The 25% Mom

I was just sitting on the couch nursing the baby when the phone rang.  I knew it was my mom, since she’s the only person who ever calls me at home, and I considered not answering it.  The baby was just about asleep and I was enjoying the quiet time, but I knew that ignoring the call would only lead to trouble.  My mom has this sixth sense about ignored calls and will torment me if she thinks I am not responding to her calls.  (“why are you so mad at me?” is a common refrain.)

I answered the phone.  It was her. 

“I just wanted to apologize for dumping all my stuff on you.”

Backtrack.  Set the stage.  A year ago this group approached me and asked if I would speak at their conference.  A conference for Native American women with breast cancer.  Since this is my target demographic for my research, it was a total no-brainer.  I agreed.

About two months ago sweets and his high school friends started to make plans for a guy’s weekend.  Sweets made arrangements with my mom to come and help me with the kids during the planned weekend, then made his travel arrangements.  A week later the people from the conference got in touch with me to tell me that they had to change the date of the conference, now it was going to happen at the same time as the guy’s weekend.  Since it was such a perfect place for me to build visibility, I agreed to speak, even though there was an obvious childcare issue.  Before I agreed to speak, I made sure my mom was still committed to helping out with the kids, like she had already said she would do.  I explained to her that I had to speak at this conference, and I really needed her to watch the boys during the conference.  She was delighted- she says that she really likes to spend time with them and always talks about how she wishes she could spend more time with them.  It seemed like a win-win for everyone.

The conference was on the 17^th.  On the 11^th, I called my mom to confirm that she was going to be with us for the whole day on Saturday during the conference. 

“I’m so glad you called!  I am still going to be able to help out overnight on Saturday and stay with you guys on Sunday, but I’m going to be speaking at a conference on Saturday and I’ll join you guys after that.”

What?  I was totally confused.  I am the one with the conference, not her.  What fucking conference is this?  Wait? Wait!  I reminded her that she had already agreed to watch the boys so I could talk at my conference.  She started backpedaling.  All of a sudden, this very wishy washy story emerged about how she was hoping to get a promotion in July and that they had signed her up to talk at this conference and that she had no choice and she really needed to do this and….

More backstory:  my mom is constantly telling me about how much they love her at her job but she doesn’t make enough money and times are really tight and she needs to find another job and they’re always, always, always just about to promote her.

So there I am, totally fucked.  I’m committed to speaking at a pretty important conference, but I have no babysitting.  The peanut is at that yucky developmental place where he is totally sensitive and only wants to be with mom.  We have a great babysitter, but she’s a fairly devout Jew and the conference is on Saturday.  I actually had the nerve to ask her if she would watch the baby, and we actually spent time trying to figure out a way to make it seem like she wasn’t working for us on that day.  I can’t believe I did that, and I felt so, so awful afterwards.  I asked some people who we’d had a playdate with the week before if they could watch the lentil and they were so friendly and agreeable, I’m entirely in their debt.  Forever.  So the lentil is taken care of, but I’m still worried about what to do with the peanut.  I’m actually envisioning myself trying to present at the conference with the baby hanging from my body in some crazy baby carrier.  Total hippy moment.  Unfortunately, my audience isn’t a bunch of hippies.

And to make things worse, the other person on the panel is a very important person who could easily make my career work and I need, desperately need to impress her.

So eventually my mom finds a way to watch the baby while I’m speaking, but I’m still left with lugging the child around for the rest of the conference, which made it very difficult to recruit subjects for my study.  All the brochures I’d had printed up (almost $100.00!) basically go to waste, and I leave the conference with just one subject recruited.  My talk goes fairly well and I make a very good connection with the co-presenter on the panel.  She discusses possible career options with me, which is very, very good, and we talk about setting up a more formal meeting soon.  The conference pays me well, which was a pleasant surprise.  And the baby behaved himself.  And afterwards, my mom tells me that she wasn’t “speaking” at a conference, she was there to co-facilitate an anger management session with a group of veterans and their spouses.  Important work, to be sure.  But the co- part of the co-facilitating is the bit that got me.  She didn’t have to be there.  She chose to be there.  Once again, my mom chose against being helpful to me for her own gain.  She didn’t even get paid to be there.  And nobody is a last-minute ringer at an anger management workshop.

But this story is less about the conference and more about my mom.  Her behavior over the past week has been a total trigger for me.  It made me realize that my mom is only 25% there for me, and has always been that way.  I’ve recognized for a long time that she’s pretty self-centered, but this weekend was the final puzzle piece that brought it all together with frightening clarity.

