stroll down mom-memory lane

This is not be the first time I'll have surprised myself and you in whom I've chosen to cite or paraphrase; Note the following quote from former Congressman Dick Armey: "[A]s in a dysfunctional marriage, every fight is really about something else."

That is so true for many fights my mother chooses to pick. I first became aware of this when I was home for the holidays a few years ago. Mom's bursts of fury are often sudden, disproportionate and otherwise uncalled for. One stands out: New Year's Eve three or four years ago, mom screamed at me for a while for being selfish (also not unusual) when I conveyed my plans for the day, which entailed joining my friends (some also in town from their respective grad schools) for an early afternoon walk around Boston. My mother screamed that meeting my friends at 1pm would leave her to clean the house all on her own. I started reasoning with her (I hadn't learned), explaining that we'd have plenty of time to clean the house together; at some point in my explanation, it occurred to me that she couldn't possibly think we wouldn't be able to clean the house; this was about control, and, to give her some credit, about her wanting to spend more time with me. How much more effective would she have been had she said, "I was really hoping we could spend more of the holiday together"? By screaming, she just made me want to get out of the house.

She often resents the time I spend with my friends and picks fights on proxy issues. The Northampton trip (see late May blogs) was a perfect example: I'd done something to offend her earlier on, so she was picking a fight over that trip. The most popular proxy for whatever's really bothering her is how much something cost: Once when I was in high school, she was going out of her way to rain on my parade of excitement about making homemade sushi (avocado); she saw the wasabi powder, asked how much it cost, and emitted an exasperated, angry sigh when I said, "three dollars."

It has occurred to me that the Flagstaff fight, which I consider-- no pun intended-- the mother of all fights, could also have been a proxy fight. Background point I: I have to take some responsibility and admit that I haven't always been as in-control of my finances as I should have been (see Mom crashing my IRA account, for example), and I didn't realize when I went to college that my mom would take her contributing to the tuition, on her own insistence, as a license to micromanage my life (although she would probably do that anyway). This got really bad (once, my dad apologized for opening a letter from the college addressed to me, by accident; mom argued that her paying for college gave her the right to open my mail). Every time I told her what classes I was taking, she would yell at me about how those would not help me get a job. From Geneva, I e-mailed her my list of classes. She e-mailed back saying she was "shocked, surprised and disappointmented." So I was determined to avoid a repeat of this situation and insisted that my parents not pay a cent of my graduate school tuition. But I let my guard down (subsidized loans covered about a third, and my family has an aversion to debt); when my mom insisted that taking out unsubsidized loans would be financially irresponsible, as she could get a better rate on her home equity line. I caved.

Background point II: Recall Nina, who is the closest thing I'll ever have to a sister; her mother, who is a wonderful person, notwithstanding her mission of professing the health benefits of urine; her father, at whom my mother yelled for bringing her a mask from Georgia that she didn't think matched her decor; and her brother, who came to my mother's birthday dinner drunk. The latter and his family live in Arizona; his parents visit him often and come back with great stories and beautiful pictures, inspiring my parents to visit Arizona. I joined them during spring break of my first year in grad school. One of my roommates then was from Arizona and told me that it was important, if I planned to do any hiking, which of course I did, to get a good book, because the best trails were not visible from the main roads and were intense enough that one needed a detailed map. I mentioned this to my parents before the trip.

I arrived in Phoenix a few hours before they did and shopped around for a good hiking book. I held off from buying one because I thought maybe I'd find a better deal elsewhere, and said as much to my parents when they arrived and asked if I'd found a book.

A few days later, we were in Flagstaff on a stopover to the Grand Canyon. At this point, I had assessed the hiking book situation and determined that they all pretty much cost the same so I decided to just get one. My mom had stopped into a jewelry store when I stopped into an outdoor gear store. I emerged with a hiking book.

Mom: How much did it cost?

A.: $17.

Mom: WHAT??

A.: $17.

Mom: I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME. HOW COULD YOU SPEND THAT MUCH ON A BOOK? HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY?

A.: Could you please get a hold of yourself? Is it worth getting this upset over $17??

Mom: THIS IS PRECISELY MY POINT. YOU DON'T VALUE MONEY! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT IT ALL ADDS UP! YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY MONEY OF YOUR OWN, AND YET YOU WASTE MONEY ON THINGS LIKE THAT BOOK!

A.: I did charge that to my own credit card.

