The post about my mom...

Mom

Look at her, she's gorgeous, isn't she?  She turned 57 a week ago.  Every day she smokes a pack of cigarettes, drinks a pot of coffee, has a few glasses of wine, eats an open face sandwich with butter and two slices of cheese, enjoys a few ounces of chocolate after dinner, runs an average of three miles, and does an ab routine.  AND, I think she does all of that without breaking a sweat.

What can I say about her week long visit?  She said it flew by...I thought it was an eternity.  I did have an epiphany...and that helped me sort out a lot of my thoughts and feelings, but it also left me with such a sad feeling inside, that I cried myself to sleep the night I had my "big revelation."

So here it is, I was wrong about my mother.  For so many years I have believed her to be a phony, but I can see that she really is happy.  It's not a show.  I realized that she and I have one fundamental difference.  A difference so great, that once I figured it out, I could finally see my mother in a new light.  It boils down to our definition of happiness.  My definition (which includes things like children and being a good person, but mostly) revolves around spending my life with my soul mate, a person I love deeply and loves me that way in return.  My mother's definition does not.  I'm not saying she doesn't love her husband, in fact, I am certain that she does.  It's just a different kind of love.  And my mother is fulfilled in different ways - she has four children that are all doing well (healthy, moderately successful, happy), she has a job she loves, and a small handful of friends in Norway and in the US that truly bring her joy.  What more could she want? And the truth is, she knows she has it all and she is grateful for each cigarette filled day.  I know it sounds silly, but I really didn't believe this about her until now...and that makes me happy for her.

What breaks me is our relationship.  We cannot talk.  We cannot have a conversation.  She will go on and on about how awful her mother made her feel, the thoughtless things Mormor (my word for her mother) would say and how she had to censor every conversation with her mother.  Does she not realize that it's exactly the same with me?  I can hardly breathe in her presence for fear of saying the wrong thing.  She mentioned a few times this visit how open she and my younger sister L. are - they even talk about sex!  On the one hand I am so happy that my sister has a mother she can confide in...on the other hand...it makes me sad that I'll never be able to confide in my mom. (I'm okay with it, though, I have all of you.) 

The other thing that bothers me so much is that she brings out a monster in me.  I've thought for so long and so hard about this.  I only lose it with her, no one else...and I imagine it's the same for her.  When we disagree about something, and it can be ridiculously small or immense, like how much laundry constitutes a full load or the meaning of happiness, for instance, and we can land in an all out nuclear war.  I think it's all those years of fighting and bitterness from the divorce.  Even though I am over all of it...there's a history there...a nerve that will always be exposed.  Too much was said and too little was done to repair it back then.  That is why I have to hold my breath when I am with her.  And I know I will never have an easy relationship with her.  It makes me cry sometimes, but really, I am okay with it all.  This is the first time EVER, that I have been able to write about it, so I definitely feel some kind of healing happening inside.

I'd like to end with the best thing about my mom...well..there are two things.  First, her smell.  When she first arrived I thought she had lost it...that deep down comforting smell that a mother can have to her child.  She reeked of lotions.  And for the first few days of her visit, it was all I could smell.  Strong, perfumey lotion.  But, by the middle of our visit, she was hanging out by the pool for extended periods and her real essence emerged.  You guys know I'm weird about smells...and if you didn't, now you do.  I am MORE than weird about them...well, I am happy to say, my mom still smells like "mommy."  I can remember that smell from when I was three or four years old, cuddled up on the couch watching The Muppets...

The other thing I'd like to say about my mom is that Littleman LOVES her.  I think she exhausts him.  She's loud, she does everything the opposite of what I suggest (bedtime routine, making a PBandJ sandwich), and very unpredictable.  But, she loves him and he knows it.  They have a little secret, this little "peas in a pod thing" they share.  She left him with a book called Little Pea that she read to him while she was here.  He loves it.  He talks about their secret every day.  He cried the entire way back from the airport after we dropped her off.  Even though she told me she doesn't really "have time" to be an active grandparent, Littleman doesn't know any better.  Whatever time he gets, he cherishes.

And so, there it is.  Sorry to subject you to this therapy session, but this is how I made it through my parents' divorce and any other situation that needed "help."  I write, I talk, I listen.  It took me ALL day to write this - I started at 1 pm and now it's 6:16pm.  That's the life of a stay at home mom.  We sit for a minute, cook for 20, sit for three minutes, go grocery shopping, sit again, fold laundry, you know how it goes.  Now I'm off to serve spaghetti.

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