter. It gets even stranger when you get to be both the mother and the daughter. But, I was watching 60 minutes this evening and one of the stories was about how fragile memory is. Honestly it was in the context of eye witness testimony and how, in the 200 cases in the last some years of people who were exonerated after 10-20 years in jail by DNA evidence which proved they really didn't do it, 75% of them were found guilty at trial with the help of eye witness testimony....which was wrong.
Which led or is leading me to muse about whether the mother daughter relationship is badly tainted by fragile memory. Cetainly I knew even at the time that my mother and I would each describe differently the misunderstanding or fallout or dreadful and disappointing interaction we had just had. But I do wonder if over time, perceptions (like how your mother remembers 'her' bedroom as being clean while you do not) become more firmly entrenched by the affirmation we give ourselves over time about the accuracy of our memory. And this, I am thinking at this moment, builds on one other thing I think happens.
I think that in long term (and maybe short term too) relationships, once one person has kind of corned the market on a feeling or a response or a position, all that is really left for the other person is the OTHER SIDE. Really. There aren't a lot of relationships where both people are always late. One is sort of late and the other person, who was probably sometimes late or a little late quite often, begins to see themselves as always being on time and becomes increasing distressed or irked or at least makes observations about the less timely person. And, after 3 or 4 years, "Sorry, you know how hard it is to get James out of the house on time". Or, "gosh no, Trudy just hates board games".
Then, the fragile memory thing builds on what started as a pretty normal difference in approach to something which did take on a little life of its own into a clearly defined and rather important personality difference which it is very very difficult to ameliorate.
Thus the interesting dynamic between mothers-daughters-mothers and perhaps other things as well.
(I don't often use ameliorate in sentences :))
It's funny to think about daughters growing up and having kids of their own ... and then being "mothers", so to speak, to their own mothers.
ReplyDeletePerspective is a funny thing, too. You always understood that better than anyone I've met. Memories are fragile, as easily damaged as butterfly wings.
When you put everything together, my friend, isn't this world an amazing, crazy, frightening, magical place?
I appreciate your wisdom, insight, and steady hand. You are on my hero list and always will be!
<3,
K. : )