Who Is The Parent
When I was much, much younger, I had very strict parents. There were terribly restrictive rules, such as, no running in the house, clean your room, no TV until the chores are done… you know the drill. As time went on, the rules gradually relaxed. By “gradually” I mean that at the age of eight, the rules were iron-clad. By the time I was about sixteen, the rules were only written in stone. As such, when my mother revealed her true colors, I was taken aback.
I don’t know how it was in your family, but for me, there seemed to be a point in my mother’s life where she simply decided she wasn’t going to parent me anymore. It’s like she finally realized she’d done her time, so she stopped being responsible for me because she wasn’t getting a paycheck anymore. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that my mother ever gave up on me; that simply isn’t the case. She did, however, stop being the law-giver.
The way it plays out in my imagination: one day Mom looked at me, realized I wasn’t an idiot or helpless and then shut off “mother-mode”. While this wasn’t really as sudden as it felt, I simply didn’t see the warnings on the radar.
For instance:
When I had fallen and bitten a hole through my bottom lip, my mother asked the emergency-room doctor if he couldn’t just sew a button on my top lip.
Blip
During a drive along the eastern edge of the Snohomish valley, my mother spied a sign advertising both pygmy goats and Burmese pythons. She suggested adopting one of each.
Blip
At sight of an ad in the local classifieds, my mother suggested I take a job as a mink skinner. “It’s just like taxidermy, right?”
Big Effing Blip!
My life became a seemingly unending series of my mother’s off-the-wall suggestions and my saying, “No. You may not!” I was the one who put the kybosh on a mother-daughter outing to see the “all male review”. I said “no” to shaving interesting patterns into Dad’s beard while he slept. And, thanks to me, my mother has never had a ride in a UPS truck. (“That’s stealing, Mother!”)
After having grown accustomed to parenting my mother through my twenties and the bulk of my thirties, being so far away from her now causes me some concern. In moments of lucidity, Mom told me that being married would give me a sense of independence and maturity. She told me that I would be able to relax because I wouldn’t be directly responsible for her anymore. That isn’t exactly true. I still feel responsible for her, only I’m not close enough to make sure that she doesn’t fill her home with small, barn-yard animals.
I can see my mother watching some 2am infomercial and having the uncontrollable desire to have a pole installed so that she could work out like the flirtatious girls. I can imagine my mother watching some sit-com and deciding that becoming a candle maker would be a great way to earn a little extra cash. It isn’t out of the question to think of my mother deciding – on a whim – to sign up for American Idol. It wouldn’t be wise, but I could believe she’d do it.
As you may have surmised by now, I have a fairly active imagination. I can picture many things that would make normal people wan with shock.
The bottom line, however, is that my mother was right. This past year of separation has given me a sense of freedom, independence and peace. Granted, it takes a great deal of effort to not parent my husband – at least that effort succeeds more often than not – but no longer being directly responsible for my mother has relieved some of my internal stress. Truly, the knowledge that my mother hasn’t simply devolved into some wild, hermitic, infomercial-supporting maniac in my absence is rewarding.
Huh. No wonder I’m not in a rush to have children. My oldest just attained adult-hood; I’m free. That, however, is a “miniphany” for another day.
I love you, Mom.
Until next time…
D. S. Vic
P.S. “Miniphany” is a word I coined meaning a miniature epiphany.
Copyright © 2009-2010 D. S. Vic.
All rights reserved
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