For what it’s worth, in the past 25 years I have spent in therapy, I’ve learned that my mother and I are enmeshed, that she loves me conditionally, that she manipulates me through guilt and shame, and that she will never change. Friends, therapists, family members, and even my mother herself have told me to stop looking for validation because it was never going to come from her. I’ve cried, over and over, about the futility of my relationship with my mother; I’ve begged her to open up to me, to speak to me kindly, to accept me for who I am. I’ve stopped speaking to her when she refused. Despite my mother’s criticism and cutting judgment of my lifestyle, I am always the one to pick up the phone again and call her, if not daily, at least semi-weekly. I have traveled home to see her and so her grandchildren can see her, even though every time I do I lose a little bit of my footing, feel a little bit more uneven, disconnected from myself and what I believe to be true. Because no matter how much my mother and I love each other, we see the truth so differently that she doesn’t seem to like me very much, and although she lets down her guard enough sometimes that I am able to remind myself why and how I not only love her but like her for who she is, each time I let down my guard with her she says something that makes me think I am not someone she is proud to call her daughter. And still, I pick up the phone to call her, and still, I return home four times a year to visit–because as much as I can’t stand her criticism and feel marginalized by her judgments, there is a void without them.
This is what forgiveness looks like in my family.
When I confessed to her that my marriage was falling apart, she began reciting the lines she had no doubt run through in her own mind many times over the course of her forty-five year marriage to my father: I should learn to be less selfish, I needed to understand what my husband needed from me and give it to him, I should think about my children and the commitment I made to them when I decided to become a mother. Thinking I could be honest with her, and believing that I was validating her, I told her I have always been so grateful for the sacrifices she made to ensure that my childhood was carefree and secure, but, I said with a sigh, “I’m not finding happiness in those same sacrifices.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, I don’t think I can spend another ten or twenty years waiting to be complacent.” I meant to celebrate the comfort she now found in my father, in the way they supported each other and spent time together, rather than to linger on the anger and passive aggressiveness I saw in her throughout my teenage years.
The silence crackled with her defensiveness, and I knew instantly I’d unintentionally pushed the wrong button.
“So you don’t think the choices I made were necessary?” she bristled on the other end of the line.
I tried to answer carefully, “No, I just mean that maybe if you’d paid more attention to what you wanted and needed you might have been happier.”
“I’m very happy,” she said sharply. “My family is my priority, and you kids were my priority. Your father and I made a commitment to raising you the best we could, and that meant I couldn’t always have what I wanted it, when I wanted it. Maybe if you weren’t so selfish, you would understand what that means.”
“I just meant–” I tried to explain, but she cut me off.
“You need to stop blaming me for your unhappiness,” she barked over the phone. “I own the choices I made, and I will not have you tell me that my life was a waste.”
“That’s not what I was saying–” I tried again.
“You know what, I think it would be best if we don’t talk for a while. I am too old to be judged by my daughter,” she spat. And with that, she hung up the phone. We didn’t speak again for months.
Apparently, forgiveness doesn’t run both ways in my family.
When my mother hung up the phone, I was hurt but not surprised. We don’t have real conversations, my mother and I, about our relationship or about what we think about each other. Correction: my mother has no qualms telling me what she thinks of me; it’s when I try to share my perspective that conflict roars to life.
And still, I forgive her.
When I was a sophomore in college, my mother panicked when the woman I was dating sent flowers to her house, where I was spending the weekend after having my wisdom teeth extracted. Or rather, I panicked when she asked me who the woman was and why she was sending flowers, sending us into one of our whirlwinds of confusion and anger that invariably lead to me clamming up and refusing to talk to her. Her questions were simple; my answers were not, and so I refused to answer, as was always the case when my mother went on the offensive (or became offensive, as I often perceived her to be). When she sent my father in as her proxy (he was often her intel when it came to me), we spent an awkward trip driving around town with cups of iced coffee sweating in our hands, discussing (or rather, attempting to discuss) my bisexuality. Unable (or unwilling) to explain to him how I had come to this conclusion about myself, what it meant to the boy I had been dating, or what it meant in general, I simply told him I was getting back together with the boy and was no longer dating the girl and that was the end of it.
For the next twenty years, I kept my bisexuality hidden from my family. After all, I was married (to the boy I had been dating in college), and they didn’t need to know (and I presumed, didn’t want to know) about my queer friends. When I took a road trip home with two women (both gay) one summer, my biggest fear was that my family would recognize them as lesbians, ask questions, and blow my cover. When my marriage fell apart, it might or might not have been because of my bisexuality; regardless, the catalyst was undeniably obvious: I had fallen for a woman. Shocked, tormented, and spinning in a maelstrom of confusion, I came out to my mother over a glass of wine during one of her visits east to see her grandchildren. Although at first she tried to talk me through what it all meant, eventually she shut down–or rather, lashed out. When she packed her bags and headed home, I thought I’d never speak to her again.
Sometimes I think about not calling her–and more time lapses between calls now than it used to. Eventually, enough time will go by that I’ll get a phone call or a text message from her that says, “Why haven’t you called me?”
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, turned 93 this year. Although you wouldn’t know it by looking at her, her heart is failing; our time together is winding down. My mother has been single-handedly taking care of her for over 30 years, when my grandfather lost his battle with cancer. Any given day of the week, my mother will stop by her mother’s house with food, or send my father to pick her up and bring her over for dinner, or they bring her to church on Sunday. Invariably, each time my mother stops by, my grandmother will comment on my mother’s shirt (don’t you think it’s too tight?), her lipstick (are you going to put some on?), her hair (you should brush it before we go), or some other aspect of my mother’s appearance. Although my uncles can do no wrong in my grandmother’s eyes, her daughter is never commended for all of the good she does. In the rare moments when my mother confides in me, I can seen how hard the constant criticism has been for her. And still, my mother continues to invite my grandmother to dinner, stops by with food, drives her to the pharmacy.
Perhaps, it is only the responsibility of the younger generations to forgive.
Last week, my grandmother called to ask me if I could fly home for the weekend, even though I had just visited less than a month ago. She wanted to buy my ticket, she said. I could stay with her, she said. We would surprise my father on his 70th birthday. Her call came on the heels of a visit to her doctor, who I knew (unbeknownst to her) had told my mother her coronary arteries were over 90% blocked. The angina she was experiencing would probably get worse, not better, even though he had given her a nitroglycerin patch to wear. Her shortness of breath was a result of the lack of circulation caused by the blocked arteries. Sum total, she was slowly dying, even as she seemed more vibrant than ever. Although I promised my grandmother I would keep the surprise a secret, I called my mother to tell her, because she is the keeper of the family calendar and because I knew my grandmother and I couldn’t pull this off on our own. Although I had assumed my mother wouldn’t be interested in seeing me so soon after our last blow-up, she seemed excited–if only for her mother’s sake.
This is why I forgive my mother each time she says something that cuts me to the bone. I assume it is the same reason she continues to forgive her own mother for the daily offenses she has endured. Forgiveness means I’ll able to let go when there’s no one left to hold.
(mostly) full disclosure 