Mom: SO WHAT? I'M PAYING YOUR TUITION!

A.: You insisted on paying [a fraction of] my tuition.

Mom: I DID? I DID NOT!

A.: I do have a job...

Mom: YOU DON'T HAVE A REAL JOB! AND THAT'S NOT THE POINT! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE VALUE OF MONEY. THE FACT THAT YOU KEEP SAYING, "IT'S JUST $17," SHOWS HOW MUCH YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT $17 HERE AND $17 THERE ALL ADD UP!


Now, I meant by, "it's $17," "is it really worth engaging in a screaming fight in the middle of a family vacation over $17 or really even a somewhat larger sum?" But she interpreted it as a sign of my gross financial negligence. She also threw back at me the fact that I'd said a few days earlier that I'd been hoping for a better deal than $17-- if $17 was too much then, why wasn't it too much now?

Answer: I believe in shopping around, but I also believe in spending money proportionately to the experience it buys or enhances, and I believed that book would enhance our hiking experience beyond its $17 (it did). For my mother, this was an issue of control (to this day, she asks me the prices of things she knows I've bought, and often gives me crap about them). My mother's attitudes about money, together with attitudes about food and clothes, are ones I continue to fight against when they sneak back into my thinking. For my mother, this fight was about my making a minor purchase without her permission. Perhaps she felt I was insufficiently grateful for her financing of my education.

This was about her having no perspective or consideration. I was past the point of being embarrassed over her screaming in the middle of the street and of being moved by her threats that we "go our separate ways" and meet up at the end of the week; she's done that before and, being the order-loving person I am, that option scares me and she knows it, but again, I was past that. I was angry at what she was doing and wasn't going to let her get away with it, so I said fine. She tried to get dad on her side, but dad wasn't buying it.

Dad and I got dinner separately; she probably went back to the hotel and stayed there. By the morning she tried to pretend that nothing had happened. Close to the end of the trip, we ran out of "obvious" things to do-- we'd covered the major national parks, and that book saved us. It had some amazing hikes that we never would have known about, that offered beautiful views we wouldn't have otherwise seen. Afterward, my mother called and kind-of-apologized. I mean, she really apologized, but her apology was, "I didn't realize that those were the kind of trails in that book; I thought it would have just mapped out the trails in the national parks, for which we'd get free maps at the gate." The more meaningful apology would have been, "I should have trusted your judgment when you decided to buy that book. You're an adult, and I know how financially responsible you are. Also, no matter what, I shouldn't have started screaming and ruined everyone's evening like that." I choose to believe that that's what she really meant.

A few other things from this trip, which took place the week before the invasion of Iraq. My mother has pulled a Tom Friedman-- she was all pro-war beforehand, but listening to her now you'd think she knew it was a bad idea after all. As usual, despite my pleas of, "I am on vacation and I don't want to talk about it," she insisted in arguing with me about the war and using infantile and ad hominem arguments, at that.

Speaking of immature, the morning after the Flagstaff fight we drove to the Grand Canyon, planning on getting breakfast on the way. We were almost there and there were few options, but I saw a waffle house, and my mother saw a McDonald's across the street from it. I've refused to eat in McDonald's ever since I read Fast Food Nation, which has only increased my mother's determination to eat there whenever we're together. I suggested that we all go to the waffle place so we could eat together; out of spite, she went and got herself breakfast at McDonald's. I had a power bar. Actually, this happened again the day after my grad school graduation-- we were on U & 14th, and this place NEXT TO the McDonald's there offered Smoothies and other breakfast food. My mother proudly marched over to McDonald's. She realized pretty quickly her statement was lost on us, though, and joined dad and me in the other place.

While I'm at it, let me continue to clean out my closet of stories I've been carrying around for a while. Some may be repeats (the long Google entry has quite a few). You may think I have a problem letting go, but really it's that I have a very good memory, and I'm detail-oriented.

