My mother called. She was upset because the job she interviewed for was filled by another applicant. We don’t have the best relationship, and I feel damned awkward whenever Mother phones me with a problem. After listening to her talk about how disappointed and frustrated she is, I changed the subject to what she had done over the weekend.
“Oh nothing much. Cleaned my apartment, we’re organizing a pancake breakfast for church. How ‘bout you?”
“Mouse_Spouse and I went to Kinetics at the Boulder Reservoir.”
“What’s Kinetics?”
“Teams of people build objects that can move across the water and then on land. They run an obstacle course that goes in and out of the lake. It’s a lot of fun. The boats are decorated and the teams wear costumes. We had a great time, but came home a little sunburned.”
“Did you wear sunscreen?”
“No. It was a cool and overcast, so we wore jackets. Forgot about hats.”
Mother giggles. “Forgot a hat and had no sunscreen. No wonder you ended up pregnant.”
I got off the phone as quickly has possible. My mother thinks I’m dummer than a sack of hammers; I’ve had to accept that. Short of winning a Noble Prize, nothing I do will change her mind and every mistake I make seems to prove her point. Usually, I try to brush off her comments and move on. If I’m upset, I burn off steam by cleaning house or journaling. After this phone call, I curled into a ball and cried. Poor Mouse_Spouse was mystified - I rarely cry. He held me and listened to me talk about how stupid I am because I got a sunburn . . .because we got pregnant. . . because I haven’t finished college. . . because my family is fucked up.
Kudos to my husband, he told me that I was intelligent and wonderful. After I had calmed down, he asked me why such a typical phone conversation set me off.
“I’m blaming hormones. Welcome to Irrational. Population: Us.”
Let me be the first to remind you that your mother is a piece of work, and you know she was a piece of work even 'fore you got pregnant, and I’m sure before the school thing and the family thing, she was still a piece of work. Try not to let her get you down.
As for irrational - did I ever tell you about the time when I was pregnant with my son and cried bitter, honest, heartbroken tears from the overwhelming pathos and delicate tragedy in the movie Naked Gun 33 1/3? No? Never mind then.
Usually, I don’t speak to Mother very often. Now she’s calling once a week, and its driving me up a wall!! I don’t want to hear about how hard it was for her when she was pregnant with me. I don’t want to be lectured about the benefits of “natural” (drug-free) childbirth and staying home from a parent who didn’t bother to raise me. (Much to my surprise, she hasn’t brought up religion. Mother is - selectively - Christian. I’m pagan, Mouse_Spouse is agnostic.)
One of these days, I end up saying what goes thru my mind during these conversations. Ya know Mom, I think the kid will be just fine. You had my IQ tested before entering kindergarten, and the results weren’t so great. Environment plays a large part in intellectual developement, at that time Dad was drunk and beating the crap out of anyone who got in his way. Hell, you even told me that you gave me booze as a baby to shut me up. Then, when I was in the first grade, Brother and I were in foster care. Not the greatest start for my growing brain. I may not have three master’s degrees like you, or a Phd like Dad, but I’ve got a stable life, a loving husband and supportive friends. Now stop acting like I’m an idiot. From what I can see, I’m the one with her shit together here.
A freaking commercial just made me brust into tears! (One of those WIC public service announcements. Babies have little food warning lights flash on their foreheads.)
I threw a tuna salad at ex-husband from the state of Irrational, about 6 months in - because…well, because I asked for a chicken salad. And they didn’t have one, so he got me tuna. And I said that was fine. And he said he was sorry, and he would take it back. And I said, no, seriously, it’s fine. And he said was I sure, because he could take it back, and I said, NO, REALLY, it’s FINE. And he said that it was ok if I wanted him to take it back, because he knew I really wanted chicken…
…and I heaved it at his head and burst into tears.
Screen your calls. Only answer every other one…and then one out of three…and then…you get the drift. If you get asked, just say you’ve been busy. Or when you called back, it was busy. I don’t think you owe the truth here, and it’s the social equivalent of the butler saying you aren’t in. It isn’t literal, it simply means you have absolutely no requirement to be available except when you are ready to be.
You don’t have to be available to be verbally beaten up. But just drifting away leaves you feeling better about yourself than yelling in return, too.
