Coming Home, Some Things Never Change

It is six days until I board a plane to come home.  In many ways, this is far more frightening than when I left.  I was so excited to be coming home at first, and then my happiness was dampened by reality.  Damn reality, it creeps up on you when you least expect it.  The trip home will be met with growth, and while that’s always a good thing, it is never an easy thing.  The source of my angst is what it always is, my children.  There are three people on this entire earth who hold the power of my heart with them and it is a continual test of my graciousness as a woman.  I am also a spirited woman, so I sometimes fail that test.  I feel as if I am failing now, though I know in the end we will all be a family.  A friend whom I have great admiration and respect for gave me some very good advice.  She said “Make sure they know it is about them.  There is nothing more important in your life than their happiness.”  She’s right, I know she is.  When it comes down to it, that’s what it will be about.  In the meantime, I am hurt.

One daughter told me I didn’t raise her and the other unfriended me because she can’t have the life she wants to build marred by her mother’s political opinions and sub textual jokes.  I understand both of their points of view.  Not having a mother to be embarrassed about, I even understand it as I have watched some of my friends struggle with their own parental issues with their mothers.  It doesn’t take the sting away, though.  At first, I was embarrassed and ashamed that my daughter unfriended me now that she is a doctor.  I took it as a personal defect in my character.  She told her sister that she couldn’t have her clients and professional peers seeing the stuff I posted on her feed, and following any links I liked to reflect on the type of person she is.  She even mentioned the links to my blog as if this was something to be ashamed about as well.   I guess she is still trying to cut the umbilical cord at age thirty.  I responded by hiding the album with her in it, and hiding most references to her as my daughter.  Now she had nothing to worry about.  I didn’t hide the album or hide the references for her, though.  I did it because I was humiliated my daughter feels as if I am someone she has to be ashamed to claim as her mother.  I have the album and references back.  I realized the way she feels is less of a reflection of the person I am than the person she is striving to portray.  I didn’t raise her to be like that, but maybe she thinks image is more important right now as she is sculpting the life she wants, the life I could never give her. 

Here is the crux of my struggle right now.  I want my children to be happy.  I want them to have the life they want, they life they deserve.  That is unequivocal.  I also want them to have the wisdom and perspective I am still acquiring, and relate to me like the adults they are.  I want them to do that while I often still treat them like children.  My children are the only people in this world I will alter who I am to be someone they want to introduce to their friends.  I did it at my daughter’s high school graduation.   They bought clothes for me; clothes they thought were more suiting to a woman and mother of my age.  I wore flats that I thought were hideous and ugly, but they liked them.   They didn’t want me to wear much make-up, so I didn’t.  They said I looked great, they were much happier with my appearance.  They took pictures of the day and I cried when I saw them.  The woman in the pictures looked much older than I feel; my facial expression was stern and fixed.   With the sunlight, I looked more like a sixty year old.  I threw the flats away as soon as I got home.  I kept the clothes because they bought them for me, and paired differently, I can still use them.  I felt imprisoned that day.  I still remember how I felt. 

I can and have dressed with style and taste when the occasion dictated it.  My daughter’s wedding was a good example of this.  They approved of the dress I chose and the look, I felt fabulous and I had a great time.  The pictures were all right, I am almost never happy with the pictures I take, but they didn’t make me want to cry if they are posted on their Facebook albums.  I conducted myself with grace and poise; I have never heard one word that anything I said or did adversely affected the day.  I did it because that is also who I am.  It came with ease, it was not forced.  It is only when I am shamed into performing a role the results are less than satisfactory.   I have to go home and attend the graduation of my daughter from veterinary school.   She already declined the graduation dinner.  She gave her reasons, but given the recent unfriending I can’t help but doubt the reasons are genuine.  Her boyfriend’s parents will also be in attendance.   They are conservative, mannered people.  I would be on my best behavior for this under ordinary circumstances.  Instead, I am going to be forced into playing a role.  It scares me to death.  I don’t want to go at all.  I have been looking forward to this day for years, and now that it is here I am dreading it.  I can’t help but feeling no matter what happens, I will end up failing. 

I know my friend is right; this has to be about them.  And when I get there, it will be.  In the meantime, I wonder when I have the right to demand they respect me for who I am, and not try to hide me or make excuses for me.  When do I demand they treat me like the adults they are?  I raised them largely on my own through very difficult circumstances.  It was far from easy, but I took my role as their mother with the seriousness it deserved.  I put my life on hold to be what they needed me to be.  I acted in their best interests instead of doing what I wanted to do with my life.  I sacrificed my dreams to ensure they grew into the adults they needed to be to chase their own.  I did it because I brought them into this world.  They deserved the best life I could create for them, and that often meant putting my desires to the side.  I am not an addict or alcoholic.  I am not a perpetual loser, always in the midst of drama and chaos.  I am there when they need me.  Do I not have the right to be my own person now that they are grown?  Do I not deserve to be recognized by them as an individual as well as their mother? 

I have six days to work this out.  It is a heavy burden.  What I see happening is that I go back home, put a smile on my face and do what I have to do.  I will hide my feelings, hide what I expect from them and make my time with them count; after all, I only have a week there.  I can’t waste it on this stuff.  In the end, it is about them and what I want for them.  It is about me and the relationship I want with my girls.  My hurt feelings don’t have a place there.  I can be self-righteous, I can demand they behave in a manner I expect, but isn't that exactly what they are doing to me?  When demands are made in any relationship the underlying question should always be “What is the most important thing here?”  The most important thing is a relationship with my daughters.  I only have a week out of this past year to be with them and I might not see them for another year.  I have 51 other weeks of the year to be myself.  I don’t have time for self-indulgence.  I still don’t want to go home, but to avoid this trip would not solve anything.  Besides, there is still one daughter eagerly anticipating my arrival.  I can’t deny her my visit because I am hurt by the other two.  I also have a number of friends who want to see me.  I am honored and humbled they are setting aside time from their lives to see me in the few days I will be back.  I am looking forward to seeing them, too.  For some of my friends, it has been years.  I don’t know when we would be able to get together again.  I wish my excitement had not been marred by my daughters, but I can’t control them.  I can only control how I respond to them. Once I get home and in the presence of people who love me, I will enjoy my time there.  

Facebook is a new social construct, redefining how we interact and what we reveal of ourselves to others.  I was thrilled my children were my Facebook friends, and used it to help maintain a connection to their lives.  The new privacy settings allow me to hide certain updates from people I don’t want seeing them.  Maybe I need to use them more often.  By the same token, my daughter could have used those privacy settings to hide from her feed what she didn’t want to appear.  She didn’t choose to do that.  Facebook is a learning process.  Maybe children do not want to see their parents as human beings with the same drives, dreams and passions they have.  Maybe they want a false view of their parents, one that makes accepting the people they see as their parents easier for them.  I don’t know.  From a social perception, we are moving from a secretive family dynamic to a more open one.  There was a time when the roles of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were rigidly defined and everyone played their role as expected.  Secrets were kept, and an image was portrayed.  Those roles and the secrets families harbor are being shattered faster than we can respond to them as a society.  Many still hold those secrets and shackled roles under the guise of traditional family values.  They don’t work well anymore, and redefining our family and social interactions is forging a whole new frontier.  Society is suffering from growing pains.  So am I.