I hesitate to write this post for many reasons. I want to entertain, inform, and express myself through this little blog of mine. Sometimes I need to comment on the idiotic things going on in the larger world around me. I try not to get too personal.
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you may have caught some comments that hinted that my mom gets on my nerves. I feel bad about that, but that’s the way it is. I love her but I can’t relate to her. What’s worse, I know that what she does, and what she’s done, is not intentional. It’s just the way she is. So of course I feel even worse, because I know some people have terribly abusive parents. And some people have no parents. And I feel like I have no right to feel annoyed.
The big storm we had the other night caused a lot of damage in these parts. Many local homes and businesses were flooded by the nearly 4 inches of rain that fell. I found out late the following day that my mom’s basement had flooded, ruining her dryer, hot water heater, and all her Christmas decorations. This is how she broke the news to me:
“Your brother and sister-in-law just left. I don’t know what I would have done without them. They’re angels.” I asked what happened. She told me how water had started seeping into her basement up to the second or third step. She told me how the fire company had ended up at her house and how her hot water tank was damaged. “I just don’t know what I would have done without[L] and [S],” she mentioned again. “Who would I have called? What would I have done without them?” she mentioned about three more times, just in case I hadn’t heard her the times before. Ummm, of course, she could have called us. She knows she could have called us. We’ve never refused to help her. We’ve shoveled her walks in the winter. We’ve changed our Friday night plans when she insisted her pine tree branches had to be cut down that night. But we’re not psychic.
My jaw tightened, like it often does when I talk to her. But I wasn’t going to play into this little game. “Just who would I have called if they weren’t around,” she said, yet again, and I said, perhaps a bit icily, “Gee, I can’t imagine. Good thing you got a hold of them. How did they find out about the flood?” She informed me that she had called them because they had some of their stuff stored down there. No one ever called us to ask for help or tell us there was a problem. And I can’t stress enough that we’re always willing to help. In fact, my husband is a saint like that.
She does stuff like this all the time. When my late uncle was very sick and his daughter-in-law took care of him, we all heard over and over how she didn’t know what would happen to her if she ever became sick. Who would take care of her? She had nobody to depend on to do all that stuff for her. It was a slap in the face to me and my sister-in-law, who had in fact, done everything possible for her several years ago when she had major heart surgery. We visited her every day in the hospital and stayed with her when she came home. Even though we each had three boys in school, we spent a lot of time with her at home just to keep her company. We did her laundry, talked to her doctors, made sure she took the many pills she had to take at the various times of the day. We got her groceries and cooked her meals. We checked on her wounds and tried to make her comfortable. My sister also did what she could after work and taking care of her two young daughters.
My brother called me the following day. We need to coordinate our schedules to take care of things mom needs done around the house. I talk to mom several times a week on the phone, but they visit her more so he has a better idea of what needs to be done. I ask him how he can put up with her constant negativity. He said she’s done the same thing to him many times when my husband has done some heavy work for her, commenting about how she doesn’t know what she’d do if she didn’t have Big Daddy to depend on.
This isn’t the effects of aging. If anything, mom’s mellowed out. We were never good enough, popular enough or quite what she wanted. I don’t know how many times I was compared with some random acquaintance and asked why I couldn’t be more like her. So, yeah, I don’t visit so much. We’re like day and night. We have nothing in common. And when the conversation turns negative, it’s easier to say, “Gotta go.” And then hang up the phone.
