(no subject)

[altarflame]

I like to act like I don't really care what my mom thinks because my mom is crazy anyway. I know she thinks my house is too messy and my kids are too numerously chaotic and that I weigh too much, and she sort of runs everything I've ever done for my brother through a strainer such that what comes out the other side is me really failing him at every turn, but, you know, whatever. She's nuts! She's always made nutso decisions. She doesn't even read this anymore - for quite awhile now - because she just can't handle my rare, completely honest, fleeting references to my childhood. *shrug*

Likewise, I like to act like I'm totally cool with my Dad, like he's the not-crazy one, the one I can call for advice when the toilet is overflowing or for a recipe when I can't remember how to make something, and he'll show up for Thanksgiving and since he works graveyard shifts he's available when everybody else is asleep. So he has no relationship whatsoever with my kids, doesn't know their middle names or birthdays or favorite things; so his place is not the kind of place we could ever go to visit. I love my Dad and he did some things right with us! I'm sticking with that. I'm nostalgic when I hear Pink Floyd and I'm eager to hear the latest jokes some cab fare told him.

Then every now and then I can't deal anymore and I start throwing a giant tantrum like a giant baby about how I HAVE PARENTS, live, virile, healthy, YOUNG parents and I want to be able to, you know, GO TO THEM for things! Like, "Hey guys, my book is getting published!!!" for instance. I mean they're only right around 50 (him just over, her a bit under). I want them to care that I'm back in college and burning through this first degree. I want them to SEE how hard it is to do good things for all these different kids and that I do it pretty damned well. I just can't imagine being so apathetic and disconnected from the lives of my grown children if they wanted me in them!

I really feel like a flailing melodramatic first world toddler right now, too, because I can call either of my parents up to say, "I'm in the hospital" or "I don't know what to do about Grant and I" or "money is really bad" and they'll lend me an ear all afternoon and call back to check in two days later. That is good; I recognize that. I appreciate it.

But no...I want them to be proud of me.

I'm even worse than that, because my Dad has always been proud of me and does tell me how great my home/family/kids are and how it sets his mind at ease and how great I cook and whatever. But he has no earthly idea who I am. We were light years apart when I was growing up since I was on my mom's "side" and to this day, I mean...I would be really shocked if he knew any of my favorite movies or music or books or "got" my humor or felt like we could "hang out" without it being super awkward. He just does not have a clue what I'm about, and that's kind of frustrating. He thinks the entire field of psychology is quackery and it's my major and also the lens I view the whole world through. I think his eyes would get as big as plates and a vein in his forehead would start pulsing if I admitted to him that I voted for Obama.

My mother has some kind of distorted and infuriating but closer-to-right concept of me as a person, but she's just never been proud of me. She was the mom who skipped school award ceremonies the rest of my relatives came to, stayed home when I was getting baptised, and could never remember the name of the organization I was travelling the country with.

Two things set this off:

1. She called on Isaac's birthday to cry and passive-aggressively make inappropriate requests of me re: a big blowout drama situation with my brother getting kicked out of JobCorps that I'm not gonna go into and never wrote about because, geez man, living it outside the computer was enough. I told her someone wanted a book of mine and I was getting published. At no point did this conversation EVER drift into Isaac's birthday (what grandmother doesn't send a card? HER PARENTS send a card) or did she even mention the publishing. It was like she hadn't heard me. This was sort of the sequel to the call I made to her in January, at my wits end about Isaac's issues/counseling/resulting investigations into our family/etc. She listened and changed the subject to her life.

2. Later the same week of Isaac's birthday, she posts on facebook that Bob made it to Lakeland on the Greyhound "all by himself" and she's "so proud" of him...my brother is TWENTY ONE YEARS OLD. How is that level of patronizing bs not embarrassing at that point in life? I was taking the Greyhound to go see her in Jacksonville when I was 16, and she sure as hell never said she was "proud of me" for it. Or anything else.

Blargh.

My Dad had really interesting and helpful things to say about Isaac in January, especially as relates to our genes. I cannot imagine trying to call him and explain this small press publisher, though, or the actual collection of utter insanity they're currently editing of mine... On the one hand, he's the one who spoonfed me Stephen King my whole childhood. On the other - Just, no.

Hopefully I have this out of my system, now, and can go back to not caring again. I am 30 freaking years old, after all.

Comments

[emfish.livejournal.com]

My parent's divorced when I was 11, and I was also on my mom's "side" after that, which was the complete opposite of the total "daddy's girl" I was growing up. My dad remarried, and my stepmother has Borderline Personality Disorder, which, when I was little just translated to "wicked stepmother." My mom, as much as I love her, drinks too much and says crazy things. The things I loved about her when I was a teenager (like how she let me drink alcohol- supervised- at 17, or how she was so open about sex talk- she taught me and my girlfriends how to give blow jobs on a wine bottle at 18) are now the things that grate on my nerves when I'm around her. I think becoming a mother has really cast a different light on my parents. I'm now seeing them through a "grandparent filter," and comparing them to my own amazing grandparents-- they don't hold up. I was fortunate enough to have been blessed with an amazing grandmother who was like the Mexican Florence Henderson. I mean, apron-wearing, bake you cookies and tameles when you're feeling down, always there with hugs and medicine and the perfect advice, TV-sitcom grandma. My parents are the complete opposite-- my mom loves my kids, but she's like Florence Henderson with a really bad mouth and a little too much wine every night. My dad comes around on bithdays and the occassional movie trip. He's defintely not a constant. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you're not alone. And I think this is a common thing. I've noticed it with a lot of my friends too. I think as times are changing, people are changing too. My grandparents died with paid-off houses and an inheritance to leave their children. My parents are both upside-down on their mortgages, have no life-insurance, and will probably breeze through their retirement. There won't me much left for me and my brothers, and that's ok. I can make my own way. I think there are definite differences now between the relationships between parents and their adult children from even just 30 years ago. I'm not sure how that will translate for my own children when they're adults, but like you, I defintely plan on doing it differently than my parents are. I can't imagine not being there for my kids at any point in their life.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_delphiki_/]

I don't think this is silly at all. My parents passed away when I was a teenager and I can say with 100% honesty that I need them more now that I'm an adult, than I ever did as a child.

[(Anonymous)]

It's easy to feel alone on this, because sometimes it seems like everyone has competent, contributing, supportive parents in relation to those of us who don't... until someone posts about it and suddenly you start finding out that you are more the norm that the world would have you believe.

My father has only communicated with me through emails he sends to an extensive mailing list for the last 3 years. My mom continually questions everything I do as though I'm an idiot and whenever I speak about my older child's Aspergers diagnosis, she gets outright hostile about how nothing is wrong with my kid... my kid actually stims quite frequently, it's not something you can't notice... yet my mom won't accept it and gives me shit about acknowledging that there is an issue.

I'm lucky in that I sort of gave up on mine years ago, but I have a lot of friends that are in that place of being in pain over the fact that they don't have parents they can count on for understanding, support and acknowledgment and it's sad. I have a girlfriend that has these huge, elaborate fantasies about winning awards for her filmmaking and how proud her parents will be - but they don't get her career at all, and never will.