My mother was more of an extrovert than I am and she never could understand that. Being in huge crowds of 'happy, peppy people" (I love I Love Lucy!) tires me out after a while. I'm fine with, say, going off to a function but at some point, I need, I crave to leave. My mother got more animated as the night wore on. It was also her need to be validated by her peers, I think. She grew up in an orphanage since she was two so she was never really alone to do anything; she also idealized the parent-child relationship. She occasionally told me that, had her mother lived, she would never have argued with her because she would have been so grateful to have her mother (implying that I, the rebellious teen, was ungrateful though she never quite came out with that word.) She didn't get that, growing up with her mother, she wouldn't have had the context of not growing up with her mother to make her grateful for having her.
You can probably tell I didn't have the best relationship with my mother. When she died last summer, I didn't actually grieve. There are things that ought to be a certain way, my mother wanted them that way desperately, and I'm enough of a daughter to want to defend my mother, but that's about all the confusion there is. My friend, who had a similar only worse mother, and I, discussed it. What we wanted from our mothers in the end was all of those loose ends tied up, maybe a little validation of our selfhoods that we never got even though we banged our heads against brick walls all our lives to get them to notice us instead of their church friends or gossip buddies. They used us to belittle us to make themselves look better and they did it so well that no one seemed to notice. The last time my mother did that, she was in the nursing home and I was going to plug in her cell phone for her. It has a rubber stop over the connection; I bite my fingernails. She smirked at her two visiting church ladies and said, not looking at me but to me, "Let me do it. It pays to have fingernails." Fortunately, I got the stopper undone and said, "Never mind, I got it." It was crudely done. That surprised me. I think that was the only time she let the facade slip enough for anyone but me to see what she was up to.
Long story to say that I totally agree with the poster below because I never felt the lack of having my mother nearby once I was married and raising my own kids in a different state. We got along a lot better when we didn't have to spend time with each other.
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Date: 2011-01-24 03:34 am (UTC)You can probably tell I didn't have the best relationship with my mother. When she died last summer, I didn't actually grieve. There are things that ought to be a certain way, my mother wanted them that way desperately, and I'm enough of a daughter to want to defend my mother, but that's about all the confusion there is. My friend, who had a similar only worse mother, and I, discussed it. What we wanted from our mothers in the end was all of those loose ends tied up, maybe a little validation of our selfhoods that we never got even though we banged our heads against brick walls all our lives to get them to notice us instead of their church friends or gossip buddies. They used us to belittle us to make themselves look better and they did it so well that no one seemed to notice. The last time my mother did that, she was in the nursing home and I was going to plug in her cell phone for her. It has a rubber stop over the connection; I bite my fingernails. She smirked at her two visiting church ladies and said, not looking at me but to me, "Let me do it. It pays to have fingernails." Fortunately, I got the stopper undone and said, "Never mind, I got it." It was crudely done. That surprised me. I think that was the only time she let the facade slip enough for anyone but me to see what she was up to.
Long story to say that I totally agree with the poster below because I never felt the lack of having my mother nearby once I was married and raising my own kids in a different state. We got along a lot better when we didn't have to spend time with each other.