I am having lunch with my mother tomorrow. Which is unremarkable, but for the fact that we have spoken only a handful of times since Christmas, and the only time I have actually seen her since then was at my father's birthday dinner in July.
She lives about 20 minutes away.
Our relationship began to spoil about four years ago, when I allowed myself to be bullied into an ill advised investment. Numerous tearful exchanges, a variety of 6 to 8 month periods of not interacting, and my unending state of continuous denial later, we are having lunch. A cozy party of four. Mother, child, the ill advised investment, and either her failure (or mine) to extricate me from it as the pink elephant in the room.
I need to talk to her. I need to wrest control of the situation back. I need to make her hear me. I need to confront these demons -- the last, and actually, the only which have caused me prolonged stress due to sheer anger. This topic is the only one I can think of, in all my life, that has provoked a visceral and unending anger in me. I have to exorcise the anger. It burns. I generally try to ignore it, but my heart tells a different story. It bears the telltale blistering and puckering. Ever-raw and unhealed.
But this anger, this unexplained rage -- its strength scares me. And only now am I beginning to realize it is because the pool from which it emanates is so much deeper than I had ever realized. The investment isn't the issue. My mother ignoring my opinions isn't the issue. The issue is that the lesson I learned early on, the one I have spent my whole life working towards applying, is that I don't want to live a life like my mother's. And with this ill-fated investment, I feel she has pulled me into that morass. The one that made my breath short as a child, that seemingly compelled me to ensure dinner be made and the house cleaned prior to my father getting home every day in the hopes he would be a little less angry, that spoke with a soft Spanish whisper of "shhhh, don't tell your father" right in front of his uni-lingual-face, that post-dated checks, that was generous with promises, but always made you never want to ask "how" when they where actually fulfilled, that always screened calls, that prized cash-and-carry as the existence of a viable credit card was always a dubious proposition, that was always scrapping and planning, and hoping and wishing and risking and betting, with a wink and prayer that it would all turn out okay.
It did. Well fed and properly clothed, exceptionally educated and not at all deprived is how I turned out. I was a fortunate kid. I am grateful. But that fortune was so hard fought. The battle scared me. I worried about survival from one day of the battle to the next. I worried about the foot soldiers. I was always worried. I was always insecure. I was always afraid.
There was no safety net.
And after all these years, there still isn't.
I am my own safety net. I accept that. I am proud that I can do that. But I am fiercely protective of it. The one thing I loved about working at the firm was that I never had to think about money. I just don't want to think of it. I want it to be a non-issue. I have enough for what I need and for a fair amount of what I want, and that is that. When that is threatened, my whole world seems tremulous. A quivering house of cards that can fall at any moment.
And I fear, as I down shifted the fiscal benefits of my career, that my mother now has the power. The power to pull me down, to pull me under, to drag me out to sea, untethered, unmoored.
I need to talk to her. I need her to hear me.
I am afraid.
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2 comments:
Ah, mothers and money - a topic to which I have given much thought. My mom's approach to money is in direct reaction to her mother's. Her mother cares only about money - it drives and defines her. She judges people entirely based on how much money they make - personality and intelligence are irrelevant. She controls (or tries to) the people around her with threats of disinheritance. She led my mom to believe she never needed to work because she'd either marry rich or inherit. My mom has a sizable trust fund, but my grandmother controls it and doles it out in drips and dribbles, questioning every choice my mother makes. But the funny thing is that my grandma doesn't control that money. She just tells my mom she does. She has no legal right to tell my mom how to use or not use it. But because my mom is now dependent on her inheritance, she's afraid that asserting control over what's really hers will mean she gives up what could be hers.
As for my mom, she just doesn't understand money. So maybe my grandma is right to question her money choices, even though she created the situation. I too remember post-dated checks and I also remember begging calls to my father asking for this and the last three months of child support and please, please, please, can we actually cash them this time? I remember lies she told to get my grandma to cough up more money (she's still doing that). Who I am, what I do, how I spend (or more often don't spend) money has everything to do with how my mom treats money. And I can't escape it.
Anyway, I didn't mean to make this about me. It just resonated so much with me. I hope lunch today goes well. I hope you find your voice and say everything you need to say. I want to hear how it goes.
TJH
You know I always want to hear about you and anything you have to say, so anything you post here is perfect!
I really appreciate you sharing this because it helped me so much when I (finally) had that meal with my mother. It helped me realize the depth with which these issues are really rooted in childhood, and not just today, and so I decided that dealing with the here and now would require acknowledging the past as well (e.g. if you are trying to cook a chicken for a dinner party, you aren't just going to cook it half way through and say that is enough because it looks good from the outside). "Acknowledging" is the key word here because it connotes a deliberateness, and (hopefully) a clarity. I spent a couple days this weekend thinking long and hard about what I was going to say, and arrived at a decision that I was basically going to thank my mother for all of the sacrifices and worry and wheeling and dealing she had to do to make my life comfortable (and keep my hands soft), and to let her know that I was grateful. However, she also needed to know that I, just based on how I am built, worried right along with her (if not more than she did, simply because she isn't risk averse as I am) and that I have carried those worries ever since. Her actions (or inactions) re. the house have threatened my security/my ability to fend off those worries, and that is why I have been so hurt. I acknowledge that I can (and should) have done something about the situation all on my own over the last four years, but I made the mistake of doing nothing (just as she did) and now we have to work together to make it right -- the common goal, to get me my unfettered security back. Seemed to work pretty well. It was the first time I shared my contentious feelings on a subject without making the other person cry -- so that is at least a start. I think she heard me. And that is a pretty good thing.
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