And So It Goes
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Nearly four years ago, Daver and I packed up our condo in Oak Park, shoved the two cats and Joey the Mean Hamster into the back of my Integra, strapped Ben in to his seat and moved back home. Home is St. Charles (NOT Missouri, thankyouverymuch) and it’s where I grew up. My parents still live here, now a short 5-7 minute jaunt across the river and while to some that might sound oppressively close, it might as well be 300 miles.
I grew up in somewhat of a cold house. Not temperature wise mind you, although my father does have a habit of turning DOWN the heat in winter until we are all blue and chattering, but emotionally. While I have never had any doubt that my parents cared for me, it was kind of like they had a Maximum Capacity for caring and when that was reached or if more was needed, they came up dry. It came in handy when I got in trouble, but since my sense of misadventure runs much tamer than my older brother, that wasn’t often.
My parents hardly measured a pulse when I got engaged–although they were happy–frequently wondered aloud why we didn’t elope (*sighs*), and when I graduated with my BSN-RN in some variation of (?summa?) cum laude, they barely noticed. I mean, they did, but they didn’t, but they did. It wasn’t like they preferred to watch the Derby on TV rather than come to my graduation ceremony or something, but still. A little excitement, some balloons or streamers or something would have been nice.
Now, my weird relationship with them this doesn’t mean that I don’t see them. No, I see my mother most days, because she helps me out in the morning for a couple of hours with the kids, which is awesome. I feel I must emphasize this before I continue: much of her daily therapy involves helping with my children every day so this is as much for her as it is for me.
We have it worked out well and it works so we work it (sorry, couldn’t resist).
The problem arises when something extraordinary happens. Amelia’s birth. Her brain surgery. My hospitalizations prior to her birth. When I got strep throat last winter. When I needed to go to the ER about my busted foot.
All of these are extraneous situations where I do need an extra set of hands. But, my mother will only begrudgingly (if she is to do it at all) do anything above and beyond. Before you take off my head, yelling that it is patently unfair to expect any more of her, I will agree with you: it is. But sometimes, several unpredictable times a year, I need an extra hand.
I have no one within 30 miles who can or will help. She has no job, nothing else more important to do, and she’s my mother.
And certainly while a trip to Crate and Barrel is important, I won’t deny it, I can’t tell you how much it hurt to hear my mother tell me that she wouldn’t be able to give me hand getting my medication from the pharmacy so that I didn’t have to drag Alex and my large, streppy pregnant self out. Because she’d been planning to go to C and B and that was what she was going to do.
This is my mother. This was a 10-15 minute job that would have meant the world to me because I was so very sick that I couldn’t swallow properly without crying in pain. Strep is a bitch.
Of course it’s not her job to take care of me when I’m sick; I’m 28 (almost 29!) years old now. I have a husband. Kids. A house. I’m (shockingly) an adult. But a little compassion would have made me feel so much less alone.
When Amelia had her brain surgery, my mother refused to stay with my kids overnight, so I had to leave my daughter and come home from the hospital. Before that, I had to listen to her gnash her teeth about how much she didn’t want stay over, what a big pain in the pooper this was (no shit, Mom) laying a huge guilt trip on me. I had no one else to call or help me and I can tell you without a doubt, this was so unfair.
My birthday is in 2 weeks, and historically, I’ve had some pretty crappy birthdays in the past years. I was in the hospital on my 24th (Crohn’s disease), got a colonoscopy on 25th, got pregnant on my 26th (wooHOO!), was in the hospital on the 27th (corneal abrasion), and was spotting with my pregnancy with Amelia (after my 2 miscarriages) on my 28th. Not a rousing round of birthdays, and while I could give a flying poo about my age increasing, I don’t really want to do much for my birthday proper except maybe hide somewhere. I think I’m due for another hospitalization.
BlogHer is the weekend or so after my birthday, so I considered that my birthday present, because then I wouldn’t have to get up on my cross when Daver forgot to get me anything. And what I wanted was to have The Daver come with me. We haven’t been away together since our honeymoon, it isn’t super far from our house, so if someone needed to run home, it was do-able. Maybe, I grandly thought, we’d even get to have The Sex without having to listen for a baby mid-hump.
I cast my net as widely as I could: 3 people. My mother, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law (Let me take my sister-in-law out of this equation because this has nothing to do with her). Neither of them owe me anything, but I blithely thought that this would be a nice, easy birthday present for me, free and meant that I would be in their debt for a long, long time. My kids are all past the getting up and being a pain in the ass overnight phase anyway.
They’re family, and this is what family does.
Har-dee-har-fucking-har.
I don’t know what I was thinking, Internet, I really don’t. I asked them both, foolishly thinking that they’d be able to do it. Maybe it would be a bit out of their comfort zone for a night or two (didn’t even have to be the whole 2 days!), but these are their only grandkids, and come on. So they wouldn’t sleep well and maybe the kids would tire them out, but so what? They can catch up on sleep for the next 3 months.
I shouldn’t have asked. I really shouldn’t have. Because when they both did the equivalent of laughing in my face (my own mother did laugh in my face), I lost it. I fucking lost it. I knew better and still, I lost it. I cried so hard that I’m still shocked my eyeballs didn’t pop out of my head and fall into my lap with a sickening SPLAT.
It’s not like they owed me anything, I know, but it signifies all that I’ve felt I’ve missed out on my life. It’s why I can’t listen to John Lennon’s “Mother” without feeling like he crawled inside my head and plucked the words out from there, in my own grey matter. It’s why I seethe with envy when I read about the relationship that other people have had with their mothers.
And it’s not really about BlogHer. I’m sure I can spoon with Stef, grab Heather’s ass. I bet Tanis will make out with me and that Karly will let me feel her up. I’ll follow Magpie around while begging Mommy Melee to grab drinks with me. It’s just 2 nights, we’ll get away again some year, and what’s that old saying? 50 million Red Chinese don’t give a shit?
Exactly.
Sure, I’ll find some babysitters some day (although I doubt I’ll have them stay overnight), and I’ll live, so not the end of the world here. It’s just another reminder of what I’ve always wished I had.
And so it goes.
And so it goes.










