Category: Family

My mother and aunt are driving me nuts…Bringing up my Ex; being mean to the waiter; and fucking old pet names…Fuck, and they just brought up religion and how I don’t call enough. – my texts to a friend during my Mom’s special day

It is a cliche to say that parents drive their adult children crazy. It just so happens, in my case, to be true.

I met up with my mother at 2:30pm Sunday. It was Mother’s Day, therefore a nice meal and a movie were required. After picking up my Mom’s friend, a woman I call my aunt, we headed off to a seafood restaurant they both love.

As is predictable for a weekend holiday, the place was packed. We arrived around 4pm, but didn’t get seated til after 5. They wanted to wait; I just wanted to eat.

My aunt passed the time reading her Bible. My mother got into a conversation with a woman. I stood around, pacing slightly, trying to get my mind off my stomach. Eventually I pulled out a book, which helped a little.

As we waited for the buzzer to go off, I tried to be the good daughter. The whole day, of course, was about me playing that role.

When we finally were seated, our waiter cracked a joke “informing us” the restaurant was out of crab cakes, their claim to fame. Bad call later, we ordered and waited a little more. Our salads and bread came out, as well a Margarita I ordered, and suddenly everything was better.

Even so, as we finished up our appetizers, my mother complained to myself and my aunt, wanting her entree immediately. I said nothing as I noticed how hard the wait staff was working, how they quickly got butts into seats, served their customers, but also helped one another. The restaurant was dancing over fire but not getting burned. I was impressed; my mother was impatient.

Our conversation veered to politics. My aunt and I often speak on the subject. The presidential race came up, as did the North Carolina Constitutional Amendment.

I then found myself going off on a tirade, saying how upset I was. I talked about how gay marriage has nothing to do with religion. How marriage, when it comes to the state and most of history, is a legal contract. How gay rights is about civil rights, trying to protect partners from vengeful families, keeping children with the parents they know and love, making it so no one can discredit another’s life.

My aunt talked about how her mind changed on gay marriage.

My mother was noticeably silent.

As the waiter cleared our appetizer plates, my mother asked for her gift. It was the usual, a gift card to her favorite makeup store. She had insisted, as per usual, that I also buy her a greeting card. My mother loves them; I hate them. To me they are a waste of paper.

As I handed over her card, I remembered how I hated picking it out. I read sentiment after sentiment and thought how much I didn’t feel the bullshit written. I found one that didn’t nauseate me and bought it.

When our meals came, I inhaled my food. I had ordered a smaller portion than both my mother and my aunt, not wanting to have leftovers. I finished all my food before them.

As I sat and waited, I knew I had no desire to see the movie they’d chosen, Think Like A Man, a Steve Harvey (read: black) film.

On a cultural level, I am pleased that someone besides Tyler Perry has put out a film for the black audience. Still, though, I knew it would be two hours of pandering to black cultural norms, not to mention I’ve heard Steve Harvey’s thoughts on women and relationships. We differ, greatly.

As the check came, I paid. My mother and aunt gave me some cash to go towards the not small bill. As we left out, it was decided we would not, in fact, see the movie. My aunt had to be to work at 11pm and it was already 6:30pm. By the time we drove her home, it was after 7.

As we parted, having already set another date for the three of us getting together, a promise was made. We are to see the movie then. Great…

I drove my mother home. We hugged, as we are both huggers, and parted.

The whole time I was with my mother, all I wanted to do was scream. But I didn’t.

I really wanted to talk to her about therapy, about the progress I’ve made, and how I think she could benefit from counseling. But I didn’t.

I didn’t want to tell her she taught me love is being someone’s doormat. I didn’t want to say that I never want to be like her, loving a man who could not give the life I wanted or deserved. I didn’t want to say how angry I am at the both of them, how part of my progress is acknowledging my anger at their fuck ups, how I now recognize the massive effects their fuck ups have had on me.

But I didn’t say any of that because it was Mother’s Day.

“I love you, my sweet banana. That’s what my mother called you when you were a baby.”

I was five months old when my grandmother died. I’ve seen photos, and have been told I look like her. I have no memory of her at all, though.

The one lasting impression she left on me was rather dubious. So the story goes: I was crying while in my high chair when my grandmother balled up my fist, pulled out my thumb, and stuck it in my mouth.

I sucked my thumb until age twenty (yes, 2-0). I only stopped when I got my tongue ring. I traded one oral fixation for another, with rather pleasant results. No one could get me to stop sucking my thumb, ever. Not even high school or college stopped me, though they did severely damper my addiction, relegating it to mostly at night as I drifted to sleep. The echo of my long lived habit manifests in my occasional humming as I lull myself to sleep some nights.

I’m not writing this post as a woe-is-me entry. It’s just… my mother doesn’t talk about her mother much. I know my mother loved her mom. I know it. And I know it was very hard for her when she died. My mother had a five month old, happy with her little girl, and suddenly her own mother, without warning, had a stroke and was gone just a few weeks before Christmas.

Out of the blue today, my mother, who has discovered the wonders of text messaging, sent me that message.  She texts me everyday, which is fine; it keeps her from freaking out when I don’t call for long periods of time because I’m busy with work or my kink/social life.  But I didn’t know my grandmother called me that. I’m twenty-eight years old and my mother is just now mentioning this.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like to have had her in it. I was lucky enough to have had her sister, my Aunties, jump in and take up the responsibilities. My mother would drop me off at Aunties during the day while she worked, and she’d pick my up at night. Aunties, Uncles, and Ella were another family for the two of us.

It wasn’t that my life was without love. Quite the opposite. Having talked to my friends about their childhoods, I feel very lucky for the experience I had growing up: no emotionally or physically abusive parents, a rather amicable custody situation, and, though we were far from rich, we were able to get by without my realizing how on the brink we sometimes stood.

Yet I find myself thinking about this woman, who I never knew, who loved me. I find myself imaging how I would try to tell her about my life now. I find myself postulating how I would be different as a person if she didn’t have that stroke, if she wasn’t taken away from us.

I guess this is the right time for this mental roller coaster ride. She died in December. I know the holidays bring back that memory for my mother each year.

With people around me who are pregnant, or trying to get pregnant, or already have kids, there is this quiet wanting in the back of my mind for the life I have yet to live. And, tonight, there is the dreaming of what it would have been like to have heard my grandmother’s voice as she smiled at me, held me in her arms, and called me her sweet banana.