I'll start with my mother's going out of her way to make disparaging comments in front of my friends, and then move on to her trying to convince me that I'm inept. My mother has always been a great cook, and she feels threatened by my cooking. I recall making tirami su and her determining that I wasn't using enough coffee, so she came over, grabbed the entire operation out of my hands, and soaked the ladyfingers in the coffee (which makes them too soggy). I'd made bread once, leading one of her friends who'd stopped by to say she was impressed. Showcasing her insecurity, my mother declared that she, too, made bread (which I assess to be untrue, given that when I made bread for the first time in her house, she went to open the oven to see how it was coming along). Anyway, there were a few months when I'd moved back from Wales, found a job (which my mother would go out of her way to try to convince me not to take and later to quit), and struggled to find an apartment in the crazy Boston rental market of summer 2000 (perhaps because my mother had insisted on accompanying me to apartment interviews). In that time I lived with my parents. One day, a very close friend came over to make pizza. Mom kept walking by to say, "I don't think you're using enough garlic," etc. In her intended coup de grace, she walked in to the kitchen, looked haughtily upon our project, and walked over to the freezer, from which she removed a cheap frozen pizza and declared, "in my opinion, this is the only pizza you really need."

Bear with me, two stories branch out of the one above. The first is on a topic you know well and one referenced in the title of this blog-- my mom considers herself a more competent manager of my career than she considers me. You know about Google, you know a little bit about TI (I actually got a phone message from one of her friends begging me not to take that job), and then there was the time she happened to call me as I was on my way to an interview for an internship:

A.: I have to go, I'll call you later..
Mom: Where are you going?
A.: I have an interview for an internship.
Mom: Where?
A.: At an umbrella organization that comprised environmental groups working on preservation in Latin America...
Mom: WHAT? WHAT? Have you lost your mind?
A.: Mom, I have to GO.
Mom: Don't even think of taking that-- what are you thinking??
A.: I'm just going to the interview. I HAVE TO GO.
Mom: Don't even go to the interview!

... and so on.

Ah, the second branching story-- my mother insisted on accompanying me to apartment interviews. I tried to cut this practice when I saw it was hurting my chances in an already tight market, but it wasn't easy. One time, my mother INSISTED on coming with me, and when I said no, she asked me to give her the address where I was meeting the potential roommate, in case she'd need to give that information to the police should I not return. I succumbed, only to see her pull up in her minivan at the time and place of the meeting. I felt my face turn beet red and went up to her car, and said, "leave. now." At home that night, she pulled the not-talking thing, but I knew she knew she was wrong because she'd apparently lied to my father about the situation- she told him that she and I had agreed that she would show up. I said to her, "you can keep acting righteous, but you know you were wrong." It worked and she let it go. When I did finally find a house, she and my dad were both horrified that I hadn't consulted them before taking it (it, i.e. the house, turned out really well). Sure I was just a year out of college then, but my time abroad especially was replete with making independent decisions and plans, and doing so became natural to me. They didn't see that then; my dad by now has gotten it; my mom not so much.

Which leads me to another theme, my perceived ineptness. For so long, I thought it was me, but it turns out that other people also lose wallets, forget to do things sometimes, etc., but every time something like that happened to me, my mother treated it as evidence of my ineptitude. It also becomes a mom-fulfilling prophecy-- she stresses me out to the point that I mess up, it's like typing when someone's looking over your shoulder. In fact, she loses things too, but I feel no need to tie those incidents to her competence as a human.

Beyond the mom-fulfilling prophecy, she also makes it worse by filling a void that is not there (not to mention nagging me--do I realize I should be practicing to drive a stick/looking for a job/looking for an apartment/packing for my trip the same day or next morning, etc.). I think she must have genuinely believed that she had to remind me that my lease was running out (she didn't).

I can't believe this was ten years ago, but the spring before Geneva, I had to buy a ticket to Paris (location of the pre-Geneva orientation program). I was on it, but apparently not on it enough for my mother, who in addition to nagging me regularly, had a travel agent friend of hers look into tickets for me. I found one on British Airways for $400 and let her know I was about to buy it; she was surprised and said that her friend had found one for $400 on some crappy charter flight company and wanted her to get a commission for it; I caved. Fast forward the night I was supposed to depart (also the night Princess Diana was killed). We show up at the airport three hours early; flight is delayed three hours; we go home and return five hours later, at two in the morning; due to poor signage and airport employees who give us bad information (tell us that the correct terminal, where we were, was arrivals only), we miss the flight. I am upset (I have a friend meeting me in Paris upon arrival; I have a meeting in Paris the following morning). Crappy charter company offers to send me for free on their next flight, four days later. I have to buy another $400, from British Airways, that will get me there in the middle of the night. That's about two weeks of the very painful data entry work I spent the summer doing. I don't really blame my mother for the whole thing (and actually the full story is pretty good but not particularly relevant), but I can't help but thinking of the situation as an example where my mom could have just trusted me.

Anyway, enough reminiscing. It's time to move on.