Monday evening mom blog, ramble, and rehashed travel notes

Dad told me (last night) that mom threw a big tantrum on Saturday. This surprises no one; mom has been pulling her Saturday tantrum for so long that dad coined the term, "Mom's Saturday tantrum." The trigger for the tantrum varies; it could be, for example, food found outside the fridge—when I would visit, mom would find a sprig of parsley that I'd taken out to cook with and accuse me of having left out overnight. The trigger didn't matter; mom would find a reason to have a fit, because she thrived on it, or thought she did. The conceit was usually the same: “All I ever do is clean up after everyone, and all you ever do is make a mess.” If this is not atypical for moms in general (or in stereotype), it is quite the meme for Russian moms. It’s a constant on “Russian Girl Problems.” (Side note: story of my life; actually, so many of those are the story of my life. Wow.).

Perhaps because the "all you do is make a mess" mentality is that common, it historically struck me as annoying but harmless. Over the years, however, I’ve come to see it as fundamentally unhealthy for oneself as well as one’s family, and it frightens me when I see myself falling into it in any way. The “I’m always cleaning up after everyone” mindset is appealing, even when it’s not true or when I don’t care/mind. For example, last fall, when I was driving myself crazy making the work trip happen, I thought toward my coworkers, “Do I have to sit there and make sure you fill out every single field on these forms? I’ve already filled out everything I could fill out for you.” This was reasonable, perhaps, but it didn't serve me. Nobody asked me to fill out his forms as well as mine; I opted to, and doing so made my job easier. And I didn’t actually mind. So why was I so drawn to the indignation drug? It was a cheap high that faded fast. Was it that, my whole life, I’d watched my mother get high on indignation? It seemed like the natural thing to do.

The key to stepping away from any drug is realizing that you don’t need it, that it’s just a cheap, fast-fading high that leaves you and the people around you feeling bad. It doesn’t resolve the source of indignation (this is especially, inherently true when the source of indignation is concocted in order to justify the indignation). You have to be able to say, “I’m more powerful than this. I don’t need indignation to feel valuable or valued to the people around me. I'm valuable in my own right.”

Note: sometimes frustration is warranted, and suppressing that frustration is counterproductive. I recall this time last year, when I was exceedingly frustrated with my then-bf for not meeting me half-way in planning for the Prague trip. I was justified in thinking, “I’m doing this and this and this and this, and all that I ask is that he send me three pieces of information, and he can’t even be bothered to read the e-mail in enough detail to send me all three?” But just because the frustration was justified, it still wasn’t serving me. I was not feeding off of the frustration, but in trying too hard to suppress it, it came out in other ways. It did not occur to me—and I still don’t know if this was the case—that F. was deliberately disengaging because he never wanted to go (I assure you that I never held a gun to his head; I gave him more than enough leeway. But he fed off the righteous indignation of sacrificing himself for what he thought I wanted, so he may well have been disengaging out of passive-aggressiveness). My point is not, “never get frustrated; let everything go.” My point is, figure out what’s actually bothering you and address it at that level. If nothing’s really bothering you, chances are, you just get off on yelling at people or feeling superior to them (see indignation-drug discussion, above). If what’s bothering you is the parsley outside the fridge, put it back in the fridge. If what’s bothering you is that your daughter is too inconsiderate to put the parsley back in the fridge, have a calm, constructive discussion with her about that, making clear that it’s not the parsley; it’s the pattern. If what’s bothering you is that your bf is not meeting you half-way, do call him out on his behavior but make sure you’re clear that that’s the issue (again, it’s not the action, it’s the pattern). But I digress.

Mom’s most recent Saturday tantrum was over the paper mess in the living room of my parents’ house. Mom makes a hobby out of shuffling papers (mail, etc.) from one drawer in one piece of furniture to another. I don’t know exactly what happened on Saturday—either does dad—but in essence, she accused dad of moving a piece of paper, maybe losing something, maybe throwing it away. In classic mom style, she got accusatory, hateful, paranoid, and generally nasty. Once she was over it, she proceeded as if nothing had happened.

I pointed out to dad that this was not a sign of dementia, in that this fit-and-forget has been mom’s MO as long as I have known her. He pointed out that he knew that, but that her fits were getting nastier. This is probably true. He added that she was increasingly lashing out—with the aforementioned nastiness and paranoia—at the people closest to her. I knew he meant Nina’s parents (among others), though he didn’t specifically mention them.

