Thursday evening ramble

In honor of World Vegan Day--which kicks off World Vegan Month--I'll share an idiotic comment that I fielded today from a friend, even though I sort of told you I'd stop ranting about idiotic comments pertaining to my veganism. The comment was--shocker--from a friend who eats like she thinks cavemen ate (see earlier post for rebuttal of that whole concept). It came about when I offered her chocolate and said I loved dark chocolate. She said, "that's why you're so thin, in spite of being vegan." Oh, honey. She and I have a sort of truce about talking about one another's eating habits, but the same loopholes apply as with my mother: I won't provoke, but I'll rebut statements that are just false. And yet, I've resisted saying to this friend, when she complains about how her skin has aged, "it's all those animal products--and your refusal to eat soy!" I just don't want to go there. People will believe what they will. All I said was, whatever. She then said something about how you can eat fat or carbs, but not both. I told her I ate both all the time. She said it was because I was "still young." Not gonna argue with the fact that I am still young, so I left it at that. The friend--who claims she prefers to not discuss politics--proceeded to drop references to liberals and lefties associated, dubiously, with everything she found distasteful. If I had more time, I might have had her justify the explanation, but it wasn't worth it.

***
Mom just called, independently of dad.

Mom: Oxfam--should I sent them money?
A.: Yes. They're one of the best.

***
At the party I went to Saturday, a woman whose mother was Slovakian talked about the $hitty things her mom said to her. It's a different standard. Eastern Europeans are not shocked by such things; it's what we know.

Today I went to lunch with friends, one of whom is Ukrainian. I gave her the short version of the mom fallout (the other friend had already heard it); it did not shock her; in fact, she commented that her mom is my mom, lite.

We three talked about our aging mothers. We remarked--the two of us Eastern Europeans, that is--that even though our moms always had a little crazy in them, the crazy just got crazier with age. I've been thinking a lot about this. My mom's always had a clueless streak, an inconsiderate streak, an unhelpful streak, and perhaps even a crazy streak--but she's gotten crazier with age. The 'unhelpful streak' resonated as my friend--who is eight-months pregnant, talked about how unhelpful her mom was when her first child was born, not in the sense that she wasn't practically helpful, but in the sense that she made a big deal out of superficial things, at the wrong time, when the focus should have been just making things easier for the mother and child. The focus should not have been picking fights. Yup. As she reminded us of this story, I thought about how that was so my mom: it's not that she wouldn't go out of her way to be helpful; it's that, at the same time, she wouldn't stop herself from being unhelpful. The thoughts of, "is this the right thing to say right now? Is it the most loving thing I can communicate to my daughter? Even though it's come to mind, is this the right time to share it?" do not cross our moms' minds. That filter--the "this is not about me" filter--is not there. It can't be persuaded, because it doesn't exist.

The Ukrainian friend understood--and helped convey to the other friend--the relative understandability of the moldy bread incident. For those of you who missed this story in August, it is here, complete with photo. "I still can't throw away bread," the friend said. "Oh, neither can I," I told her. "But this bread was really f*ing moldy." I showed them the picture. I'd brought this up as an example of mom's becoming more extreme in her old age (even as she accuses me of being more extreme in mine), but it became a fascinating case of cultural difference. To the Ukrainian friend and I, the instinct to preserve the bread was quite understandable. It made sense to us even as it didn't; had the mold been any slighter, we might have let it go. To our American friend, this was all absurd. The Ukrainian friend acknowledged that the instinct--the gut aversion to throwing out food--would be even worse for my parents, who had lived through The Blockade, than it would be for other former residents of the Soviet Union. And yet, for those other former residents (and their descendants), it was still hardly negligible.

***
The cultural issue came up again when my Ukrainian friend talked about how she hated having to nag her son to eat. She knew it was counterproductive--she, too, was of the upbringing of "we know hunger, and we know that if you're hungry, you'll eat. If you're not interested in what's in front of you, you're not hungry." But she said it's like letting your kid cry: it's not as easy as it sounds, even when you know it's the better thing to do. And if she sends him to bed hungry, he wakes up half an hour later saying he's hungry (again, this is where my parents would have said, or did say, "too bad, next time you'll know to eat at mealtime.") This is something my parents did right. I didn't want to say this to my friend--though, being Ukrainian, she wouldn't have been offended either at the statement or at the unsolicited opinion from a non-parent, partly because she knew it was right. She said as much.

***
Cultural/historical factors aside, mom of ten years ago would have still tossed the bread upon seeing the (extent of the) mold. She might have yelled at me for having created the situation based on which the bread got moldy, even though I'd just gotten there; she's blamed me for more absurd things. She might have tied the incident to my general spoiledness and disregard for others. Unless she were in a particularly forgiving mood, she wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to shift the blame to me, nor to leverage it into a broader attack on my character. But she would have acknowledged that the bread was beyond edible and she would have tossed it. Mom as she is now, however, just agreed to toss it after ten minutes of trying to convince me that it wasn't that moldy, only to took it out of the plastic and stick it in the crisper drawer of the fridge, where the mold could spread to all the veggies. Somehow not realizing that I would see it when I went to make the salad.

It's this change in my mother that breaks my heart when I allow myself to think about it. Hell, she's always been abusive and ridiculous; it's what she knows. I just hate that she's losing her mind.

But what makes me feel a little better is that she's still holding on to her mind. She's still herself.