Out of mercy and respect to my mother--both of which I still do possess, despite her best efforts--I will not tell the story I would like to tell, regarding her travails with the VCR. Which is a shame, because at the moment I am quite inclined to tell it. I would be less inclined to tell it had it not been for the events of yesterday.
Yesterday, as I mentioned in my early-morning post, I had to go to Mom's.
I suppose a word is in order here regarding that "had to". I am, as I've stated previously, 34 years old. I own a house and a car; I have a fairly well-paying job to which I go five (occasionally six) days a week. I have quite a few marketable skills, and quite a few more non-marketable ones. I am, in short, a fully self-supporting adult, with a few minor exceptions. I have lived my life, gained wisdom through experience, and can justify my opinions. I do what I need to do; when that's done, I do what I want to do.
The one exception to this independence: My mother. For whatever reason, no matter how useless or annoying I find the conversation, I have to call her every single day. And at least half the time, the conversation has no interest to me--who she saw at church, which friend of hers said what to whom, generally people I don't even know--which would be less-frustrating if she, in turn, expressed the slightest interest in the things that are important to me! And as if the calls aren't bad enough: I am expected to go see her at least every two or three weeks. Not just for an hour or two--for the better part of an entire day.
I can hear the hen-clucks now: "Oh, how can she be so selfish? Her mother gave birth to her, changed her diapers, wiped her nose, made sure she never wanted for anything, sent her to college, and this is the thanks she gets??"
My answer to those people: You have obviously never spent time with my mother.
A parent's job is to raise their child. Their CHILD, not their 34-year-old adult human being. My mother persists in trying to change my views about everything--literally EVERYTHING. Relationships, technology, politics, spirituality, personal finance, home care, sociology, the workplace: EV-ER-Y-THING. Not a topic in the world escapes her scrutiny. SHE says -I- reflexively take the opposite opinion of whatever she says; it seems the opposite from my standpoint. The difference is, I don't think HER opinions reflect poorly on me!
Perfect example: On one visit, my yin-yang pendant slipped out from under my shirt collar. Her reply to that was: "You don't seriously believe in that garbage, do you?"
Any of you who can come up with a polite, truthful, and assertive reply are cordially invited to submit it; I certainly couldn't. I just tucked my pendant back in and changed the subject, but it's typical of my mother's attitude toward anything that matters to me.
The worst of it is, she insists on asking questions to which she already knows she won't like the answers!!! I once told T (the old roomie) that when dealing with men, there was a theorem that should be followed almost without exception: If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question!!! My mother needs to learn this lesson. She knows she doesn't want to know any of the details about me and LJ, yet she persists in asking questions. "Does he live there?" "Does he pay for the groceries?" "You didn't co-sign on that car, did you?"
It was this last question that came up yesterday.
When I was very young, we had a neighbor on the corner who asked personal and family questions--how much my father made, or whether we were moving, stuff like that. And in dealing with that neighbor, my mother said I had to be polite, but I didn't have to tell her what she wanted to know. "It's okay to lie if someone's asking you something that's none of their business," she told me.
So I will admit it: I lied. I told her I was paying part of the car note, but that I hadn't signed anything. Even that answer didn't shut her up, though, and so I knew when she got home that she'd call me and go into round 2.
Good ol' Mom didn't disappoint me, either. She couldn't have been in the door five minutes before she was on the phone to tell me how upset she was. (I have noticed that people who spend a lot of time upset about things are usually borrowing trouble that isn't theirs to begin with.) And finally I had to pull out the big guns:
"You know, Mom, I get up and go to work every morning. I earn my paycheck, and I feel like I shouldn't have to justify how I spend it. I make choices based on what I see as the best action at the time--same as you. I don't say anything about what you do with your money, because I know you worked for it, and you earned it."
"And really," she said, "it's mine to do whatever I want with it." Her tone of voice here was petulant, almost childish.
"But the difference is," I said, "when you make a mistake--even if it materially affects me--I don't criticize you, because I know it's your money, you earned it, and it's yours to do with as you will. So, for example, when that deal with the financial manager went bad, even though in the long run that will affect me, I didn't say anything--because I knew you had done what you thought was best at the time."
"That's right," she said.
"Well, that's exactly what I'm doing here. I'm doing, with my money, what I believe is best."
What could she say to that? Nothing--which was exactly what she said.
I'm sure at some point she'll find out that I own the car, that it's on my credit report, that I'm responsible. And she'll be pissed beyond words, and give me another lecture about lying to her. I'm sure she'll use that as another excuse to lecture me about the time when I was on heroin, how I couldn't be trusted--but that was a different kind of lie. THOSE lies were to obtain something for my own gain; these lies--if that's what they can even be called--are to maintain my autonomy, my dignity, the privacy of my private life. I'll fight for THAT, if nothing else--the right to call my life my own and answer to no one, no matter how "entitled" they feel.
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