another brain cleansing

Okay, I just need to let a few things out. A part of me wants to disable comments, as I am not looking for advice--I just want to get things off my chest and know that I am being heard. That is all. So read with caution, realizing that this is a cathartic post.

La Princesita has had two hard lessons on how unfair Life is this week. First came with the last softball game of the season. I had worked hard on a lineup in which no girls repeated the same fielding position they had in the last game, to give them all practice. She was to play 3rd base in the bottom of the 3rd (3 innings in coach pitch), and the other coach switched her to short stop for some reason. I wasn't certain as to why; I was organizing the other girls. My princesita is a very agile player and can play most positions well just because she pays attention and doesn't spend the game drawing in the dirt with her toe. The coaches know that--but she had played short stop last game and really wanted to play a base during this last game. By about the 5th batter, she was in tears, and it took over two hours to calm her down.

Same general idea last night at her school's annual Sock Hop. She had practiced all year to be able to win the hula-hoop contest for the 1st grade. And she was one of two left--until someone who was walking off after her hoop had fallen knocked my princesita's hoop so that it fell. I was in the audience and yelled, "Hey, that wasn't fair, her hoop was hit by that other girl." Other parents saw and agreed...but what else could I really do? Crestfallen and proclaiming in tears how unfair this was, I dragged her and the Young Prince home...and she finally fell asleep in my bed, about an hour later, exhausted by her laments.

What ought I do? Teach her that yes, Life is unfair. So suck it up and move on.

No, that would be bad of me. I can teach that in a much gentler way. She is only seven years old, and much like her Mama Llama, an extremely sensitive soul. I pray for guidance to teach her strength in the ways of the world.

---

At the sock hop, I ran into some people I don't see on a daily, or even really on a monthly, basis. One of these women is nice enough, but is rather well-known as gossipy and a busy-body. I therefore tend to keep our conversations light and avoid any topics, like my personal life, that I don't care to have spread all over the elementary school community. The first thing she asks me last night? "So are things better with you and Him?"

Admittedly, I was blindsided. First, this was incredibly forward of someone who, as far as I knew, knows nothing for certain about my marital situation. So of course I jumped to the defensive. I demanded to know where she heard this from and why she was asking me. Uncertain as to how to deal with this, I lied and said that no, everything is fine. She said good, and I changed the subject immediately while watching the above mentioned hula hooping contest. Then, without looking at her, I said, "No, we've been separated now in-house for over two years. But I would like to know where you heard that, because I want to know if someone is spreading news about me around this school community." It was then that I learned that He had confided in her husband, who had been previously divorced.

He is not well-known for his, shall we say, discerning judgment regarding who he chooses to talk to. But then again, who am I do judge? I guess that, when I am the one affected by his mouth...

Anyhow, she had some strong opinions about how, no matter what, it is better that we be together, for the good of the kids. I told her that I disagree, that we are not giving a good image of what a healthy marriage is to the children and that my health and happiness need to be factored into the equation...and etc. etc. etc.

I was secretly thankful that Princesita had to leave due to tears...a perfect excuse to get out.

However, this encounter reestablished the fact that I am definitely being painted as the "bad guy" and he as the victim...and although I like to bitch about all the little things that now I let get to me that I used to let slide, I fully recognize that the failure of our marriage took two of us. Not just one.

*---*

My mother. Oh dear, what to say? For those who haven't followed, or known, the saga regarding our relationship, the least I can say is that I am always on pins and needles with her, and she regards me much in the same way. Somebody who wants to know why she can't be more of a part of my and my kids' lives while everything from my pregnancy to my miscarriage has been blamed on me, the news that I bought a home was greeted as if someone close had died, and that I cannot do anything that she expects me to do to make her life complete. I have taken steps back and have come to realize where this stems from in her life, but while she continues to express her great disappointment in who I have become and the fact that I put my children before her in my life, I have a very hard time in trying to maintain any semblance of even a superficially decent relationship.

What created this latest drama? The fact that she sent a Halloween card, some spare change for piggy banks and stickers for the kids and a Starbucks card for me, received at 4 p.m. Halloween afternoon (right before trick-or-treat time) and did not hear, by the next Wednesday, any verification of receipt of this collection of cards means that I am doing nothing to help her be a part of my children's lives and that she doesn't know if she ought to send Princesita's birthday gift if we had not received what she had sent for Halloween. We had been in contact various times on email over the election, and I had a terribly busy four day weekend with the kids...but she never once mentioned, "Oh, by the way, did you get something special in the mail?" No, I am the Bad Daughter for neglecting to mention what she is hoping to, evidently, trap me into not mentioning by not mentioning it first. No, she won't send it certified because it really has nothing to do with whether or not we received what she sent; it all all to do with a test of whether I will remember to mention and appropriately give thanks in recognition of her efforts.

