Mother’s mysterious reasons

 

December 26, 1998

 

 Anyone who claims to survive the holiday season unscathed is full of shit.

 Somewhere among the vast array of family members or friends trouble always lurks.

 For those of us with troubled souls closer to the surface, disaster around this time of year is no surprise, thus when my mother told me Christmas Eve she didn't want to celebrate the holiday with us, I just sighed. Then I began a campaign of telephone calls back to her as to determine a reason.

 With my mother, I never expect answers. She is the original mysterious woman, someone who keeps her complaints to herself, letting them fester into outrage thus resulting in situations such as this.

 Nothing satisfies her.

 This is not totally fair to her, of course. She is mentally ill, and as a result has been shuffled aside more than once for family convenience. Even I don't always take her into account first when making life decisions.

 She still fumes over my moving her from Jersey City Heights to Hoboken, even though the cost of rent shrank by three quarters while the apartment size increased by that same amount.

 She did not want to move out of Paterson either when my uncle Ted decided to move south to Tom's River and take his mother (my mother's mother) with him. Since my mother did not have the funds to live alone, she had to go.

 Yet for the most part, my mother makes decisions on skewed information, often getting all of the details of an event wrong, thus forming opinions that have no basis in reality.

 When confronted about her decisions, she just shouts out: "I'm not stupid, I know what's going on."

 Both these declarations are wrong.

 Her mental illness focuses her mind of single important moments in time, against which new even relevant information has no bearing. These moments become symbolic representations of an unchanging condition. If Dot, Ted's wife, is in a bad mood, the woman is cast as evil forever.

 Yet, my mother is not totally wrong. These symbolic moments sometimes do reflect a weakness of character. I often fail to live up to promises I've made. Dot did hate my mother. My mother's brother Rich did wish my mother dead in place of the sister that died young.

 It is the inflexibility of her opinions that make my mother wrong, and her inability to show mercy on those of us who are flawed and cannot live up to her expectations. Dot had a vision of family which never included my mother or grandmother, yet for 20 years, she got stuck with the extended family. Rich did love his other sister better, whose death drove him to drink and into his own madness -- out of which his remarks emerged. And I am not always reliable, but struggle to balance many needs and obligations, including my mother, the way I did with Rich before her. I handle neither situation adequately, but mean well in my efforts, something my mother does not always see, or wish to see, since such a vision would contradict her existing option.