If A Tree Falls and My Mother Doesn't Hear, Am I Still Wrong?

I remember being a young newlywed and saying to my husband, “If I ever become my mother, you have permission to shoot me.” 

The fact is, my mother was a devoted wife to my father for over fifty years.  He felt privileged to have her on his arm and was embarrassingly open about his love for her.  From the time she met him—as a substitute for a blind date to her freshman beach party—she catered to him on every level, fulfilling the image of the perfect housewife of the 50s and 60s.

I do not think my mother has ever gotten over the fact that her only daughter had no interest in emulating her life.  I am the product of a different generation, one where a woman is not defined by the man who keeps her.  My mother’s love of whiter whites, infinite books of green stamps, and dinner on the table at six made me cry for her.  I once made the mistake of asking her if, once all the kids left for college, she might have fun getting out of the house and getting a job.  She was furious.  “I don’t have to work,” was her only reply.   In her generation, a working girl was an unfortunate woman who failed to net a good marriage.

My husband and I hit the professional world at about the same time.  I got my master’s degree and began a career in my chosen industry.  My husband graduated from dental school and began a prestigious oral surgery residency.  One day I was shocked to hear my mother criticize him for what she perceived as his selfishness.  She saw him as relying on me to “support him” while he neglected his Harvard education and husbandly responsibilities.  “I’m embarrassed for you,” she said gravely.
 

There is an expression designed for just such situations:  “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”  I would not have changed my circumstances for the world.  I not only worked voluntarily, I pursued an advanced degree in order to enter my field.   Although incredibly frustrating and a little sad, I have difficulty feeling angry at my mother for what she believes.  She comes by her values honestly; they have served her well over a long life.  I do not waste my time trying to enlighten one who worked at teasing hair and trading recipes while turning a blind eye toward women who raised the glass ceiling.  But when she tries to make me over in her image, that is when she runs afoul of my good graces.   I will never be Mom 2.0.

But it is harder than you think to escape your roots.  Most people’s paradigm for household operations comes from how their mother kept house.  The brands that our mothers used for toothpaste, dish soap and laundry detergent become our factory settings.  We are accustomed to a very particular scent on our sheets, or the picker-upper strength of certain paper towels, or the implied quality of labels, such as Heinz Ketchup or Hellman’s Mayonnaise.   My mother has a particular way of folding a paper napkin diagonally, and a relentless preference for heavy terry cloth dish towels.

My home is set up to my preferences, which are decidedly—if not intentionally—counter to my mother’s.  I fold napkins in half crosswise and place them with the fold out, the cut edges tucked neatly under the plate.  I use an out-facing fold because I read a book of etiquette as a child that contradicted my mother’s custom of tucking the fold under the plate.   I fold crosswise because that is the way Annie Sullivan taught Helen Keller to fold her napkin.  It was one of the first activities that helped break through Keller’s silence, connecting her with the rest of the world.  She went on to graduate from Radcliffe College.  When I received my degree from the same institution—76 years later—I thought of her as they handed me my diploma.

I am deliberate and purposeful in the organization of my home.   I am no Suzy Homemaker; keeping house is an odious chore to me—not a joy.  I prioritize:  clean is important while neat is less so.   My mother just cannot bring herself to let me run my household my way.   As I roll my husband’s socks into the matched balls he prefers, she clicks her tongue and asks, “You stretch out his socks like that?”  She would prefer that I faux-iron the socks with my hands, restore them to the flat shape they assumed when purchased, and then fold them to look brand new as I set them in perfect stacks in my husband’s drawer.  She did this for my father for over fifty years, which makes her the undisputed authority on men’s socks.  

Cooking in my mother’s presence requires an agile defense.   I leave my green beans long (“Your father likes them cut up”) and I boil long-cooking brown rice (“Minute Rice is faster”).    When a crumb drops on the kitchen floor and I don’t stop cooking to pounce on it, she exhales sharply and asks, “Should I get that for you?”  For almost thirty years I have run my own household—far longer than the seventeen years I spent in hers.   While I am competent enough to get my family nourished and our friends entertained, under my mother’s critical eye I am forever flawed because I am not her.

All of this notwithstanding, Nature is a devious beast.   I’ve spent the better part of a lifetime of trying to craft myself as an original, designing my own pattern and fighting for the right to do so.  But we cannot hide from our DNA; we are the pre-printed immortality of our parents.   More and more, I see flashes of my mother—in the way I hold my hands, in the way I purse my lips, sometimes even in the sound of my own voice.  I have been running away my whole life from a static world where my mother rules, but I have not escaped.  I have merely recreated a parallel world where my values apply.  In the end, it is less a battle of substance and more a struggle for identity.  Me, 1.0.

Tomorrow's blog:  Antiques Like Me