my mother

My relationship with my mother is complicated. Actually, my relationship with my parents is complicated. It is more obvious however with my mother because she is the one I communicate with more. My Dad is more of the strong, silent type. Not often affectionate. Very much that stereotypical father figure from the 70's.

Right now my mom and I are only communicating via email other than the obligatory phone calls home for holidays, birthdays, etc. Her emails consist of two or three sentences about once a week. My responses are less often, but tend to be much longer and more narrative of what is going on with the boys. About once a month I send a DVD to them with videos and pictures on it of the boys.

As I said in an earlier post my parents seemed like they couldn't get out of here fast enough the last time they visited. I wrote about the incident at the Franklin Institute and how they reacted to it.

Several weeks ago I was talking with my mother on the phone about how difficult TB has been lately and how if we just got a break now and then it would make such a difference. Her response - "That's what being a parent is. You wanted kids." Huh, very helpful right? Like I don't know that.

That response should not have been a surprise to me. It's typical of our interactions with each other. I will feel like we are having a good conversation, so I'll open up a bit more, share my feelings with her, thinking she understands, and then get put in my place like that. What I'm really looking for is just some acknowledgement from her that she understands that sometimes it's hard. That sometimes I just need to vent and be listened to.

So, after that last time I decided that I was going to hang back for a bit. Thus the emails. But even that tends to bite me in the ass. A couple weeks ago I said something about how sad I felt that they didn't seem to want to see TB anymore, and how hurt I was that they left so quickly last time (in the middle of a snow storm mind you). She responded to the other things in the email, but has said not one word about that.

My mother did not have a good relationship with her own mother. I've written about my grandmother before and what a great relationship she and I had. I never really could understand why my mother seemed to resent her so much, her own mother! I swore I was going to break that cycle and not allow it to happen with my own mother, but in so many ways I feel like she isn't giving me a choice. Why do we let our parents have so much control over us?

What do they say the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome?

Yeah, see why I need therapy?

**Black Hockey Jesus at The Wind in Your Vagina, wrote a post about his father a few days ago. In it he also referenced the definition of insanity. At the time he posted his I had this sitting in my drafts, not sure if I was ready to post it or not. If you aren't reading this guy you should be. He is hysterically funny and sometimes borders on the insane. Plus he needs some more followers on Twitter it appears.