With mothers, it's complicated.
They bring us into this world. They love us. They comfort us. They tell us we are beautiful and brilliant and perfect. They fight for us when no one else will. They are so, so, so proud of us.
And they ground us. They yell at us. They tell us we have disappointed them. They tell us "no." A lot. They hate our boyfriends with the spiked hair. They hate what we're wearing. Sometimes they say things like, "I don't think I can go to your wedding if you're going to insist on wearing a red dress." Sometimes they say things like, "I don't want to be your mother anymore."
Like I said, it's complicated. But I've learned a few things.
1. Do not bullshit thy mother.
She has a sixth sense. She has eyes in the back of her head. She has ears like a dog. And she has a finely tuned bullshit detector.
Don't pretend you don't know how that vase broke. Don't lie about what time you came home last night. Don't tell her on the phone that everything is fine, even as you're choking back the tears.
She knows.
There’s no point in trying to bullshit mom. She might not say so, but she always knows. Always.
2. Don’t give anyone else the power to make you feel bad.
When I was in elementary school, there was this girl in my class who used to torture me. She was mean.
Heathers mean. She called me names. She humiliated me in front of the other kids. There were days I would go home in tears. And my mother would tell me, “Don’t give her the power.”
It didn’t make sense to me at the time.
“I can’t control what she does,” I’d insist. “I can’t make her not be mean to me.”
“But you can control how she makes you feel.”
If, at that age, I’d known the term “psychobabble bullshit,” I would have risked her infamous face slap to say it.
But...
She was right. Since those days, there have been other conflicts. Lawyers who were mean to me when I worked at a big snooty DC firm. Boyfriends who broke my heart. Friends who betrayed me. But in each of those moments, after the initial expressions of frustration/outrage/sadness, I think of my mother’s words. Don’t give them the power. Don’t let them make you feel bad.
It isn’t always easy. Sometimes, it feels downright impossible. But I try. I know. If I let them ruin my day, they win. Don’t give them the victory. Don’t give them the power. Live with integrity and know that however they treat you, you have the power to rise above it. I have that power, and no one can take it away from me.
3. When it comes to sex, just be smart.
My mother talked to me about sex from an early age. There was no stork talk when I was a kid. No “gift from God” talk. When I was very little, there was the book
Where Did I Come From?, which explained, in pretty explicit detail, how sex works.
There were always frank conversations – including a conversation about oral sex when I was in high school in which the words “it’s fattening” were uttered. (That’s all I’ll say about that.)
But she was always honest with me. And real. There was no Palinesque “pause before you play” nonsense. No Nancy Reagan style “Just say no.” No talk of the Bible or burning in hell or saving myself for marriage. With Mom, it was all about making smart decisions.
Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Don’t let anyone make you do something you don’t want to do. And if you’re going to have sex, for god’s sake, be safe about it. Use protection. And if that protection fails, come to me. I’ll take you to the clinic; I’ll pay for the abortion. No judgment. No lectures.
Make smart decisions, she said. And I did. I always did.
4. Read. A lot.
There was always reading. Lots of reading. Television viewing was limited, but I could read any book in the house, even the “adult” books.
During the summer, my mother and I would make a list of books I wanted to read, and then I would deliver oral reports to her. I had a subscription to Highlights for Children. I had my own library card, almost before I could write my own name.
We spent countless hours at our favorite local bookstore. Hours at the library. We played word games -- Perquackey and Scrabble and Boggle.
Even now, my mother sends me books she think I’ll enjoy and newspaper articles -- not links, but actual newspaper clippings -- she’s saved for me. Just last week, she sent me an article about a walking tour of Holden Caulfield’s New York.
It was because of all that reading that I said, “I want to do that.” And when I told her, “I want to do that,” she did everything she could to help me do that. She typed my stories. She organized an after school workshop, bringing in local authors to talk to us about writing. She helped me apply -- and get accepted -- to a college class on expository prose when I was a high school freshman.
I am a reader because of her. I am a writer because of her.
5. Peanut butter is made of peanuts -- and that’s it.
My mom was an organic, everything-from-scratch kind of mom. And that was before there was a Whole Foods on every corner, before Walmart claimed to sell organic food.
