Blaming Mom

A couple of days ago I talked to my grandmother on skype.

She is 87 years old and quite amazing I might add.

She is my dad's mom and the only grandparent I have left.

She is energetic and kind and just really sweet.

We talked about a lot of things but one issue she mentioned really got me thinking.

It's a story I have heard many times before, as older people like to repeat the parts of their lives they find important.

She told me again about the time her mom (my great-grandmother) forced her to eat tomato soup because that was the rule at the table and how she got really sick after that.

And how her own grandmother came to her rescue by making it clear that forcing someone, especially a child, to eat like that is unacceptable.

My great-grandmother has been dead for 20 years.

Still, my grandma remembers stories like this very vividly and feels the need to tell them to me once in a while.

When I was little and would visit my grandma and my great-grandma who lived very close, I remember noticing how my grandma would be slightly irritated by her mom. Sometimes she would snap at her.

Then, when my great-grandma died, my grandma was devastated.

I recall her crying at the funeral, overcome with terrible grief and sadness.

I was 8 or 9 years old at the time and I clearly remember thinking "Why is she so sad? She was always so annoyed by her, by the things that she had hurt her with while growing up and afterwards".

There was a similar pattern with my mom and her own mother.

Whenever she came over to talk to my mom there would be arguments.

Not real loud fights or anything but arguments nonetheless.

My mom would be irritated and even angry.

I know many of my mom's stories about the ways her mom had failed her, hurt her or disappointed her and some of those are not nice stories at all hence why she remembers them.

Then, when my maternal grandma died and I came home from college for the funeral, I found my mom in an unrecognizable state.

She was a shadow of herself.

I did not understand why she was so devastated when they never seemed to get along and there were those deep wounds that never seemed to heal.

Fast forward to the present day, I so happened to bump into some articles about motherhood that somehow all ended up about being the shortcomings of different mothers.

An article about how someone sat on a train and was shocked to see a mom read a book and not interact with her 10 year old son.

A discussion about a movie and how the mom was to blame because she had encouraged the child to put on a happy face in a difficult situation (thus indirectly prompting the child to repress some emotions).

Another article about how someone called the police on a mom who was trying to strap her screaming tantruming toddler in a stroller.

All this made me think about my own mom.

Do I blame her for things?

Yes, I do.

Do I remember vividly the times when she snapped at me, yelled at me, ignored me in a critical moment, criticized me or hurt me in any way?

Yes, very clearly.

My mom failed me quite a few times.

How could she not?

She is only human.

And throughout a lifetime, you have many opportunities to fail the people you love and you will fail them, unavoidably.

Could she have done worse?

Oh yes, very much so.

But somehow it seems that in today's world when we know so much about psychology and how wounds from the past shape us and sometimes incapacitate us, it is so very easy to look back and say:

I am like this because my mom did or did not do something for me.

She really hurt me and some sides of me suffered and I became different.

Smaller, cheaper, not whole

She can rightly be blamed.

There were others too, but she started it.

For some people, the things that were done to them are tragic.

But even those from "regular families" have their big bag of hurtful things to carry.

My daughter is two and a half.

I often think of myself as the memory I will be for her in the future.

I wonder what she will see me like, remember me like.

She cannot remember things yet and already I know I have started building her bag.

She can already blame me for failing her at times when I was impatient or angry or indifferent.

I am sure she will have a lot more to blame me for when she is older.

It will be her choice whether to do that or not.

I try to be a good mom, a present mom.

But I also want to set an example by telling her about the amazing things my own mom has done for me.

I might tell her when she is older that my mom gave me time-outs when I was little and would lock me in my room and I would be completely terrified and thinking she left and didn't love me anymore (mind you, many books still say this a good way to discipline a child); and that that is why I would never do that to her.

But mostly, I want to tell her how my mom was wonderful in her support in everything I did and the way she took care of me when I was sick and would listen to me talk about my crushes, my grades, my friends, my teachers and my homework.

I haven't seen my mom in year, we live so far away.

Our talks on skype are sometimes nice and sometimes can feel like a chore which is sad.

But sometimes, like yesterday, we talk for two hours and I feel I can tell her about my worries, my struggles and my problems.

Because she is there. She's always been there.

And I am tired of blaming mom.

Because, honestly, it's not fair that our emotional memory remembers the bad things so easily and so vividly and takes the good moments for granted.

I hope when my daughter is 87 and she talks to someone about me she will say

"My mom, she was completely absent/hurtful that time when things were bad.

But the next time she was there. And the time after that. And I am glad she was."