The other day my brother called me at work to invite me to a family get-together that will be happening at his house today. I told him that "I would try to make it", but I think we both knew I would probably not show up.
The first thing you have to know and understand is that this is in no way a sad blog, so keep telling yourself that throughout your reading. If you start to think otherwise please refer back to this paragraph.
Simply put my mother and I do not "get along" and never have. Admitting that, to most people, is like admitting that you club seal pups for a living. The fact of the matter is that her and I learned a long time ago that we do not see eye-to-eye on anything, and prefer not to be around each other. We have only spoken to each other maybe a half dozen times in the last twenty years. This is by mutual consent, and neither of us have a problem with it.
I grew up on a farm and most my summers were spent living outdoors, literally. One of the things I loved to do was go out into the woods and 'live off of the land'. I was always a survivalist, which continues to this day. One summer, when I was about 15, I went out into the woods to live, and spent the entire summer there. After about two months my brother and his girlfriend came 'tromping' out through the forest calling my name. They told me "that mom had sent them out to see if I was still alive." Of course I was just fine and went back home a few weeks later in time to go back to school.
My second ex-wife would get livid when I told this story. She could not comprehend any mother allowing her son to do that, much less not checking up on him for two months. To me though, this is where I gained my strength and my sense of independence. It was a gift from my mother, the ability to stand up to the entire world when everyone turned against me, an ability that I've needed from time to time in my life.
A few years later I came home from work to find our house empty. Everything had been moved out except for my stuff and the telephone. The phone rang and it was her calling to tell me where she had moved to, and that I could gather up my stuff and move there as well. She thought this to be quite hilarious as it had been "done to her" when she was young, her brother showing up on his bicycle to give her a ride to the new house. My mother has a flair for practical jokes; she loves bad jokes and worse puns. This is probably were I get my strange sense of humor, which is another gift from my mother.
Some years after that, I had moved out, and her and I had grown apart. When, by chance, her neighbor ran across my personal website and he emailed me. We talked back and forth for a time, and I decided to go see her, to see if we could patch things up, bury the hatchet (and not in each other). There had been many fights between us over the years, but I thought maybe we could fix things. That is when she told me "that it was too late for us" and things have pretty much staid that way between us ever since.
A few years ago she had a stroke (ok this part is sad), and yes I did go to the hospital to see her. Since then she has been confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak. I did feel sorry for her because she had been fairly active up until that point, taking up roller blading in her seventies. All of my family has convinced themselves that having this stroke has somehow changed her, that she now regrets the past. I believe that their reasons for feeling this way has more to do with the 'permanent smile' the stroke has left on her face, rather than anything she may have been able to communicate to them, with the simple 'yes' and 'no' signals they have been able to work out. I also believe that nothing has changed in the relationship her and I have maintained for as long as I can remember.
So on this Mother's Day I will give her the one gift I know she will truly enjoy. I will give her the gift of spending the day with our family, without my presence. You may call me a bad son, if so, so be it. I've left out a lot of the worst examples of our relationship, this blog has grown long enough already and those are between her and I. If you think I hate her you would be dead wrong, and I don't believe she hates me either. In retrospect, I have to take back one thing I said, I guess her and have found one thing that we see eye-to-eye on...
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2 comments:
I, for one, don't think that you are a bad son. If I did, I would have to think that I'm a bad daughter. I really relate to the relationship you have with your mother (although mine would have alerted the National Guard if I'd been gone 10 minutes). I have come to terms with the fact that a parent and child can love each other, but not like each other.
I know exactly how you feel when you tell people about mom. They also tend to assume you are a nut job or evil. I mention it sometimes, but I never go into details. At least you have moved past it, I am still not able to.
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