Birthday Memories
Today’s my mother’s birthday. Had she not died in 1996, she would have turned 85 today.
Like many people, I am still conflicted about my former relationship with my parents. Freud would have been very interested in the way I interacted with my mother, but I largely discount Freud. Psychologist Nancy Hazan would have also wanted to explore that relationship, and I’ll grudgingly admit that Hazan may have something significant to contribute about my earliest attachments.
Of course, I was much too young to remember it, but soon after I was born I was given to my maternal grandparents to raise while my parents trucked off to Washington, D.C. to establish careers. My father had a son by an earlier marriage who was also given to the grandparents, in this case, the paternal grandparents. The difference was that I eventually was reunited with my folks, while my half-brother never came to live with us.
Those who met my parents before their deaths commonly told me “I don’t know how you turned out as well as you did.” Implied in that comment was the understanding that even though I was far, far from perfect, with the environment I grew up in, and the parental influences I had, the fact that I wasn’t a serial killer, or worse, was a remarkable achievement. I once mentioned this to one of the college classes I was teaching and one young woman expressed surprise. “I took you has having an Ozzie and Harriet upbringing!” she said. Ozzy and Sharon, more like.
Upon my mother’s death, my children and I went to her memorial service in her home town in North Carolina. Everyone was predictably nice. After hearing comment after comment from well-wishers telling me what a wonderful person my mother was, my teenaged daughter took me aside and asked in a whisper “Are they really talking about Grandma!?”
There’s an incident that I recall from my own high school years that I think is telling. I was hoping to open a bottle of cola and was unable to find the bottle opener anywhere (remember when cola bottles needed an opener?). I searched and searched without success. I finally asked my mother. She told me it was in the junk drawer in the kitchen, the one that I had just finished searching. So I searched it again. This time I took out every piece of equipment I found in the drawer, one item at a time. No bottle opener.
Fine. I decided to do without the cola.
Twenty minutes later I was out on the enclosed sun porch looking for a magazine I had left there, and there, on the breakfast nook table, was the missing bottle opener. I had already decided against having a drink, so I left the opener there, retrieved the magazine, and went into the living room to read it.
About thirty minutes later my mother loudly announced that she had found the bottle opener for me. She came into the living room and placed it in my hand. “Where did you find it?” I asked. “In the kitchen junk drawer, just like I told you it’d be,” she replied.
It was a little thing, but very telling. She would rather lie to me, than lose “face.”
I don’t think either of my parents thought very highly of themselves. They were from Appalachian origins, and neither was college educated. In the high octane world of Washington, D.C., such limitations must have been embarrassing. So they pretended to be better than they were. I know they fooled some. Perhaps they even fooled themselves. But their constant efforts at face saving even at the expense of the truth, or at the expense of a genuine and healthy home-life, was an extreme price to pay.
It troubles me in my adult life, even now.
Like many people, I am still conflicted about my former relationship with my parents. Freud would have been very interested in the way I interacted with my mother, but I largely discount Freud. Psychologist Nancy Hazan would have also wanted to explore that relationship, and I’ll grudgingly admit that Hazan may have something significant to contribute about my earliest attachments.
Of course, I was much too young to remember it, but soon after I was born I was given to my maternal grandparents to raise while my parents trucked off to Washington, D.C. to establish careers. My father had a son by an earlier marriage who was also given to the grandparents, in this case, the paternal grandparents. The difference was that I eventually was reunited with my folks, while my half-brother never came to live with us.
Those who met my parents before their deaths commonly told me “I don’t know how you turned out as well as you did.” Implied in that comment was the understanding that even though I was far, far from perfect, with the environment I grew up in, and the parental influences I had, the fact that I wasn’t a serial killer, or worse, was a remarkable achievement. I once mentioned this to one of the college classes I was teaching and one young woman expressed surprise. “I took you has having an Ozzie and Harriet upbringing!” she said. Ozzy and Sharon, more like.
Upon my mother’s death, my children and I went to her memorial service in her home town in North Carolina. Everyone was predictably nice. After hearing comment after comment from well-wishers telling me what a wonderful person my mother was, my teenaged daughter took me aside and asked in a whisper “Are they really talking about Grandma!?”
There’s an incident that I recall from my own high school years that I think is telling. I was hoping to open a bottle of cola and was unable to find the bottle opener anywhere (remember when cola bottles needed an opener?). I searched and searched without success. I finally asked my mother. She told me it was in the junk drawer in the kitchen, the one that I had just finished searching. So I searched it again. This time I took out every piece of equipment I found in the drawer, one item at a time. No bottle opener.
Fine. I decided to do without the cola.
Twenty minutes later I was out on the enclosed sun porch looking for a magazine I had left there, and there, on the breakfast nook table, was the missing bottle opener. I had already decided against having a drink, so I left the opener there, retrieved the magazine, and went into the living room to read it.
About thirty minutes later my mother loudly announced that she had found the bottle opener for me. She came into the living room and placed it in my hand. “Where did you find it?” I asked. “In the kitchen junk drawer, just like I told you it’d be,” she replied.
It was a little thing, but very telling. She would rather lie to me, than lose “face.”
I don’t think either of my parents thought very highly of themselves. They were from Appalachian origins, and neither was college educated. In the high octane world of Washington, D.C., such limitations must have been embarrassing. So they pretended to be better than they were. I know they fooled some. Perhaps they even fooled themselves. But their constant efforts at face saving even at the expense of the truth, or at the expense of a genuine and healthy home-life, was an extreme price to pay.
It troubles me in my adult life, even now.
posted by Satterwhite | 8:50 AM
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