I’ve watched mom turn on people for years now. In fact, I’ve recently rethought the dramas I observed and heard about in my childhood: mom's epics, in which she always cast herself as the righteous hero. I’ve thought about some of the people—including my cousin (my dad’s niece)—that mom vilified when I was little. I now wonder whether things went down according to my mom’s version of events, and if not, whether I needlessly lost out on relationships with family as a result. My dad didn’t really try to counter her stories—maybe he thought it wasn’t worth it.

But I've moved on from anger at mom to compassion. This shift was solidified as I read Marshall Goldsmith’s “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful,” which was provided to me at work as part of leadership training. It continues to strike me the extent to which business skills are also interpersonal skills. Mr. Goldsmith touches on this in the book, writing that people who have made a point of systematically improving their working relationships by consciously changing their behaviors, have also seen improvements in their family lives. He writes of a Buddhist tale, "The Empty Boat," of which there are various versions and interpretations, but the gist is that a man out in a boat, in the dark or fog, yells at another boat to change course, but the other boat does not, and the boats collide. The man is furious and yells at the other boater, until the fog lifts or moon comes out or the boat gets closer, to reveal that there is no other boater: the offending boat is empty. Because he has no one to be angry at, his anger cannot be sustained; it dissolves.

What Goldsmith takes from the story is that anger is pointless: every boat is essentially an empty boat, or it may as well be. Even if there’s someone in the boat, they’re just doing what they know how to do, based on their programming. I can get angry at Gracie for being whiny when I’m trying to get things done, but what’s the point? I can’t get angry enough to make her stop whining. Mom has provided the perfect negative role model for this since I was a kid: she would always get angry and yell, and it certainly had an impact on me—I gradually withdrew—but it didn’t change the offending behavior, if any, or make me work harder to make her happy. It had the opposite impact: I realized that nothing could make her happy—that she would yell no matter what, because that’s what she wanted to do—so I stopped trying. But, coming back to the present: I've also let go of any anger or resentment toward mom. She does what she does because it's what she knows to do. I'm not going to come near her boat as long as it is a threat to me, but I'm also not going to direct any anger toward it.

This made me think of another well-worn Buddhist tale that could also apply to mom: The Muddy Road (Tanzan).

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross at an intersection.

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

There’s probably a spiritual or mythological fable for every aspect of human relationships. I got to thinking about how ‘healthy’ Buddhist stories are compared to ancient Greek ones—those were some petty, f*ed up gods, and they made for some great stories. [Side note: I’m not going to see “Metamorphoses” this year; I saw it last year, and it was disappointing. That kind of play has to be held up by impeccable acting, which the production we saw did not deliver. I’m a sucker for mythology and for theater, so I especially appreciate it when the forms are combined (“Argonautica” was awesome; “Ion” was not; “Ramayana;” “Conference of the Birds” was not).]

I'm a sucker for mythology largely because my mother made a point of reading it to me. When I think about it, some of my favorite childhood memories are reading things with my mom, and talking about them. Even as a child, I was taken aback at the $hit that the Olympians pulled. The Egyptians, too (creation by masturbation--really??). Also, the gender dynamics in some Russian fables, written into verse by Pushkin. But I digress. For Halloween one year--my mom was always one for creative costumes that few would understand--she made me a Medusa costume. She sowed a bunch of rubber snakes onto a swimming cap. It was awesome, but it was lost on a lot of people.

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Our foray—Kate’s and mine—into Greece was not wasted, even though Delphi was the only place we really saw. I qualify with "really" because we did get in some nice views from the train from Istanbul to Thessaloniki and even more on the bus from there to Delphi. And we saw the lesser parts of Athens as we made our way from the bus station to the airport—the city was shut down in a transit strike, and we decided to sleep at the airport rather than risk getting stuck.  I think, in that process, we saw the Parthenon from far away (i.e., downtown), but really it was all about Dephi, and Delphi blew my mind.

Because I'm such a sucker for mythology, I could really feel the spirit of the place. Also, it was off-season, and there was hardly a soul to make it feel like a tourist destination. It was just the land of the oracle. I'm so inspired by the thought of it that I have to post pictures again.