My Mother Strikes
I don’t normally gripe about family here. For instance, if my stepmother’s ears were burning, she’d have to guess at the source of overheating, rather than being able to confirm the source by checking the blog. I might sometimes make points obliquely, but…
I’m going to make an exception for my mother, who made herself persona non grata earlier today by doing something I was cluebatted out of doing habitually by irate friends when I was about fifty years younger than she is now.
She dropped in.
Not so bad, right? Someone just dropping in can’t expect your house to be perfectly clean or that you will be enthused to see them while the baby is napping and one of you is trapped underdressed in an adjacent room by the presence of “oh shit the knock on the door wasn’t lost delivery people as it’s been every other time and she barged across the threshhold without so much as a by your leave.”
But this is my mother we are talking about.
We were already in a quandary over the possibility of having her even casually share in babysitting Sadie during the extraction of daughter two and subsequent hospital stay. We already planned never to have her babysit at our house, though it hadn’t extended to having her never visit at all, which, at the risk of sounding like my certifiable ex-sister-in-law, is where this is headed in a too late to watch the train wreck, it already happened sort of way.
My mother babysits extensively for my youngest brother’s kids, at their apartment. For a long time, it was generally at least five days a week, like a full time job. We all got to hear how awful my brother was for seldom even giving her gas money, but hey, she loves seeing the kids. At least it’s down to two or three days a week.
As a result, we get to hear, with great repetition, about how poorly my brother’s wife feeds the kids, and about every imaginable transgression in their care of the kids, housekeeping, finances, and life in general. When I started taking Lexapro back in 2003, I made damn sure my mother never had any clue about it, after hearing her crow to everyone about my sister-in-law’s post partum depression in a “she’s worthless and weak” sort of tone. Everyone. There is nobody who won’t hear about this stuff from her. My policy has long been to avoid giving my mother and her ilk anything to talk about. Or to want to be in on so she can Know Things. You’ll recall how I got married in Vegas, then informed her, and the rest of the family, later. You’ll recall how she reacted to our “no visitors at the hospital” request, with which she was visibly insulted, by pointedly dropping in. Luckily it was not during a time any generally private appendages were out and about for Sadie’s nutritional benefit, and we were both feeling charitable enough to tuck away the incident with minimal ire.
Since we don’t want her examining our lives and apartment for things to trumpet to the world, we’d long since decided we couldn’t possibly have her stay with Sadie while I am at the hospital with Deb and Valerie. As of right now, we plan to have me spend minimal time at the hospital and do most of the taking care of Sadie myself. We don’t even want to leave her at my grandmother’s house. Which is where my mother lives, because she managed to get foreclosed out of an almost paid off house under mysterious circumstances eleven years ago. Exactly what transpired is something she has managed to keep quiet and obfuscate to a remarkable degree, considering that if it were one of us she’d pry and broadcast as much detail as she could about it.
And yet the foreclosure was a good thing, in that she’d never have been able to fix the house from the increasingly rundown state over which she’d presided. It’s likely the foreclosure was partly intentional on her part for that reason, as it wasn’t a matter of affording the payments. In current terms it would be like making almost what I do now, but having a mortgage payment one-third the size of my rent. Then again, it doesn’t make sense. At auction, someone bought the property sight unseen for 30k. When they saw it they reeled in horror and immediately sold it to the guy who really wanted it, for 50k, which is no more than half the current value of the land with the house demolished, as it was. Last I knew before it was foreclosed she owed a mere 10 or 15k, but she’d never have afforded the 50+k to rehabilitate the place. But I digress a little, though it fits in with her housekeeping and the throwing of stones.
My mother is the world’s worst housekeeper. Actually, she got worse over the years, and it never helped that she was in a house she had to move to against her wishes, in which there was dramatically too little space, much of it unfinished basement that never got improved as promised to get her to move there. Still, there is no excuse to let your house get to the point where someone dropping a dime to the local board of health could get it condemned and lose you custody of your kids. The neatness or cleanliness of someone’s house is something to which my mother has no place lifting a word in protest or dismay.
Yet she does.
Regularly. As if she’s the authority.
“Black!”
She walked into our kitchen in which there were pans and dishes on the counter, waiting to be washed, like more than a whole day’s worth. The high chair had the remains of Sadie’s lunch in it, from feeding her just before showers and her nap. Worse, Sadie threw a bunch of her lima beans, to which she was less receptive than usual. We’d not yet gotten down and picked them and the other thrown food up. Then there was the generally “not fully unpacked and organized” look, with some boxes stacked, plastic shelves leaning against the wall waiting to be cleaned and put together, and that sort of thing. As my mother observed, “so you’re not fully settled in yet, huh?” Beyond the kitchen was probably some paper Sadie had helpfully shredded onto the living room floor. I’ve seen far worse, and not just in my mother’s house. I’ve been responsible for far worse. However, it was worse than I’d prefer company to show up to, and sufficient to guarantee my mother will gossip about Deb’s deplorable housekeeping far and wide. Who cares if you’ve been suffering days of intestinal violence and are being rudely intruded on when the place is at its worst since we’ve moved in. The daughter-in-law will now be branded a slob. But hey, at least it was obvious that we feed our kid vegetables, and not a nonstop diet of hot dogs and mac & cheese. At least my sister-in-law remains the winner of the “you suck at feeding your kid nutritiously” award, featuring a prize of a full year’s supply of ad nauseum commentary to everyone when you aren’t present.
