Again, I got tempted into making a post about AI shit, and I don’t want that to be my most recent thing in the sidebar, so I gotta figure out something to talk about instead. Think think think…
All I could come up with is the question “How’s yer mudder?,” to which the answer is obvious enough. For most of my blog’s readership, your mothers are dead of old age. Mine could be too, for all I know. I don’t know what she’s up to anymore.
Brief history of my immediate family. Both parents were the least regarded of their boomer-sized broods. In my mother’s case, it may literally have been because of her skin. She had very bad acne, compared to everyone in her own immediate family. She probably has antisocial personality disorder, since my sister got that dx and was very much like our mother. This leads to trouble with the law, other kinds of mayhem.
I don’t know the specifics, but at some point she joined the Air Force, working in proximity to jets, acquiring permanent tinnitus, learning how to use an assault rifle. Good for her. She used the preferential treatment of veterans in government hiring to get a clerical job at the Veteran’s Administration hospital, which she held onto for a pretty long time.
To avoid the messy household and the stanky feral beasts she had spawned, she spent as much time at work as possible, doing overtime. At some point this transitioned to claiming she was working overtime while having an affair with some dude from the workplace. After the divorce with my dad was finalized, she married dude, so it musta been twu wuv™.
You know some people are just horny on affairs? There are songs about it. Basically, as long as she could keep the miserable marriage to my dad going, the illicit sex was hotter for her. So every day at home was screaming and bullshit, and any love I felt for either parent was lost forever. Both of my parents could die brutally and I wouldn’t shed a tear.
That also means I don’t feel the loss of having once loved them, right? I don’t believe a person needs parents to turn out decent, presuming I’m decent. So no need to offer condolences in the comments. I don’t need my parents on any level.
My father continued to offer some important support to me in adulthood, like a place to stay when my income was insufficient, etc., so he’s still in my life. Out of a sense of obligation I call him on the phone once a week to check in, to give him a sense of not being completely alone, because otherwise, he is.
Presumably my mother is alive out there somewhere, married to dude, retired or not. But she might be dead. Dude might be dead. She might have total presence of mind and still be furiously devouring romance novels and trying fad diets even though she’s never been fat in her life. Or she might be saddled with dementia, feeling paranoia and fear every day of her life, in some shady home that jacks 99% of her VA pension and social security in exchange for inadequate care.
Don’t know, don’t care, except insofar as I’d care about a total stranger. Hope it ain’t too rough for her? But I have no desire to talk to her at all. Hell, I don’t even want to talk to my father, but he managed to stay in my life to where my sense of obligation is engaged. Good job, him.
If you’ve got a mother, congrats. If you’ve lost one you liked, sorry. None of this is relevant to me, and that’s alright.
–
My mum had a date rape sometime in 1960 so I came along. The result of it.
She left Spain in great shame. My grandparents were not that great at having me around.
I was kinda a problem kid. Not easy.
Meantime she went to Britland and got married to an Australian [elided] and ended up on the other side of the world. I have 3 sisters: Maxine, born in London. Wikitoria (Vicky) in Enzed. Marianne in Oz.
I joined therm in Oz in 1972, after she rid of him and got a place and got my sisters out of the orphanage.
(Sorry for the personal shit)
—
So. Life, eh? Esp. as a kid.
Jollity ensues.
Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (Camp Granada Song) with Lyrics Sing-Along, Allan Sherman, 1963, updated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFTOvO0utY
(Doesn’t autoembed if there’s no whitespace before the URL, FWTW)
—
PS thought about adding ‘Mother’ by Lennon, but a bit too much after that.
i also have a profound reason to hope recent genetic contributions have nothing to do with who i am. got an aunt that might also be my grandmother. life is full of little horrors, whaddyagonnado?