There was no junk food in our house. No chips, no candy, no soda. We didn’t eat Cheerios; we ate juice-sweetened cereal she bought at the health food store. Yogurt-covered raisins were a rare and special treat. Soda? Verboten. Potato chips? Forget about it. My mother was the mother on the street who gave little boxes of raisins on Halloween. That was Mom.
I hated it. I wanted Skippy and jelly – not fruit preserves, but jelly – on white bread. I wanted what my friends had in their lunches.
But oh no, Mom wasn’t having any of that.
“Peanut butter is made of peanuts,” she would insist. “You don’t need all that sugar, all those chemicals, all that crap.”
But...
I never had a cavity. I don’t cook “instant” meals out of boxes or cans. I buy whole grain bread. I have no sweet tooth. I love the farmer’s market. Because she taught me that you don’t need all that sugar, all those chemicals, all that crap.
She was right about that.
6. Learn to get along with your brother. One day, he’ll be all you have.
To say that we didn’t get along as children is a laughable understatement. We hated each other. Passionately. Vehemently. There was a lot of name calling and door slamming and knife fighting and ass kicking when we were kids. A lot of “I hate you” and “I wish you were dead” too. There were a lot of complaints from the neighbors about the screaming.
But Mom was hell-bent on making us friends. Or at least, not sworn enemies. When we fought, she’d make us sit in chairs, facing each other, not allowing us to move until we’d worked it out -- whatever that meant.
“One day you’ll need each other,” she said. I didn’t believe it. I dreamed of the day when I would be an adult, living in my own house, free to never, ever have to see or talk to my brother again. Ever.
But...
When I have a frustrating interaction with one of my parents, I know there is one person I can call, one person who will understand everything. I dial his number and he answers and I say, “Dude.” And he says, “Dude, I know.” There are three decades of shared history in that “Dude.” Three decades of understanding. We don’t have to explain anything to each other because we were both there. We know.
Of course we still fight. Sometimes, we have epic battles in which I call my mother and yell, “Your fucking son!” And we say ugly things to each other, things that, if we were still living under my mother’s roof, would put us in those damned chairs until we worked out our problem. Those chairs are no longer necessary, though, because after a while, I will call him or he will call me, and one of us will say, “Dude,” and the other will say, “Dude, I know,” and that’s all we have to say. Because we know that when all else fails, we have each other. We always have each other.
7. It’s okay to cry.
I have never been good with emotion. Sure, I can go from zero to angry in .2 seconds, but the other emotions? Not so much.
Mom wanted me to know it was okay to feel sad, to cry, to express emotion. She wanted me to know that it’s not a sign of weakness. I would fight it; I hate crying. But she would tell me, “It’s okay to cry, Little Mouse.” (Yes, that’s what she calls me. And yes, I call her Mommy Mouse. It’s our thing.)
Crying isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s important. It brings relief. It makes you feel better -- especially if you are in your mother’s arms, and she is stroking your hair with that special mother’s touch, and she is telling you, “It’s okay to cry, Little Mouse. It’s okay.”
I struggle with that still. I hate crying. Still. But I try not to fight it because even if I am not with her, not able to let myself go in her arms, I can hear her soothe me, comfort me, assure me. “It’s okay to cry, Little Mouse.” And when the tears come, I feel better.
8. You can be anything you want to be.
I was raised on
Free to Be...You and Me. My mother taught me to believe I could accomplish anything I wanted. Equestrian? Ballerina? Writer? First woman president? I could do that.
My only limitation was my imagination. And I had quite the imagination.
Being a girl would not stand in my way. Being blind in one eye would not stand in my way. Don't listen to the teachers who say you can't. You can. Don't listen to the doctors who say there is no hope. There is always hope.
My mother taught me to believe I can take on the world. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. But I try because of her. And those victories are hers as well, because she always, always believed in me. And she taught me to believe in myself.
And because of Mom, I know -- I know -- I can be anything I want to be.
My mother was a really good mother. I don't tell her enough. I don't thank her for everything she did for me, everything she gave me, everything she gave up for me, everything she taught me. I don't say "I love you" as often as I should. I don't return phone calls as quickly as I should.
But I am grateful. And I do love her. And despite my every effort to learn nothing from her, I know now that I learned so much from her. All those lessons, all her sayings -- they sank in after all.
[Republished from last year by request and for my mother. Happy Mother's Day, Mommy Mouse.]