I think she believes I sit around on my ass all day every day wondering what to do next.

How I would KILL for a day like that. Just one day.

She said in the email (no, not a phone call because she will not telephone me; I have to always call her and am the Bad Daughter if I don't comply in a timely manner) that she is open to suggestions. I suggested a few years ago that she buy herself a webcam that just plugs into a USB port. If she doesn't understand how with following the directions, her handyman up the street can help her. Then I can walk her through the installation of Skype and she can chat and see the kids in what is practically real time whenever she wants.

But that suggestion was rejected. The only suggestion she wants is that I move back west. I am expected to alter my life and go back to her, because all her life she has been abandonded or forced to abandon when she was a child. She doesn't see why people in her life (her mother, her daughters) have always moved on to follow our own lives instead of molding ours around her needs.

If I would be going back to that, there is no way in hell I'm going back. I've never been good enough for her; nothing I have ever done has been good enough. Why put myself through any more? It is easy to say "Well, then don't. Don't let yourself be that in your mother's life." But that is it...she is my mother, and besides my sister is the only family I have left. The three of us. That's it.

So forgetting it is much easier said than done. So, to call or not to call? Damned if I do, damned if I don't. We've been down the same path before, and I have told her in no uncertain terms that she can feel free to call here as well, and that I should not be the only one trying to make her a participant in my children's lives. If she doesn't feel she is, then she needs to do more. I can do better with the thank-you notes. I know she appreciates that, but I do those for major things (birthdays, Christmas gifts). Are Halloween cards now included on that list?

*---*

I'm okay, I'm just feeling a little defeated, yet again, and it will pass. The holidays are coming, which always stress me out, and is a prime Disagreement Season between my mother and I. I feel it coming, deep in my soul, and it fills me with dread.

Reflections on Motherhood

To those who are mothers: Happy Mother's Day. I hope this has been more than a Hallmark-created holiday for you (!).

Today was a lovely day for me. I got the kids up and gently reminded them that they wanted to wake me up with their preschool and kindergarted creations so I walked them out to the dining room, reached up to the shelf where I had placed them out of the way, gave the decorated paper bags to the monitos and then rushed back to bed and pretended that I was asleep. They shook me "awake" yelling "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOMMY" and La Princesita handed me hers while The Young Prince took to unwrapping his own to give me that which was inside.

*---*

One Mother's Day, when I was a junior in high school, I had planned to give my mother a copy of the oratory speech I had done eulogizing mothers and the role they have played, historically and currently, in family life. It got personal as well, this speech of 10 minutes, and I brought home trophy after trophy with it. My coach had expected me to take it to nationals but, alas, the State judges didn't think as kindly and I lost at finals. However, I had bought an "Anything Book"...basically a blank book with lined paper and a fabric cover...and written the entire speech, in calligraphy, and was planning to give it to my mother for Mother's Day. I ended up throwing it at her when we had a huge fight as to my reasons for wanting to attend the last day of the speech tournament in which I had already lost placement--I genuinely wanted to see the others and lend moral support to my teammates. My mother thought that I must want to go for some other reason; namely, a BOY.

This was the topic of a great deal of problems in my adolescent relationship with my mother. I was accused of having illicit relationships with my teachers just because I was an excellent student who my teachers happened to love--probably because I was one of the few who actually truly respected my teachers. My biology teacher, rest his soul, an older gentleman who requested I be his 4th period aide my freshman year--his daughter had even babysat me when I was a child, we even went to the same church. Yeah, I was "doing something" I shouldn't be since he gave me a hug as a sign of peace during Easter Mass that year. Right in front of my parents, mind you. At that point, I was really too naive to understand what my mother was getting at (I was quite a late bloomer...).

Accused of something of the same thing with my orchestral conductor when he hugged me in the PDX airport and thanked me for all my hard work after two hard weeks of my leading the orchestra in Japan after I graduated from high school (again, an embrace that occurred right in front of my parents)--I had done something inappropriate, evidently, to encourage that kind of response. In reality, it had been such an amazing, emotional first-time abroad experience for all of us involved, including my conductor, that had created a common bond on an emotional level that only, in my life, music has ever been able to create in me. Of course, my mother could never have understood that.

Any gifts ever given me by a boyfriend were greeted with a snide, "So what did you have to do to get that?"

