What If I Treated My Mother Like She Used to Treat Me?

If I did it, it would be called neglect — when she did it, it was called parenting

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

As my 91-year-old mother’s caregiver, I make all of her meals. Since I don’t want to waste food or my time, I make what she likes.

Because why wouldn’t I?

When I was growing up, my mother made all of my meals. Since she didn’t want to waste food or her time, she made what she liked, and what you’ll-eat-it-and-like-it.

This wasn’t a problem for the most part. She was a good cook, and I enjoyed her cooking.

But with such a rigid policy, to which she remained fiercely devoted, a bad case of food trauma was inevitable.

Along with my mother’s you’ll-eat-it-and-you’ll-like-it policy, she also had a remain-seated-until-everyone’s-finished-eating rule. This meant that when Brussels sprouts were served, which to this day I have a cellular loathing for, dinner went longer than usual while everyone waited for me.

It usually went like this: I would eat everything else on my plate, while the slimy balls from Belgium grew cold. My father, who didn’t appreciate me keeping him from his Rockford Files, would give me a stare so penetrating that his eyes glowed green (swear to Medusa they did).

The sprouts were too large to swallow whole, so I’d put one in my cheek, tears springing to my eyes from the taste, and bite it in half before choking it down. Then drown my taste buds by chugging a glass of milk, while quelling the urge to throw it all back up.

Okay, that was really hard for me to relive. Sorry about taking you along for the ride.

But this is what I think about when I’m watching my mom happily eat what I’ve made her.

For every single meal.

Freaky Friday

As my mother’s sole caregiver, I have a lot of aha moments.

Like when we’re walking, and she’s shuffling her feet. To be clear, she could not shuffle just fine if she wanted to. As proven when she demanded to be discharged from the hospital (because hospitals don’t serve wine) and did everything but a herkie in front of the PT to get those boxes checked for her ticket home.

When I was little, if I didn’t pick up my feet to her standards, she’d give me a hard shove, which made me trip forward, and order with the sharpness of a drill sergeant, “Stop schlupping!”

I don’t know if she didn’t like the sound of shuffling little feet, but this happened often. And it’s what I think about whenever she’s schlupping on our morning walks, while also wondering how quickly the cops would be called if…

Pardon the exit to humor’s dark side, where I now live full-time.

Lately, with the combination of being with my mom every day and the exhaustion of caring for her, I’ve been wondering a lot about what would happen if we changed places.

Like in the movie Freaky Friday, when the mother and daughter switch bodies. Except in my movie, I get to keep my body but pretend to be her, and she gets to be me…when I was a girl.

Not sure if this will be a dark comedy or a horror film.

But it’s definitely rated Gen X.

If I did or said to her now what she did and said to me when I was a child, someone would call the authorities and report me for elder abuse. In fact, I probably would have been arrested already. Or at least under investigation.

Yet when she did it, it was called parenting.

And I’d like to talk about that.

Sweet Mom and the Other One

My mother had two sides to her when I was growing up. There was Sweet Mom, who spoke in a sweet voice and called me Sweetie and had a sweet way about her.

And then there was the Other One.

The one whose voice could slice paper without making a sound. The one who switched from warm to cold so fast it’d make your eight-year-old head do a Linda Blair.

And the one who knew exactly where to pinch you in public so no one would be the wiser (her favorite target was the soft spot underneath the arm that could bring tears to the eyes of a grown man, let alone a small child).

Then there were her words. And the biting tone she delivered them with.

It was the not-funny kind of sarcasm, and she wasn’t good at it, which made it meaner because it would just overtake her. No filter — and no empathy — to give her pause and think, Do I really need to say this?

When I grew out of my awkward junior hell school phase and entered high school foxhood (or at least the race for it), she sometimes spoke to me less like a mother to a daughter and more like a woman threatened by her daughter, needing to take that threat down a notch.

I didn’t have the language to understand this back then.

I do now.

If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better. — Anne Lamott

My father was less great. He ran on emotional neglect and spontaneous rage like it was fuel. His main target was my mother, who never stood up for herself, so I stood up for her. Sometimes, directly in front of her.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” I’d tell him, as my mom stayed silent behind me.

But then later I’d find out she had set me up, thrown me under a bus. Not to protect herself, but to keep herself in the position of victim. She knew my father’s anger needed a place to land, so my mother pointed in my direction, then stepped out of the way.

Just what a 15-year-old girl needs to lock in her still-developing brain: You’re not worthy enough for even your own parents to be on your side.

My mother did this throughout my adult life as well, leaving me covered in bus tracks. But I’ve gotten used to it by now.

Kind of.

She also operated under the Do as I Say, Not as I Do principle, which was common to any Gen X upbringing, so nothing out of the norm to see there.

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” says the parent, who then says not-nice things to their own child.

I think they call it verbal abuse nowadays. If I spoke to my mom the way she used to speak to me, I’d soon find out.

The difference between us is palpable.

Don’t get me wrong, my mom wasn’t a bad mom (grading on a Gen X parenting curve here). She was nice a lot of the time. But she’s nice for niceness’ sake, like saying please and thank you when called for.

She’s not particularly kind, though. She’s got a mean streak in her that I did not inherit, and it flares up when I least expect it.

Like when she gives a metaphorical sucker punch to the gut, where you lose your breath for a second and wonder what the fuck just happened?

