Mothers and Daughters
My mother says she doesn't understand me. I don't know why she would think that. To me I'm a pretty understandable person. Nothing hard or complicated about my personality whatsoever. Just the same, my mother says she doesn't know who I take after. And if it wasn't for the fact that I'm a spitting image of my father she'd think I had gotten switched at birth.
I have to admit that I'm just a tad bit of a rebel. Nothing real drastic. Just enough to let the world know that I'll not be conformed (at least totally). Take for instance when I turned 50. Now, for most women that would have been traumatic. Not for me. I looked 50 right in the eye and got my nose pierced. Since it was the big 5 0 I was celebrating I got the tiniest little diamond stud. It's so small you hardly know it's there till I turn a certain way and the light catches it. However, when I told my mother what I did her reaction was one of total horror and disbelief. You would have thought I had something the size of a door knocker hanging off my nose. For pity sake it's a diamond chip, not the Hope Diamond. Her reaction to my 50th birthday present to myself was totally inappropriate....in my estimation that is.
Then there was the time I got my first tattoo. If that didn't put her six feet down nothing would. Thank God she has a strong constitution. She just stood there giving me the hairy eyeball the way only a mother can, lowered her head ever so slightly and then just went "Hmph". Now you have to understand something about my mother. She has become a master of masters at non-verbal communication. She's always done her best disciplining with a look and a grunt that would send chills down my spine and cause the hair on my arms to stand at attention. As a child growing up under her gaze (no pun intended), I would often cry inside of myself at times of discipline, "For God's sake, mom, just hit me. It would hurt less then the hairy eyeball." By the way, I now have a total of three tattos all very discretely placed so as not to offend mother or anyone else.
I love my mother. She's good to me in more ways then I can count. I know I probably baffle her and she's learned to accept my little idiosyncracies over the years. We're always there for each other and I know that I can count on her and she can count on me. We're opposite in every way possible a mother and daughter could be. But in one way we are alike. And that is our love and respect for each other.
Oh, by the way. I don't think I'll tell her I just had my belly button pierced.
I have to admit that I'm just a tad bit of a rebel. Nothing real drastic. Just enough to let the world know that I'll not be conformed (at least totally). Take for instance when I turned 50. Now, for most women that would have been traumatic. Not for me. I looked 50 right in the eye and got my nose pierced. Since it was the big 5 0 I was celebrating I got the tiniest little diamond stud. It's so small you hardly know it's there till I turn a certain way and the light catches it. However, when I told my mother what I did her reaction was one of total horror and disbelief. You would have thought I had something the size of a door knocker hanging off my nose. For pity sake it's a diamond chip, not the Hope Diamond. Her reaction to my 50th birthday present to myself was totally inappropriate....in my estimation that is.
Then there was the time I got my first tattoo. If that didn't put her six feet down nothing would. Thank God she has a strong constitution. She just stood there giving me the hairy eyeball the way only a mother can, lowered her head ever so slightly and then just went "Hmph". Now you have to understand something about my mother. She has become a master of masters at non-verbal communication. She's always done her best disciplining with a look and a grunt that would send chills down my spine and cause the hair on my arms to stand at attention. As a child growing up under her gaze (no pun intended), I would often cry inside of myself at times of discipline, "For God's sake, mom, just hit me. It would hurt less then the hairy eyeball." By the way, I now have a total of three tattos all very discretely placed so as not to offend mother or anyone else.
I love my mother. She's good to me in more ways then I can count. I know I probably baffle her and she's learned to accept my little idiosyncracies over the years. We're always there for each other and I know that I can count on her and she can count on me. We're opposite in every way possible a mother and daughter could be. But in one way we are alike. And that is our love and respect for each other.
Oh, by the way. I don't think I'll tell her I just had my belly button pierced.
posted by Gammys Perspective at 3:43 PM
5 Comments:
Okay okay...I could go off on some philosophical rampage (as I am want to do) especially on this topic (many conversations already between us) but I won't. Let's target instead your very interesting comment that you are a pretty understandable person... hmmmm...
Let's see if I have this right.
You are a 58 year old "grandmother" on one hand, which would evoke thoughts in some people (like your mom) of a cookie baking, bingo playing, tissue hoarding sweet older lady, running around in her 1968 Valiant in impecable condition of course...
While in reality you only touch cookies that come in a box, bingo is a song you teach your granddaughter, (okay...you do hoard tissues), and you drive around in a sporty little number fit for a 23 year old chick named Megan...
Hmmm...why couldn't mom understand that?
Okay...on one hand you were raised by her to be a good little Catholic girl, went out into the big bad world and joined a cult (oooooo...), woke up and found Christianity, then became a Simcha JAP, and now find that its all so much simpler than that...
Wonder why mom doesn't understand?
No, wait...inside you there is a woman-girl who believes in all the usual traditions so eloquently expressed by Tammy Wynnette (I think)...in the song "Stand by your Man". Everybody sing... evoking thoughts of a very staunch conservative suburban housewife...
And yet on the other hand you stand there in all your glory, from the top of your spiked gray hair, ears pierced this way and that way and then some, the infamous nose piercing, tats jumping out from the back of your shirt, and one the size of Minnesota peaking up at you from underneath the linen capris...
What in the world is not to understand about that...!?!
Hmph...I just don't get it.
:)
What a great post this is! You sound like me except for the nose piercing, tattoos, sports car and well ... okay, so you don't really sound anything like me but I do believe you probably THINK like me. :)
My mother never quite "got" me either, though in the last fifteen years of her life, she finally accepted the fact that I was not a run-of-the-mill "anything."
Your writing flows nicely ... like conversation. That's a true talent and one I very much appreciate!
By the way, the one thing I did consider at 48 years old was piercing my nose (as you said, tastefully). I haven't yet; maybe I'm waiting for a senior discount.
I've had some weird experiences with my own mom lately. For instance, she has been supportive of my decision NOT to have children and I'm able to hear it w/o thinking that she's referring to wishes that she didn't have children. Though she did mention that she hated us all when we were teenagers. At least she's honest. But I'm honest back. I told her that teenagers are supposed to rebel. She agreed but said that if she knew she would have to go through such a monstrous period, maybe she would never had made a family. Interesting to be an adult discussing adult things with my adult mother....
Hi Anna, Just dropping by to let you know how I liked your last comment at Don Swift's :-)
Considering tongue piercing?
Thanks Justine. I thought your comment was great and I mean that sincerely. Tongue piercing? Nah, I am too old for that one. But maybe another tattoo?????
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