Mother's Daze?

My father used to joke that the reason Yiddish was called the “Mama Loshen” (mother tongue) was due to the fact that she, the Jewish mother, did most, if not all, the talking. I can’t speak for other matriarchs, but in my family that witticism revealed a very stark reality, and one reason I dread calling or visiting my mother. It’s not that I don’t love her or care about her. In my own detached and arrogant way I care about her needs and feelings. I just prefer not to sit through half an hour of listening to her babble on and on before she finally says what she planned on saying when she first picked up the phone. Without exaggeration, I can set down the phone, prepare a couple of sandwiches, open a beer, boot up my computer, and then return to the phone without my mother ever knowing I was gone. Mother and I also have some history between us that skews our relationship in a bad way.

Among my worst character flaws, and there are certainly enough of those to be thoroughly ashamed, is having little patience for things that don’t interest me and, as poetic justice seems to curse one closest to home, the range of my very own mother’s coherent conversational capabilities are severely limited to the mundanely pedestrian. It’s not that she doesn’t try to pontificate on every subject under the sun. Need legal or medical advice? My mother will eagerly offer you a consultation free of charge. Her generosity with counsel, however, does not offset her cerebral ineptitude. Mother isn’t all that bright and tends to follow the path of least intellectual resistance when assessing an event or idea. Her linear thinking doesn’t leave much room for imagination, and coupled with lack of formal education and a healthy dose of over-worrying anxiousness, it turns out that even if she miraculously diagnoses the problem correctly her solution for said problem remains wholly inadequate. That she has managed to do as well as she has is a testament to some internal quality or good fortune that remains yet undiscovered.

Since she was widowed last year, she has changed, and perhaps for the better. She began confiding more of her concerns to me, her eldest child, to a much greater extent than I’m comfortable with and much more so than she does with my brother or either of my sisters, with whom she has daily, if not hourly, contact. Mother is starting to worry more about her health now and she has been having panic attacks over finances. Her physical symptoms are being treated by a very competent physician. For the psychology, however, she’s now taken to calling me at odd hours. All this is bringing out an existential side to my mother that I’ve never seen before, and if you think listening to her blather on about carpeting was irritating, just imagine what happens to my blood pressure when the conversation becomes a mutated parody of “Tuesdays with Morrie”, wherein mother plays the grand and wise matriarch of all that exists on heaven and earth right after admitting she has no idea what is going on around her.

I realize that her health isn’t what it used to be. In five years, Mother has lost the business, her mother, and her husband. Mortality doesn’t require great genius to find acknowledgement. I sense that part of her wants to apologize for something she imagines that she did or didn’t do sometime ago before it’s too late to make amends. She believes I am mad at her and she is correct. I am. She knows the reason, but true to form, she deflects the responsibility onto her late husband and then offers me advice on how to cope with my disappointment. Let me just say that I am ‘coping’ fine, and to guarantee my sanity I choose to maintain a safe geographical and emotional distance from her. If she is counting on me provide for her some emotional ‘anchor’, she is in for a rude awakening. I leave that task to my siblings. They are stronger people than I.

That she allowed my father to raise me on his own was a great blessing. My father had his faults but, by comparison, my father’s silence and psychic distance were infinitely more tolerable than her ranting mother-hen impressions. I bear her no ill will on account of my childhood. Even the religious differences that came about later on created no particular issue. With my mother it was about business, always about the business, and like the Mafioso who kisses your cheek and then shoots you in the back saying “Hey. Nuthin personal. It’s juzz bizness ya know”, my mother, too, could turn from loving and trusting parent to mob goon when it came to her business. That she expects her son to suddenly forget how he was screwed over is a little unrealistic. Mother is good at having high expectations of other’s sense of forgiveness.

So before I called my mother this Mother’s Day, I took a deep breath, put everything in proper perspective and dialed her cell number. After the ritual introduction phase of the conversation wherein mother divulged each and every detail of my sibling’s lives, she asked me “Are you mad at me for something?” I answered “Yes.” There was an eerie silence on her end of the line and before she could speak I said “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you or that I am doing anything that I normally would or wouldn’t do. I am who I am and I have my own feelings to sort out. It may have been a long time ago, but it was very hurtful for me.” With that she did seem a little comforted. For her, as long as I act the dutiful and loving son, and even if only for a short phone call now and then, it really doesn’t matter to her how I really feel. The reassurance is all she wants. Beyond that, she can use her imagination to conjure any variant inner reality of her choosing.

There were no tears of either joy or sorrow this Mother’s Day. There never are. She asked me if I had heard from any of my own children and, sadly, the answer was still ‘no’. I wished her a “Happy Mother’s Day”, asked her to send regards to my siblings, nieces and nephews, and she reminded me to call more often and maybe even come up for a visit. As always I said that I would and that maybe, if I have some vacation time, I would pay them a visit. For my mother’s part, she stoically endured the usual passive-aggressive sign off that she receives each time she parts company from her eldest child, choosing once again not to call me on my bluff.

I can’t be closer to her than what I can be for the moment. The storybook family sing-a-longs, holiday dinners, and walks along the beach are not my forte, nor are they hers, but she dreams of me gracefully performing the very thing that she herself cannot manage. I am reconciled to this reality. She continues searching for something she will not get in return. I would tell her to leave off her regrets, but she is as apt to take my advice now as I was to ever take hers. More futile effort is not needed.

I love you, Ma. Please accept that this love has to be from a safe distance. For both of us.