My relationship with my mother isn’t very solid, either. I mean, when I was growing up, sure, we got along well. She was ridiculously overprotective, but she compensated by going to bat for me with dad when I wanted something out of the ordinary: a guitar, a new bike, armloads of cash. She was Good Cop to my dad’s Bad Cop, Madeliene Albright to my father’s Taliban.
Then something changed. I dunno if it was menopause or mental illness or a little bit of both, but sometime in high school, my mother took to her bed and refused to get up much. In addition to the babysitter we already had (there were four of us boys), we took on two cleaning ladies and a part-time cook. In the middle of dinner, mom would occasionally wander from her room into the kitchen, rifle through the junk drawer chock full ‘o Flexeril tablets, and mosey back to bed. Not a lot of mother-son bonding experiences, as you might imagine.
My freshman year at Millsaps, my parents divorced. About a year and a half later, while I was off in Texas for spring break, she married some scuzzy freak she’d been seeing. Since she didn’t bother to tell me herself, I had to find out from one of my brothers. I called her up and had a long conversation about nothing in particular and then, just as I was about to sign off, I asked: “Mom, while I was out of town, did you get, um, married?” She responded a quick “Yes,” and that was about all she’d say.
All-in-all, that’s the way our relationship’s gone for the past decade. She’s not a terribly good communicator. Add to that her genetic disposition toward schizophrenia and alcoholism, and you’ve got a woman most folks would try to avoid. Except maybe Tennessee Williams, who’d write a play about her.
Frankly, mom and I don’t have much to talk about these days. We don’t see eye-to-eye on anything, really. When I make the obligatory pilgrimage to her house once or twice a year, it’s like Chinese water torture: we talk about safe things, make small talk–drip, drip, drip–as the minutes creep by. I’ve managed to escape each incident with my sanity intact, but I don’t know how long I can keep it up.
My dad and I, though, we get along like gangbusters. We’re both pretty stubborn, and we butted heads a lot when I was younger. He thought I was frittering my life away in the arts instead of becoming a lawyer or doctor or something. He also had a little trouble accepting the fact that I’m gay. But now that he sees I can make a living doing what I love, and that Jonno and I have a relationship as solid–if not moreso–than any of his married friends–he’s come around. We could sit and talk for hours; in fact, we have more in common than I’d ever thought possible.
Sorry, mom. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards. Hope your day was happy.
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