The Obligatory Bitch About My Mother Post

I am feeling much better now.  The bout of dizziness and nausea was determined to be foodborne illness by the doctor at the emergency room with almost a dismissive flair.  Happens a lot at this time of year, she explained.  They sent me home and told me to get some rest and ride it out, that it should subside in a day.  If not, then come back.

It subsided fairly quickly and here I am, ready to write a post about how much my mother annoys me.

What's that?  A blog post complaining about a parent?  The ground beneath me is breaking!

Here I am, lying on the couch, unable to move except to run to the bathroom to throw up.  My sister calls to wish me a happy new year, and I tell her how sick I am, and I'm just waiting for the ex to come and pick up the kids.  She sympathizes and asks if there's anything she can do but I tell her not to bother, since her car is in the shop and she'd have to hop the bus down to see me.  The ex was coming shortly to pick up the boys early.  If there was anything, I'd call her, but otherwise I thought I'd be okay.

Fifteen minutes later, my phone rings again.  It's my mom.  I already know my sister (let's call my sister Heather) probably called her right after she got off the phone with me.  This, with very little paraphrasing, is our actual conversation:

Mom: Happy New Year, Wanderer.

Me:  Happy New Year, Mom

M:  How are you feeling?

W:  I guess you probably talked to Heather... I feel terrible.

M:  Are the boys okay?

W:  Yes, the boys are fine.

Silence.

M:  Well... what do you think it is?

W:  I don't know.

M:  Was it something you ate?

W: (feeling very dizzy) I'm not sure mom.

M: What did you eat?  Did the boys eat what you ate?

W:  Mom?  I...

M:  Was it that chicken?  (Mom had packed leftover chicken from Christmas, including the carcass, so I could make stock)... you didn't just leave the carcass lying around, did you?

W:  Mom, I'm... that's... that's just ridiculous... why would you even...

M:  I'm JUST ASKING Wanderer... there's no need to take that tone with me.

W:  Mom, I'm really sick, if you’re just going to interrogate me, then I’m letting you go      .

M: Oh... okay then, I'll call you tonight and see how you’re feeling

There is virtually no situation where my mom will not take an opportunity to make me feel like a 7 year old.  And up until about a year ago, I just put up with it, because that's how moms are, right?  Well, not really, but I've been far more assertive with her lately.  That day, however, I was too sick to bother fighting with her.

Instead of doing what normal people do when they find out their child is sick, which is convey sympathy and then give an offer of help and comfort, my mom wants to immediately find out what the culprit is so she can admonish me for my carelessness.  I'm reminded of that line in Clerks:  "There's nothing more exhilarating then pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?”   If Schadenfreude is an Olympic sport, I think my mom could have retired the gold medal.

Okay, that’s harsh.  That’s way too harsh.

But every time I see her or talk to her since I can remember is laced with this kind of interrogation and accusation.  Arrgh!  There are long periods of time I simply don’t talk to her, just because I don’t want to go through this with her again.  I stand up for myself now, but there are times I simply don’t want to deal with it at all.

I try to be sympathetic, and my mom had a childhood I can’t even pretend to process.  She was born in the height of the Battle of Britain in Newcastle in England’s North-East.  Newcastle and the surrounding areas were heavily targeted by German bombers because of its collieries and shipbuilding.  A couple of hours after my mom was born, her and my grandmother were whisked off to the bomb shelter.  And that was it for the first 4 years of her life.  Bombing raids and air sirens and soldiers practicing maneuvers in her front street and young men in her neighbourhood going off to fight and never returning.  And for a decade afterward, she endured rationing.  So I can understand that her formative years were tempered by some pretty hard-assed living.  I’d be looking over my shoulder a lot too if someone was raining bombs on my head for the first 4 years of life.

In spite of all that, from what she and my dad have told me she excelled.  She was a competitive dancer in ballroom and tap, and she was a semi-professional tennis player in her teens.  She was quite social and outgoing, and a passionate supporter of Newcastle United, going to as many games as she could afford.

