Sunday ramble: part I

I found myself trying to figure out when mom became insufferable. Ironically, this came out of my decision to make every effort to think positively of her, to focus on her warmth, even as it's been increasingly replaced with bitterness. The more immediate trigger for the question was riding past Dyke Marsh this morning, even though I ride past it nearly once a week. I think it's because the Post ran a thing about best walks in the area, and that was one of them, and that reminded me of the time I took my parents there. It was just after I'd finished grad school more than ten years ago, and they'd come down to see my new digs (the rented ones). So I took them out to Dyke Marsh, and mom complained about it the whole time. Actually, she periodically broke from complaining about it to peck at me for having a soldier's stride and lacking femininity and delicacy. And that kind of thing pretty much characterized the last decade of our interactions. It only got worse, and it's pretty much all I remember when I think of the last ten years in mom.

She wasn't always consistently awful, but I guess she was always intermittently awful. And by always, I mean since before I was born, according to dad and even friends of hers. She apparently always loved to yell at people, failing to realize how insufferable it made her; how it poisoned any affection for her. I told you recently about her asking why I didn't bring her a gift from Indochina; I didn't say, because whenever you do get a gift you complain about it. That's been true since I was a child, and at some point even then I just stopped trying. I remember also, as a child--even a small one--dad's and my making an effort to clean the house before she got home, perhaps because we were expecting guests; she reacted by throwing a fit over the spots we missed. This was always the case when you tried to do something nice for her: she'd yell at you for doing it wrong. Now that I think about how consistently she did it--she even did it to Michael (Nina's dad) when he brought her a beautiful decoration from Georgia (the country)--I think it must be something she picked up from her own mother, that it must be the only thing she new. It was, is like reflex. And that realization helps replace--not the bitterness, because I haven't cultivated any, but the detachment I've settled for in its place--with a semblance of warmth.