When I was 12, my mom left our family to live with her new boyfriend in Australia.  When I was 13 she returned, divorced my dad, and took me to California.  When I was 16, I woke up one morning to see my mom sitting on some strange man’s lap.  They asked me what I was doing that day and I said “playing soccer.”  Then they said “We’re going ring shopping!  We’re getting married!”  I think I may have thrown up, but I’m not sure.  It was a blur.  Closely following that conversation was the “and you’re going to have a new step-sister!” conversation where I learned about the strange man’s 12-year-old daughter.

For much of my life, my mom has found ways to justify the fact that I’m not a priority for her.  I’ve never really been able to pin-point this until this weekend.  It’s always bugged me that she has other things happening when I need her, but I never identified what those other things were and why it bugged me until now.  When I was 17, I was playing in an honor band performance about 150 miles from where we were living.  My mom swore she’d be there for my performance.  She didn’t show up.  When I got home, she explained that my brother was arrested that weekend and she had been forced to stay home and deal with his problems.  (Looking back, it seems totally obvious to me that my brother should have spent a little more time in jail when he was younger to try to avoid the chronic alcoholism we’re all living with now.)

That’s a perfect example of how these things work.  It’s always just out of her control.  She can’t come to my soccer games because her alcoholic husband needed something.  She can’t go to my concerts because she has to stay home and bail out my brother.  She can’t help me with my kids because she has to deal with some half-fabricated work problem.  She really wants to, she’s really sorry she’s not there, but she just can’t do it because it’s out of her hands.

Now that I’m a parent, I am starting to see through this bullshit.  I am realizing that sometimes you have to make decisions that might hurt because you have to be there for your kids.

In the doctoral program, I have a classmate who has three kids.  The doctoral students used to try to get together now and then for social events and she could never do it.  One kid was having a game or a recital or just needed some mom time and she always chose her kids over anything else.  She was a great roll-model for me, showing me how one makes their kids a priority.  She showed me that no matter what, you always have to choose your children over anything else.  Even if that means you won’t have fun with your friends or you might miss out on something exciting.

My mom doesn’t do that.  She will always choose the excitement.

But at the same time, she tries.  She makes promises, and she usually comes through by about 25%.  This conference weekend is a great example- she was able to watch one boy while I spoke, but I still had to spend a week trying to find another alternative, which took away from me preparing for my presentation.  She wasn’t there for us over the weekend when we needed her- at bedtimes, because she was too busy with her own life.  Even though we’d asked her months in advance to commit to our family, she still found a way to get out of the commitment.  We couldn’t rely on her to actually help.  She did come and spend time with the lentil, but it wasn’t what I needed.  She always tries, because after all, these things that get in the way are never her fault.  But she never follows through completely.

I realized this weekend that I just cannot rely on my mother to ever help us out in the way she says she will.  She just can’t do it.  She will make all sorts of promises, but they’re empty.  I love my mom.  She tries hard.  But she just doesn’t do that mom thing that I want- the mom thing where she’s there for me when I need her, where she helps me and soothes me and makes me feel like maybe the world is going to be okay.  I never realized how much this bugs me until this weekend, when her preoccupation with her own life became crystal clear.  I know this may come off as me whining, but I think maybe I just need to whine a little.  I wanted a mom who would follow through with promises and be there for me when I needed her most.  I got a mom who really wants to be there but only follows through at about 25% of need.  It’s a constant psych-out because I never know when she might actually follow through.

She offered to throw me a birthday party.  This morning, during our phone call where she apologized for laying her crap on me, she was really calling to tell me that she couldn’t throw me a birthday party after all because she has no money.  Good thing we already started planning the party without her.  Instead of throwing us a party, she’s making us potato salad.  But don’t worry- she’s going to make two kinds of potato salad, in case people don’t want the kind with mayonnaise.  Because she’s going the extra mile for her kids.

Comments

[jen]

this made my heart hurt :(

[HeatherK]

Mine too. Put her together with my mom and we'd maybe be scraping 50%. Ugh. So often I feel like a dog begging for scraps.

But on the other hand, I'm so impressed that you got everything to work out somehow and were able to present and make a good contact w/ the co-presenter.

[Ally]

I'm sorry.

[rhubelerosko]

Isn't it amazing how much we learn from our parents? We learn to avoid their mistakes with us and learn to adopt the things that worked! So many lessons in this post.

[KK]

Me three.

Man, I am *so* sorry. (And your mom's behavior is very similar to my dad's, even down to the behavior around divorcing, remarrying, etc..) Coming to the realization all of this is painful, but helpful. Eg, with my dad, I've just had to learn that he's a flake, that I should have very, very, VERY low expectations. He is so flaky about visiting us that I literally do not tell the kids that he is visiting until he is en route. (And he has visited us *once* in the past 3 years.) And yeah, I've gotten to the point where I always make alternate plans when we have "plans" with him, because so often, they fall through. I'm glad that *you* are celebrating your birthday yourself.