Geordie legend Jackie Milburn at St. James' Park.  Mom is probably in the crowd somewhere. She told me the stands were so packed with people that for the entire match her feet never touched the floor

When my mom was 22, she and four of her friends bound a ship for Canada.  My mom never discussed why she left, but to say that Canada seemed like a land of endless opportunity and plenty, untouched by the stark reality of war, which was still very much in the air back in England, even though life had somewhat returned to normal.  From what I gathered, there was a lot of tension between her and her mother, and it was no secret that she favoured her brother, my uncle Fred between the two kids.

They lived in Montreal and lived what my mom described as a pretty cosmopolitan lifestyle.  They would take trips to New York to see the sights and visit the famous jazz clubs (all of which my mom ended up hating, and never returned), ski in the Laurentian mountains or Vermont, or take in the nightlife of Montreal.  She brought her Beatles records along with her to parties before anyone here ever heard of them.  She lived through the Quiet Revolution in 1960s Quebec, where Quebec nationalism really found its feet and she found it difficult being an Englishwoman in a society that was fomenting a distinctly anti-English segment.  More than once she was ignored in shops for having an accent and/or not being able to speak French.

It was never clear how my mom and dad met.  They are both ones never to talk about themselves that much, but they did meet on a train going to Vancouver, my mom coming from Montreal and my dad getting on at Winnipeg.  My dad’s cousin chatted her up first, but it was my dad who ended up capturing her attention.  They were married in Vancouver in a matter of months and my mom was pregnant with Heather soon after. 

My dad probably could not have been more different from my mom.  I’ve never really figured out what they saw in each other.  Opposites attract, I guess, but they were about as opposite as you could get.  My mom was metropolitan, my dad was small town.  My mom loves to dance, my dad hates to dance.  My mom liked jazz and the Beatles, my dad liked country and the Stones.  My mom was a teetotaler, my dad was a drunk.  My mom loved to travel, my dad couldn’t be bothered.

And so my mom settled into married life with my dad and never looked back.  My mom’s four friends that she came over with all did pretty well for themselves.  One married a lawyer in Montreal, one married an insurance man who later got into Alberta politics.  One married a multimillionaire and moved to the States.  Another married a multimillionaire and moved back to England.  My mom married my dad, a drunk who drifted from working at the railway to working in the mines in BC back to working at the railway.  Don’t get me wrong, dad always made sure we always had a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothes on our backs, although there were times he was very begrudging about it.

Later on, my sister told me the last time they traveled back home to England that she confided in her that although she doesn’t at all regret having us kids, she regretted getting married to my dad.  She feels embarrassed whenever her and her four friends get together for a reunion, they are living these fabulous lives while she still lives in the same rundown house in the same working class neighbourhood in the same boring city with the same unmotivated blue-collar drunk for a husband.  I was shocked when my sister told me that she told her that she felt like she married beneath her.  I never saw my mom in that light before.

She didn’t say it, but both my sister and I got the impression that she regretted coming to Canada in the first place.  In Canada she is edgy and neurotic and anxious and chain-smokes, but back home she is completely different: relaxed and fun-loving, barely even smoking.  I’m not sure how much of that is her being back home and how much is it being away from my dad, but I’m sure it’s a combination of both.

My mom suffers a boatload of anxiety and mental issues.  I’m sure growing up in the spectre of war has a lot to do with that as well as my mom’s stereotypically British attitude of ‘stiff upper lip and all that’ when it comes to her problems.  Anxiety and panic and worry seems to permeate everything she says or does.  Growing up in our household with a moody, unpredictable drunken dad on one hand and anxious, panicky and pessimistic mom on the other has imparted a lot of the same elements onto us kids.  My sister and I both grapple with anxiety, and I’m sure my brother does too, although he is an iron wall of dispassion and would never, ever admit such a thing.

 Anyway, mom called yesterday and asked how I was.  I told her I was feeling better and that set her mind at ease.  She asked about the boys and I told her they were fine.  We talked Newcastle United’s horrific performance against Liverpool last Friday and she told me Uncle Fred called on New Years Eve from the pub at about 1 in the morning their time and swore that they didn’t play that badly.  We laughed and both agreed that Uncle Fred was well into his cups then.  Oh well.

Mom still annoys me.  She still annoys all us kids.  She needs real help for her anxiety and I think what she really needs to do is to leave my dad.  But that’s another lost post for another day. I'm off for a run.