I was forbidden to wear black, a denim skirt or a denim jacket for creating the image that I was a "denim girl" (her words, not mine) or a devil worshipper. In my mother's eyes, evidently, the clothes made the person...no matter what. Even the most wholesome Little House on the Prairie-esque girl, who happened to be a close friend of mine, had a denim jacket but that did not phase my mother. She was convinced that, if I wore a denim jacket then I would next be out on the corner with the tree frogs smoking during break.

She told somebody, I have no idea who, that my best friend in school was a slut. Word got back to her, or her mother, or somebody and her mother told her that she was to no longer associate with me. From my point of view, suddenly my best friend did not acknowledge my existence. I had no idea what had occurred and, when I confronted my mother about what I came to learn in a heated blow-out, she denied absolutely everything.

Of course. Easier that way. I would kill to make that right, to show that one cannot judge others by the actions of their parents. But I cannot.

I have spent most of my life trying to please my mother, make her proud of me and the kind of daughter that reflected well the work of her parents, and moreso, to prove to her that I merited her respect and, moreso, her trust. I pushed myself to be a straight-A student in high school and college while being a star violinist, a star debater, a star on the math team, on the school board, holding various jobs at once, getting good scholarships to a good university, going to Girls' State, being a leader, being literally the best I could be in absolutely everything I overextended myself in doing and trying to always do good...but I always, in her eyes, made the wrong decisions. I was accused of working with "filthy folk" when I started volunteering with the Mexican migrant community in Northern Oregon. I was asked why I couldn't go to a rich country "like Spain or something" when I announced I was going to study and live in Ecuador. I then got a well-paying job right out of college teaching for the Japanese Ministry of Education in Japan...and that was good but "couldn't I have gotten something closer?"

I got a full-tuition waiver as a Grant Scholar and Instructor of Spanish at Tulane so I could pursue my Ph.D. My mother's last words as I left for school were, "You know, you could develop, um, 'other' interests"...meaning: "Find yourself a husband." So I did. That is what was expected of me, and I complied always with the expectation. Of course, she has worked to break our marriage apart since it began and my sister thought I was overreacting until she, too, got married and my mother stopped bothering me so much and started in on her.

If anything, this has done wonders for my relationship with my sister. We now understand each other so much better!

When I was 20 and so sick with monthly cramps that I could not walk, would turn ghostly white and would scream still after taking 8 Advil, my mother said that nobody could hurt that badly. My father, always my defender, took me to my doctor who ran blood tests on me and found that I was not only severely anemic but that I could be suffering some extreme endometriosis, which a surgery later that week proved that I was. My mother didn't speak to me for quite some time after that. I think she felt guilty.

I was told when I was pregnant with La Princesita not to ever expect any childcare or help from her. Then I was battered with thoughts from her like, "And what are you going to do if you have a 'special needs' baby? What then?" I still, to this day, don't know what she expected me to answer...but when I cornered her on this the THIRD time she started in when I was expecting The Young Prince, she denied ever saying such things. She visited me for an hour five days after La Princesita was born--after 20 hours of natural labor the placenta had adhered and I had to have it cut out of me--which ended up infecting at four weeks postpartum and I thought I was going to die when I went back into labor to deliver the placenta pieces, delirious with fever, all alone, with a new baby four weeks old, no husband around and no mother who would come help me. Little did I know then that my great-grandmother had died four weeks post-partum after having my grandmother and her twin brother, of the exact same thing back in 1924.

I, of course, was "overreacting"...just as I always had done.

I miscarried at 13 weeks and she did not come to help out because she didn't want to be a part of a "community event"--not to mention that it was believed by her that I caused the miscarriage because I lived too far away from "family support"...this coming from the same mouth of she who said that I was to expect NO support from her with my children. We had our huge accident in which my husband broke his back and I sustained chest injuries that had me not able to breathe well for six weeks, and she didn't come to help for the same reasons...thank God I have a family made of the greatest friends in the world here (She-Ra...to name-drop).

She thinks it unreasonable that we will not consider changing our entire careers so we can move back to Oregon and live by her. That had been her great motivation in trying to break up my marriage (which is falling apart well on its own momentum, thank you very much), to have me move back to where she is...all she wants is to have me there, she's not interested in the "package deal" I now am.

