#292 Reach out to My Mom
A little while back, I told my parents that I was going after my dream of being a writer. My mom seemed like she took the news really well. My father said she just wanted me to be happy.
So when I got a phone call earlier this week from my mom, I didn’t think much of it. But it turned out to be one of the worst phone calls I’ve had with her in a long time.
There was no yelling or screaming. She just started talking about my decision. It was as if I wasn’t even there and she was having a conversation with herself. She said complained I was 36 and trying to do something as impractical as writing. That I should pretend to be happy at my job so I could stay there. That basically everything I was planning on doing was wrong. I was going to ruin my life and I was a horrible son to boot.
Normally, my first reaction when my mom acts this way is anger. But she had never acted this way before. She sounded depressed. Then I felt like shit because I made her feel that way. I started crying like a bitch. I couldn’t take it.
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep doing my work and be happy. I don’t want to make you unhappy. I’m not happy though. What do you want me to do?”
When she heard my crying, she relented a bit and I hung up the phone.
Then I got angry. I got angry about her guilt trip. About how she wasn’t even giving me a chance before I had even started. Angry that we couldn’t just talk like normal people. She couldn’t let anything go. I dreaded ever calling her again because it would just be another massive guilt trip.
My father wrote me an email later:
I suggest that you will maintain good and normal relationship with her (difficult but I hope you will at least try). Call her often and just tell her about your plan and how you’re doing it. Ignore her complain and suggestions and comments, and just say OK and I’ll do it, something like that. Tell her about trivial things of life, for example, what you will do during holidays, what people you see, what activities you engaged, but not your current work, especially the part you don’t like.
While I appreciate my dad was trying to make peace but the email just made me angrier. I was sick of bending over backwards to accommodate my sometimes bat-shit crazy mom.
I told my dad she had to change before I’d ever talk to her again. She couldn’t just make me feel guilty every time she called. I wasn’t going to allow her to do that.
My dad wrote back and asked me to understand her point of view. I’ve been understanding it my whole life. No, I was not going to bend for her. Not this time. If we talked again, it would be on my terms. It would be because she agreed not to make me feel like shit anymore.
Then I went to yoga tonight. Ella talked about being non-judgemental in life. I thought about how my mom was judging the shit out of me. But wasn’t I judging her too? Wasn’t my ego being hurt by her? In yoga when you are in a pose and you feel resistance, you’re supposed to breathe and let go. Don’t fight it. Let it go.
When I got home, I picked up the phone and called her. I fully expected a shit storm. A guilt trip of such epic proportions that Chinese mothers back in the homeland would talk about it while making dumplings. They would teach classes about it. Graduate students would write thesis papers on it. “Analysis of the Destruction of a Grown Man Over the Telephone.” They would make summer blockbuster action movies about it. My life ending in a giant mushroom cloud.
The hand holding the phone shook as I anticipated it. She asked me how I was doing. I winced. I said fine. We chit chatted for a little while and I noticed she had still not started the guilt trip. What was she waiting for? I decided to bring it up in a roundabout way.
“Well, I just wanted to call to make sure you were ok. I didn’t want you to be unhappy,” I said.
“Yeah yeah. I’m ok,” she said. Then pretty soon, she said, “Ok. That’s it.”
That’s it? Where was the guilt trip? Stunned, I just said goodbye to her.
I thought about it for awhile. Then I realized that she was trying her damnedest not to say anything that she really wanted to say. That she was trying to have a completely normal conversation. For me. I was so worried about all the things she was going to say.
Turns out it wasn’t that. It wasn’t about she did say. It was about what she didn’t.