Think about this: are people smarter after they get their degree? Are they smarter the day before they get it than the day after? How smart were they when they started? A degree is just an indication that a certain amount of work was done. More smart people attempt this because it’s more pleasurable for a smart person to do, but degreed people and smart people are NOT the same set, as any degreed person would tell you. Furthermore, a degreed person is especially not anything special without proof once they are outside their own specialty – look at cold fusion. Wow, only a smart person could make a mistake that big!
(disclaimer – I have a Ph.D. It’s kind of a fun thing to have, but it would be pitiful if that’s all I had to hang on for my sense of self-worth.)
Being smart is like being pretty: nice, and a benefit, but not worth very much without character. Well, I guess we know where your family stands character-wise; and we have a pretty good idea where you stand, and here’s a hint: the locations aren’t very near each other.
Finally, you are far too articulate to doubt your own intelligence. Try to work up some pity for people who clutch at some score on a test with questionable validity because they can’t point to any true achievement.
(second disclaimer: I wasn’t even pregnant when I once cried at a silly analogy in a mystery novel. Not even a plot point, an analogy. The analogy involved an unloved kitten. And I have a Ph.D.)
You, on the other hand, are intelligent and wonderful. How do I know this? Because you are one of the few Dopers whose MPSIMS threads I automatically open.
You don’t need the excuse of “hormones” to explain being upset by her judgemental, wrong-headed pronunciamentos; any right-thinking non-preg person would be similarly upset. Learn to ignore her.
Plus…she’s only going to get worse after she has a grandbaby to pick on. For one thing, your child is going to need YOU to run interference when Grandma starts with the “You’re stupid, and yer dog’s ugly” crapola, if nothing else than to reassure, “No, you’re NOT stupid”.
So you need to develop some kind of filter that will let you brush her off as mere static, so that your kid can see you dismiss Grandma as mere static and can learn, from you, how to do it.
I know it sounds awful to say “brush your mother off”, but she’s not behaving like a normal mother, so she doesn’t get a free pass for behavior that in any other non-blood relation would be considered unacceptable rudeness, that would get her dropped from your personal A-list like a hot potato.
Hey, my grandmother was upset when she had liver stones because she couldn’t figure out how had she gotten those, but worse: because it’s something you can’t cure by eating.
She thinks that my aunt first got breast cancer from sunbathing topless (which may be true) and the second time, 15 years later, from… what was it? Oh, yes, from watching the seagulls. In any case, it’s all the beach’s fault. You shouldn’t oughta go to the beach because it gives you cancer if you’re not careful. Grandma herself can go to the beach as much as she wants (which anyway isn’t much), because she’s not dumb enough to catch herself a cancer. I mean, really, she’s 93 and in a lot better health than even her daughters, which proves she’s not dumb enough to catch herself anything. She’s quite mystified by how she caught that bit of arthrosis in her right knee and refuses to believe that it’s from old age. She’s not OLD, and how can that stupid doctor woman say she’s old? She’s just 93, that’s not old! Bet that doctor woman is dumb enough to catch something, hrumph!
Mom, Grandma’s eldest surviving daughter (there was an older one who died in infancy), is, on the other hand, perfectly rational. For example, recently she was here to visit, along with Lilbro. She brought me several pairs of shoes: of course, none of them happened to be one of the pairs of shoes I’d requested, which basically means I’m going to have me a closet-cleaning for shoes one of these days. No, no, she bought the ones she decided I had to need for this time of year; forget that the temperatures are completely abnormal, if she says I should wear mayjanes and not espadrilles, she’ll bring the maryjanes and not the espadrilles.
While she was examining the shoes back at my house, she discovered a pair that she decided to throw away. But! She very carefully wrapped and brought me… the active-carbon insoles.
MouseMaven, as another person who loves reading your posts and admires your intelligence, here’s my $.02: Start distancing yourself from your mother. Do it slowly, do it gently, but do it. Because the first time she says something negative about your child you will wish you had. Maybe she will decide your child is perfect - it’s her grandchild, after all - but I wouldn’t count on it. Maybe you can let her into your child’s life when he or she is 20 or so, after you have had time to explain that Grandma is a little off and don’t listen to her…but until then, do not allow this poisonous woman to ruin your joy in your baby.
And I’m sorry for calling your mom poisonous, but I thought it sounded a little better than toxic and a lot better than some of the other alternatives.