Nowadays, it’s nowhere near as damaging to my psyche. And I’ve gotten really good at enforcing a strict don’t-fuck-with-me-policy that came about organically in my 24/7 caregiving role, which I think my mom can sense.

But it’s the memory of my mom’s mean streak that still gets to me.

And the reminder that I have a mother who cared about me, but not enough to say I love you or how are you or wanna talk about it?

Not enough to see the person standing right in front of her.

My well-being was not and has never been interesting enough to her. So I find it funny that her well-being is all I’m interested in.

The other contrasts are funny, too.

(And by funny, I mean the kind that keeps me in a perpetual state of laugh-crying while dissociating.)

For example, my mother has to know where I am at all times. This isn’t an aging thing, because she couldn’t have cared less where I was or how I was doing up until last year, when we moved in together.

If I step onto the patio for ten minutes of air (the kind of air not available when I’m in her presence), she slides open the door and pops her head out to say something, nothing important, just words to make sure I don’t get that air I need for long.

If I take a short swim in the pool, which is 20 feet directly in front of the sliding glass door where we live, she stands like Jason in Friday the 13th and stares at me. Waiting for me to look her way so she can say her famous line, “Are you ever coming in?”

If I’m taking too long in the bathroom (minutes are dog years to her), I’ll hear her walker roll up outside the door. She’ll either say, “Suzanne, are you in there?” as if I had Shawshanked my way out the shower wall. Or she’ll wait to say something after I come out. “I thought you’d be in there forever.”

Having my bathroom time monitored by a woman with a walker, who didn’t know or care where I was for the majority of my childhood, is one of the many hypocrisies I live with.

Starting from when I was in first grade, I left the house after breakfast and walked to school as my parents went to work. After school, I walked home to an empty house. In the summer, instead of school, I went somewhere. Then I came home for dinner.

I had a house key on a string I wore around my neck, a bike with a flower basket for carrying necessities (like my little brother), and an understanding that I was on my own until the streetlamps came on.

My mom never knew where I was. And I was six.

She’s 91 now. And I find this particular hypocrisy fucking hilarious.

(I will die on this dark humor hill, from the top of which I toss down f-bombs at my whim.)

I’m grateful for my ability to laugh at it all, since the alternative would be action.

Like when my mom scratches her thin skin, bleeding like a zombie if zombies bled, and instead of cleaning the wound, putting ointment on it, dressing it, and managing its healing…

• I would squirt a dropperful of Mercurochrome into the gash, blending the blood with red-dyed Mercury, and tell her, “You’ll be fine,” before kicking her outside to go play and leave me alone.

Or like whenever it rains and instead of making sure the umbrella covers her (if not avoiding being in the rain altogether)…

• I would squeeze her hand and yank her forward while saying in a derisive tone, “Oh please, you’re not sugar. You’re not going to melt.”

Or like when she picks at her nails, instead of saying and doing nothing…

• I would slap her hand — hard — and make her feel like she’s disgusting for doing it in the first place.

Who am I kidding, though?

While I have a good chuckle in the privacy of my head about reversing roles with my mom, I’m unable to be anything like her.

It wasn’t how I was raised.

But it’s how I’m built.

I wonder if in the absence of having an empathetic parent, empathy grows?

What This is Actually About

People will say my mother did the best she could.

Perhaps.

But why do our parents get a pass just because they’re parents? Why is the grace allowed to them expected to flow in one direction?

What about the cost to the child who is showing love and kindness to the parent who never showed it to them?

And please don’t say I should give as good as I got because it doesn’t work like that. You can’t turn me into someone who would ever treat my own children like my mother (and father) treated me.

I’m not bringing this up for pity, or even for validation, but because I’m honestly fascinated with the dynamic I can only see now that I’m inside of it in my role as caregiver.

My question is, why do we expect children to show up for their parents with patience, compassion, respect, and dignity?

As if it’s all about the parent.

Fuck your feelings about it, kid — the unofficial motto for Gen X

To be clear, I’m pushing back on the expectation, not the action. In the absence of my doing anything different with my mom, I take some weird pleasure in imagining it.

I might also just be losing it, my brain on caregiving and all.

But to be clear, I’m not my mom’s doormat.

I’m kind, yes, but not compliant. I care for her, yes (said with a sigh), but I’m not disappearing for her. Quite the opposite.

To protect my mental health, I have some iron-clad boundaries that keep me out of her line of fire. To an outsider, it might look like suppressed anger.

Or hardness.

But it’s really just me being quiet, not offering extra words that use my energy, not trying to keep up a conversation with my mom solely to avoid the silence.

I don’t do small talk with her. And that’s all she has to offer, because when you have no interest in someone’s well-being, even if it’s your own daughter, words run out quickly.

Still, this isn’t about what I refuse to give her.

It’s about how I refuse to become her.

So when my mom is schlupping, I will continue to say nothing.

When she gets under my figurative skin, I won’t find the fleshy part under her arm and pinch it until her eyes water.

I’m not here to verbally dress her down for the sake of making her feel like shit about herself. Or make passive-aggressive comments that wear the clothing of a compliment, but have the body of an insult.

When she doesn’t finish every bite on her plate, I won’t make her stay seated until she’s done licking it clean.

I will never force her to eat until she gags.

And I’ll continue to make the food she likes.

Except for…

Her favorite.

Too bad, so sad, Mom.

But if you liked those slimy balls from Belgium so much, you should have eaten mine.

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