An Old Friend

I am the oldest of six and my mother was born on Christmas.  There was no way to win.  If you spent time with her on her birthday, she cried because you didn’t like your new Christmas toys.  If you played with your toys, she ran in her room and slammed the door because clearly you thought  Christmas was more important than her birthday.

On a normal school day if you were to say, try to  read a book, she would yell upstairs that she “wishes she had time to just read.”   If you were a teenager and asked to go out to a party, she’d mutter,  ”So, your plan is to just leave me here  by myself with all these kids ?”  And when I sold my first T.V. show she wondered if  I’d,  ”finally  be able to get her a job.”

It’s possible I am predisposed to guilt.

The thing is,  I have been through literally decades of therapy.  I recognize guilt.  I  wave at it as it approaches.  Guilt is an old friend I think I’ve outgrown but because we have so much history together, can’t quite bring myself to cut off.  She shows up without any warning (no way Guilt is a guy), embraces me, and to tell the truth,  I hug back.   We feel so comfortable together, that I’m honestly glad to see her.  ”Oh, there you are!” I cry,   “You certainly got here in the nick of time. Listen to this!  I almost went out to dinner with some friends rather than rushing home to be shunned by my son.”

This is a very long way of saying I’m worried that I’m  passing this hard-wired guilt on.

In really ugly ways.

My son asks to have a couple friends sleep-over after I’ve worked until 11:00 the night before and I say, “Oh good.  Let’s make sure you have fun.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll just serve all of you several meals, clean up and lay in bed at two in the morning praying you’ll all go to bed soon.  I’m pretty sure the six hours of sleep I had last night should be enough to last me for the rest of the weekend.”   Or I will be trying to get out of the house to do something for myself and he will suddenly need to be taken to a school thing or require help on a project.  ”That’s okay, honey,” I say,  ” I didn’t really want a massage.  I don’t actually need new shoes.   It doesn’t matter.  Nothing I want to do ever matters.”

I don’t want to be this person.  This person is my mother.  I-am-not-my-mother.

Yet.

So one night after two (read: four) glasses of wine, I decided to help him through this flaw in my character . I sit him down and tell him all about the way I was brought up.  I explain my mother and what terrible guilt she inflicted on me and how sometimes I can’t help trying to make him feel guilty because it’s so ingrained in my blood.  Then I made the mistake of a lifetime.  I tell him that when I try to give him guilt, he should refuse to accept it.

Wa-aaay too much ammunition.

First of all, and this is key… no more wine before mother-son talks.  Secondly, I have to find a way to take this back because now it appears I have absolutely no leverage.  I used to be able to make him feel really terrible.  I can’t tell you how much I miss that.  Now he looks at me and asks, “Is that guilt?”  ”No!  No,” I cry. “Not guilt!  This is all medically documented.  My back is actually broken from working all day to support this house.  Raising you has literally taken years off my life.”

And now armed with his new information, he laughs at me.

I don’t know.  Maybe it’s a good thing.  Maybe I have kept my son from drowning in my bottomless pit of guilt.  Maybe I have broken the ugly pattern and saved generations of children from misery.

But I have screwed myself royally.  Don’t worry.  That doesn’t matter.  I wanted to be screwed.  Really.

Rae