After having read a few of your posts about your mom, I’d say that it’s time to distance yourself from her. She’s not likely to change her bad behavior and her mean comments, and you don’t want her labeling your child The World’s Dumbest Baby Ever[sup]TM[/sup]. Limit your exposure, and try not to take her irrational behavior seriously. If she gets touchy about it and continues to drag up the past, be rational with her and be honest about why she does not deserve your attention. She’s going to have her own “poor me, I have a stupid kid!” notions regardless of what you do, and you don’t want her imprinting those ideas on your kid.
Irrational is fun. At my cousin’s ordination when I was 8 months pregnant, my aunt didn’t get enough food for the reception after his first Mass (this is typical - she ran out at every event that weekend), and the only things left were these little rabbit-food finger sandwiches that were awful. And I was STARVING. It had been an hour-and-a-half long Mass, and we hadn’t had breakfast beforehand because we were staying in a hotel.
I burst into tears with my brother and sister-in-law, and had an emotional breakdown until my parents got us out of there and took us to Wendy’s, where, as soon as I got my Frosty, I was happy again. Apparently, my brother and sister-in-law STILL laugh at me for this.
I also threw a shoe at my husband one weekend because he refused to go get me ice cream (I missed, but he still went to get me ice cream), and sobbed at the Charlie Brown Christmas special a day before finding out that I was pregnant.
As far as your mom - Caller ID is a good thing. Seriously. Just don’t answer. It’s not worth the aggravation.
It is well known in my family that my mother, brother and I are all much more pleasant people to be around if we are fed at regular intervals. No pregnancy needed. When I started crying over which water bottle I got(or something like that) when leaving a historic landmark, Dad knew it was time to figure out what we were doing for dinner, even if the clock didn’t say so just yet.
If I had to guess, I’d predict it’s more likely that she’ll be constantly “surprised” that a woman of Mouse_Maven’s “humble abilities - you know, she scored very low on that IQ test when she was 4” is doing “such an good job as a mother to that precious baby!” She might even add some tidbits about how “lucky they are that the baby got his/her Uncle’s smarts!” and, just to make M_M’s head explode, she might note that “it just goes to show that mothering isn’t THAT hard!”*
I agree that some distance would be nothing but good.
*(I’m pretty sure M-M’s mother is my mother-in-law’s clone.)
Thanks everyone. I have been a wreck for months and the SDMB has been very kind.
For many years, I was estranged from my mother. Her little digs and manipulations were more than I could tolerate, so I stopped taking her calls and refused invitations to family functions. In 2004, she was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cervical cancer and had to have surgery. When I heard of this, I decided to resume contact. To this day, I know that this woman is unstable and can’t be trusted. I feel very drained whenever I’m around her; keeping your guard up takes a lot of energy.
Mother is not allowed to be alone with my nephew. Mouse_Spouse and I have decided that we will keep our child’s contact with her to a minimum. (How to explain my fucked-up family to the Mouseling is something I will have to figure out one day.)
There is a strong steak of mental illness in among my immediate relations. I have been on antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs for many years. Both my brother and father are alcoholics. My mother has never been diagnosed with anything, but her identical twin sister has been in and out of treatment for anorexia nervosa. What scares me the most: both of my parents and I have attempted suicide at one point in our lives. While the environment we lived in may have played a large role in this behavior, the family connection – with our shared alleles – frightens me.
For years I was told that I was stupid, ugly and worthless. This will always haunt me, but it no longer controls me. I’m not sure who said it, but I try to live by the adage “The best revenge is living well.”
Now, I need some chocolate and to get a stack of forms signed by a reluctant PI.
I’m halfway serious. If she thinks she’s smarter than you, then make fun of her by encouraging this belief. Next time she calls, say you’ve managed to cut yourself in the kitchen, because you forgot which side of the knife was the sharp one. Or you can’t talk right now because you buttered the bread before you tried to toast it and now the toaster is on fire. Or you’re on the way to the vet because the dog seemed kind of hot so you put in the fridge for a couple of hours and maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do. Or you’re worried about your husband cheating on you because he leaves the house every weekday morning and doesn’t come home until after five o’clock! Y’know, stuff like that.
See how outrageous you can be and still have your mom believe you. And in so doing, you will demonstrate that you’re not the stupid one. And get some laughs besides.
If you want to take a more active role you can try reversing it. Call her up and tell her that you can’t find your blue sweater, the one with the white buttons. Sound frantic, make noises like youre searching through drawers or something. Demand that she tell you where it is.
