Past Present: a gift this holiday season (Part 1)

(May 30, 2009)

Each month, when we open our mother daughter circle, we call upon the energy of our female lineage.  More than once, one of the mothers has just finished complaining about her own mother…whom she is about to summon, like this:  "I am Rachel, daughter of Barbara, daughter of Mary, daughter of Anna, and I am Here, Now."

I have never questioned, when I am in the presence of my mother, “What in the hell qualifies me to lead mother-daughter groups, if I can’t even create* a satisfying relationship with my own mother?”  Because I know that although in that individual moment, in her presence, I might feel utterly bewildered, in retrospect it will all make sense and I just need to stay present in that paralyzing moment in order to get to the place where compression turns into perception.

Am I there Now?  She’s only been gone for two hours, after a long seven-day visit…in fact, to honor my maternal inheritance I just want to say that, her plane is probably actually still sitting on the runway, because you know how stressful travel is, late as usual because you know United, not only do they charge you for your suitcase, but they are never on time, and a cab from Midway is actually the same price as a cab from O’Hare, even though you think it wouldn’t be, and Midway airport is so much easier to get around in, Southwest Airlines is so much friendlier and they don’t charge you to check your suitcase, so Midway is actually better to fly into even though I know you don’t want to drive all the way out there to pick me up.  Did you put that leftover taco in the fridge?? Hmmmm??!

Oops.  Got carried away there, on my mom’s train of thought.  Her spoken stream of consciousness, or lack thereof, begins at 7am—right after my ayurvedic warm oil massage, tantric sex breathing, yoga…and delightful, aromatic, excessively long shower, which one would think would be adequate preparation for the onslaught.  To be able to live through that constant monologue for a week and not stab myself in the head with a fork, or perhaps more therapeutic but even more offensive to my mother, lie on the kitchen floor on my back and yell help at the top of my lungs—has anyone ever done that right in the middle of a frustrating interpersonal moment?  I mean, since they were a two year old?  It might provide a powerful energy shift…which is all that is actually needed, right?

Interpersonal moment.  That is the key word…the level of interpersonal moment my mother is willing to engage in ludicrously unsatisfying.  Mostly I just tune out, like the long-frustrated husband in the movies who turns his hearing aid down, saying the occasional, “Yes!” when appropriate.  But there are moments when I want to say to her face:  “You’re not home!”  She already thinks I’m super, super weird, so…what can I lose?  She can disown me and it actually might be BETTER.  Like when David said he was going to divorce Janet a few weeks ago, dropped the bomb, she was devastated, and now their relationship has never been better.  The sex is more satisfying than ever.  Suggesting a “divorce” might be just the key to unlock the appalled state I get into in my mother’s presence.  I walk around the house going, wow, this is really who she IS?  Is she really this afraid of silence?  How can she not know her thoughts, her state of judgment, her need to plan compulsively, are making her miserable and affecting her level of sanity?  Well, but she knows…she has asked me why she isn’t happy, and I have told her.

Can I get out of judgment that she’s in judgment?  Maybe, if she wouldn’t verbalize every judgment.  Maybe at the next visit.  Which she’s already talking about, planning.  I am feeling pretty much like if we never saw each other again, it would be fine.  I will not die wishing I had tried harder to have a relationship with her.

Or will I?  It is not my responsibility to heal my mother.  I learned that, decades ago, when I tried to get her into an AA meeting—or anywhere close.  I can’t heal her.  And she is not going see me, if she’s looking through a lens of judgment—and she is not going to allow me to lead her into a more positive state, even though she has, on occasion, asked me to. 

My instinct is to…try.  Just my very presence, I am told by yoga clients, is healing to be around.  I would assume SOMETHING about me would rub off on my mom.  But it does not seem imminent.  Instead, she rubs off on me and I compress.  She has declared, “This is who I am, and I can’t change.”  She is very invested in clinging to the state of mind that makes her unhappy.  And we seem to polarize each other.  Because I sure don’t feel like my expanded self around her.  My experience last week is that at the most, we average each other out, me going numb and she… maybe avoiding voicing some of the more graphic fears that she might normally put into words.

Even knowing that with every fiber of my being, when my mom is talking about how much worse the world is getting and how she will never change, there is a polarizing affect that feels like I so strongly don’t want to enter her world, that I can’t fully inhabit mine.  It’s just energy.  But it doesn’t feel safe to FEEL around her.  So the full bloom of my happiness is stunted in her presence.  And I take full responsibility for that. 

*Nine years later, looking at this blog, I have a wealth of compassion for myself, as well as for her, because after my mother's death I see very clearly her incapacity to be happy or to sustain a deep and loving relationship.