As of today, my mother has made herself officially Not Welcome In Our House. And no, our lives don’t revolve around going over there for dinner on Sunday. Even when we don’t have the shits, thankyouverymuch. We’ll go sometimes and enjoy it, but we’re not going to be there every single weekend. I make a point of her seeing Sadie regularly, and Sadie just loves her grandmother time. It’s not like she’ll be deprived if she doesn’t barge in on us.
I don’t even mind her babysitting. It’s just never going to be at our house, and never for long enough that she can come up with something she “needs” to fetch for Sadie from our house. I’d had in mind to leave Sadie with my mother and grandmother for one overnight and/or at length some of the days, but I think we’re just going to cope as best we can with small stretches of babysitting by someone, and I’ll have her with me, at home, work, and sometimes the hospital, the rest of the time. The combo of a cesarean and breast feeding is rough, and the “help” from the nurses isn’t necessarily a Good Thing. The ideal is to have me there, especially at night, especially the first night.
The worst part is my mother is a chronic helper. She has to help help help. When we were kids, she’d neglect us and help other people. The best was when she went and cleaned house for other people. To help them, not for money. One time, long after I’d moved out, I stopped at the house and there were a couple of strangers there my brother told me were “her latest strays.”
She has a need to be appreciated that drives generosity to a fault, almost akin to a martyr complex. She will let herself and her own life go to help other people. Which is bad, but at least when it’s wanted and not being pushed on you, not as bad. It’s an interesting contrast with my stepmother, whose similar yet healthier compulsion is financial security.
The prices she extracts for her help and generosity are appreciation and gossip-worthy (or gripe-worthy) knowledge. She’s a one-upper. The internet would be her natural home, yet she is strictly offline, and regularly foiled by my already knowing something she’s proudly announcing, usually because I have it in e-mail or saw it on a family blog, sometimes weeks before she got the tidbit. This even relates to her atavistic thrill with genealogy and the achievements of ancestors. Better to pridefully name-drop the past than be notable yourself.
Just as you would avoid showing weakness to someone who expects you always to be strong, to be perfect, to never get that B when a higher grade exists, you avoid letting my mother know or observe anything she can possibly gossip about. I don’t even like it when she’s regaling people with positive gossip about me. Especially when she has no idea what she’s talking about, or is contextually skewed. Ugh.
We all have foibles. Usually I try to dismiss my mother as just having particularly silly and annoying ones at times. For now we are too irritated to take it lightly, and thus the rant. We now return you to more normal blogging.
Have you told your mother how you have problems with all the gossiping? Sounds like she needs to be confronted about it.
Posted by on 10/20 at 08:29 PMI would let her know in no uncertain terms exactly how I felt. To her face.
And I would keep the door locked. Let her talk, the rest of the family must know how she is by now.
We had an “intruder” in the family, although she’s now passed, and she spoke nothing but Armenian and turkish, she seemed to get no greater delight than from snooping, prying, and complaining. You just have to lock someone like that out.
Good luck.
Posted by caltechgirl on 10/20 at 09:32 PMI HATE when people just “drop in.” One of my biggest pet peeves...like ever. And hey, we would love to babysit Saide for you when Valerie arrives! Seriously, if you need any help, let us know!
Posted by Sharon on 10/20 at 11:22 PMRant away, you SHOULD after something that rude and selfish. Agree with Caltechgirl completely.
Posted by Laughing Wolf on 10/21 at 07:16 AMAye yi yi! Jay, I feel for you folks…
Posted by Paul Burgess on 10/21 at 07:49 AMI agree with CTG and LW that it’s good for you to lock your doors from your mother. Mom or not, she doesn’t deserve the just-dropping-in privilege. Ack. So rude! I have this little teensy worry that my boyfriend’s mother will do the same thing after we’re married and have kids…
Posted by PrincessJami on 10/21 at 10:35 AMFortunately, everyone knows better than to drop by unexpected at the house of a guy who owns a lot of guns!
Posted by Jeff Soyer on 10/22 at 04:21 PMConfronting her doesn’t work. She simply twists the whole thing in her mind and refuses to see she has done anything wrong.
And that kind of thing is what cause my ex in part to be so crazy in her own way towards my family. We lived in the second floor of her house for a while. Her part of the house would be a total disaster, yet we would come home to find her cleaning our bathroom because there was toothpaste stuck on the sink or something stupid like that. Thats Mom.. sighPosted by Wayne on 10/22 at 11:49 PMI have an aunt who runs from one child to the next, speaking ill of all the others. Some of my cousins have told their mother that they will not listen to her gossiping about their siblings anymore. Naturally then they are the ones being gossiped about.
Posted by on 10/23 at 06:20 PMI feel your pain. You have been describing my step-mother to a tee. And confronting her won’t work. It just throws fuel on the fire. I’ve tried. I get the “After all I do for you/them/him/her...blah, blah, blah” speech. Gack! I sometimes think that the “giving” is just as you describe...a source of material to gossip or gripe about. My brother’s family has completely banned her from their life. I think it is honorable that at least you try to let her have time with the grandkids, but do teach your kids early on that gossiping is wrong. Kids can get sucked into that behavior very easily.
Posted by on 10/24 at 10:44 PM
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