Your stories are just another example of “The good old days weren’t always good,” to quote Billy Joel. Bebe’s mother sounds like she was the family-of-origin’s scapegoat (which leaves lifelong mental scars) and John’s mother was forced to leave the country because of a crime that was committed against her (which leaves permanent mental scars) and John’s grandparents treated him like a pariah (which leaves permanent mental scars).
I have a great-grandmother about whom I know three things:
1, when her son tried to enlist in WWI, she marched down to the enlistment office and brought him home again “because we need him on the farm.”
2. She was mean.
3. While living with my mother’s family at the end of her life, she hid food everywhere, and the rest of the family constantly found rotten stuff in all kinds of places.
I periodically wonder what her life was like, and how her pain may come down the generations to me.
Things are complicated with my mother and she’s sitting 5 feet away. I’m living with my parents for now. It’s not possible to live on my own with what I’m paid. I’m going to go back to school and try to train for something that allows some independence and they are letting me stay here while I do that.
My parents are both people who act nice but make terrible political choices. They put the monsters into power, and we never talk about it. That’s fine with them but hard on me, I have to suppress a lot.
She wasn’t a bad mother and I still love her. It’s mostly that she and my dad didn’t recognize the trauma I was going through at school growing up, trauma I’m still going to a therapist to work on. She didn’t have a lot of power in the conservative protesteant culture she lives in. If she has a lot of negative things suppressed she doesn’t talk about it and I don’t know. This family isn’t very good at meaningful conversation.
She’s not in good health and is in her 70s. There’s nothing big like cancer on the horizon, it’s mostly age and lack of activity catching up with her. She seems satisfied with watching TV during the day so I guess she’s ok? I don’t know how much longer she will be around though. I’m trying to develop a more meaningful relationship with her and my father but it’s hard. We have little in common and there’s that supporting evil thing. They have no idea because they avoid media that might break their view of reality.
katyd – let’s hope second part of that line is also true.
wiess – a vivid portrait in few words.
brony – familiar business for our generation. my mother-in-law lives with us because we needed her money to get the place, not because of our magnanimity. i’m extremely glad she’s not a republican, very sorry you have to deal with that. when i’ve dealt with older conservatives i tend to focus on mitigating the harm their worldview causes to them – “the news seems to have upset you, maybe watch the soap opera instead” – fwiw.
“…and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems”? Yup, may it be so.
My parents passed on recently. Both were first-generation Americans from immigrant parents, but from blond/blue-eyed countries so they met the “all-American” standard. My parents grew up with The Baby Boom and my mother was firmly convinced by the marketing of the times where women were expected to be brainless, pretty ornaments on a man’s arm and the worst thing a woman could do was think. She and I didn’t see eye-to-eye most of the time, but I knew she loved me and was trying to do her best by me.
Of my grandparents, 3 out of 4 had passed before I was 6 months old and and the 4th before I was 2, so I never knew them.
katyd – were u late child for mom or just had unfortunate grandparents?
Mostly immigrants doing dangerous immigrant jobs. Ferryboat engineer killed when engine boiler exploded, lung cancer after a childhood and adulthood of working in masonry, cancer from working in a beauty salon, brittle bones from chronic malnutrition in early life that after a fall on a slippery floor, broke several bones and fatally fractured a skull. None of them made it to 50, 3/4 of them dead by 40.
I sometimes think about the dangers when I see road crews working; they’re predominantly recent immigrants themselves and their lives are often in danger from the oblivious idiots around them. Then there was the bridge collapse on the east coast when a badly-maintained cargo ship took out an bridge in the middle of the night. There had been a team of road crew repairing the roadway on the bridge and virtually all of them were killed (I think one survived out of many). All of them also legal residents but also immigrants because who else is going to risk their lives in miserable working conditions for so very little pay?
Also worth noting: in the 1930s, all 4 of my grandparents walked off the boat into Ellis Island and walked out of the building American citizens. There was no decades-long waitlist or mandatory court dates or swearing-in. Yes, less than a century ago, people could become Americans just that easily. Many more got off the boat in other port cities and were instantly citizens.