*----*

I have come to see and understand that my mother is jealous. Of what? Of opportunities I have had, of the generation in which I had been fortunate enough to have been born, of decisions I have made to just JUMP and do something new, of my being more like her own mother than like her--the same woman who she sees as having abandoned her not only after her own father died by marrying another and moving away but also by dying unexpectedly of a heart attack in the middle of the night when she was 62. All the people important in my mother's life have left her side at some level--my father left her widowed at 54; I had grown and flown at 18, never to return to live long-term in Oregon; my sister also left the area; her mother; her brother is only 300 miles north but they hardly ever see each other; the rest of her bloodline is pretty much all back in Minnesota. Her lifelong friends in Oregon are getting older and some are dying. She is alone, yet is unwilling to make any changes so that she is not so alone.

I am working hard to understand where she is coming from. I felt I had been pushed away from her when I made the decision to leave home and stay away in my early 20s. I felt she didn't like the person I had become and, instead of being a source of pride I was instead a symbol of how much she had failed as a mother. That is what she told me not two years ago--and I cannot counter how she has raised two daughters, both with graduate degrees, never been in trouble with the law or into drugs, with lovely children and lives of our own is normally not considered "failing" as a parent. But she sees our leaving her side as a failure on her part.

There are things that my mother did or said while raising the two of us that I will never repeat. The communication was terrible and I could not ask her questions or approach her in any way. I knew I would have things thrown back in my face or be teased to no end, so I ceased to depend on my mother as a source of confidence. She made that so. I can tell you the times I would go in and sit on her bed, trying to open up and talk to her. She closed the doors. I already do not do that with either of my children; I stop everything no matter what I am doing if they have to talk to me. I have made that decision. I want my children to talk to me.

There is so much in my upbringing for which I admire and thank my mother. She dedicated her life to raising my sister and I, making sure we always came home to somebody in the house, that we always had healthy food to eat, that we had ample time together as a family, that we had special traditions that we would look forward to for each season. She taught me the value of staying home with my children, which gave me the motivation to figure out a way to teach while staying at home--and thus teaching my children that they can do whatever they want if they can put their minds to it!

I love my mother very much. The last year or so has involved a great deal of introspection and attempting to comprehend better my mother's position in Life, and to learn to respect her, her difficulties, our misunderstandings and how I, as her daughter, can work to better our relationship. I speak to my mother usually about once every week or two, and our conversations are now much more pleasant than they had ever been. I have made it clear I will not discuss certain topics and, if she attempts to bait me, I will not continue the conversation. I will not tolerate attacks. Such limits have helped (at least me) to enjoy the time we have together and the conversations we do have.

Baby steps. So far, really, great strides have been made since my father's death. However, nobody is ever the same person following the loss of a life partner, a lover--and, from my point of view, a great role model and who was always my personal defender and hero. So we must adjust, adapt, and accept our new places in Life with grace while using what we have learned thus far to further deepen our respect for the Other, always, in our lives..

Happy Mother's Day.

to laugh, or to cry?

This morning I do not know which force is pulling me more. I had to leave Mom at the airport early and, although it can be stressful having a houseguest for a couple of weeks and juggling work and personal schedules to accomodate, it sure was nice having her here for a while. It would be nice not to live quite so far away...

Pre-mother Panic

Okay, it's panic time.

I'm sick. I've got cramps. And Mom shows up in..53 hours.

Sometimes I think God just likes to kick me when I'm down, watch me writhe and then sock it to me.

Our phone conversations over the past month (Mom's, not God's) have been filled with implicit expectations and cleaning hints.

"Yes, I vacuum all the lampshades."
"I take a wet cloth and do the knickknacks. You wouldn't believe all the stuff you get that way!"

You get the picture.

So I have now vacuumed the entire house, I think I have all (visible) cobwebs *inside* the house (the outdoor ones, left over from my Natural Halloween Decor, will remain at least until I feel better), but the lampshades and knick knacks...sorry, I'm just going to have to hope she doesn't bring a white glove. I'll do the bedroom tomorrow and Monday. I'll have to move a bunch of stuff out, since all my stuff is in her room.

I'm tired. I hate house cleaning. I hate cooking.

She, on the other hand, cleans and maintains a spotless house weekly. She always has. It is admirable, but it is not me. She makes out a shopping list and plans all her meals for a week and shops for them. I open the fridge and see what I can throw together into one of my magically delicious salads. And if I can't throw something frozen solid from the freezer into the crock-pot at 9 a.m. and have it melt-in-your-mouth cooked by 5:30 p.m., I just don't even try...except for some spaghetti sauce or the like once in a while.

Perhaps this is partially why we only see each other once a year.

At least I should be feeling better and NOT be PMS-ing while she is here. That already makes the visit much more tolerable!

Ahhhhh...time to split some chocolate with my baby boy. Too much hard word for the day!