I know this is off-topic for the Kitten Calendar and I’m in the middle of some much cuter threads, but I need a place to process this without any family readers and without asking any activist friends to any extra emotional labor. So if you’re reading, thanks! I owe you some fun later on?
What do I do with a mother-daughter relationship after
mom has informed me that “Reparations would be horrifying” because reports about
slavery were exaggerated? Fully, teeth-grindingly estranged, is where. I don’t
know what my family life will look like past the protective barriers of Zoom,
guess I’d better figure it out. Let’s try to see how we got here.
There was a day I’ve already written about some, a day
last June when I lost all of my plucky good citizenship and determination. Even
my badass block-a-cop-car protester courage was eluding me. The city was under police
and military siege, there was still a curfew/quarantine combo making me jump
out of my skin, and on top of that a big rainstorm knocked the power out in a
way that seemed (but wasn’t, of course) permanent.
I went to Sweetie’s to use her Wi-fi for work and
ended up breaking down crying because she had neither ground beans nor a scoop
to make coffee. I was out of everything that kept me a decent, functioning
human, like my own power was out. It was a time I could have used a mom who checks
in to see if I’m okay. Sweetie has those kind of parents! Though they are
conservative Texans, they do tend to ask after her safety whenever the National
Guard is in town (So often it seems like!) and never discourage her from
protesting or assume she is a fire-setting looter. They just, you know, parent!
Even though she is fifty and really tough!
I’m 46 and really tough, and my mom spent all of her
energy writing facebook comments about how she “thought I believed in peace” and
defending white people in general and her own white-supremacist-leaning (Well, I
THOUGHT they were just leaning but it seems they are marching with the Proud
Boys tomorrow…) sisters. So many comments until I blocked her, having tried
every strategy for years to bring her around. Sometimes I just want to say,
fuck off, SURJ, I fucking TRIED.
I should have fully blocked her (not just facebook blocked
her) back in March 2020 when she started circulating anti-mask disinfo! Or
maybe way back in 2016 when she told me I was manifesting rape culture by
thinking about it too much. Possibly, I should never have tried to be friends
or “friends” with my mom at all, but I kept trying. I still kind of want to
try, it’s so hard to stop myself. Psychologists tell that story about the
mother who set her son on fire, how he still asked for her.
After I ruined Thanksgiving 2016, (which, sorry niece and
nephews, NEEDED to be ruined) I eventually responded to mom’s efforts to stay
close. (That Christmas, though, I must’ve really given the UPS man a sense of
futility when I took mom’s yearly wreath right down to the curb.) Mom’s love
language for me is jewelry. If a bracelet broke, I sent her the beads for her
jewelry supplies. She repaired all my necklaces for me over the last four
years, both ones she designed and ones she hadn’t. I did a very good job of
extending and reciprocating love. I’m proud of us both.
But my (our) deep wish to be connected was no match
for the powerful pull of the Trump/Russia internet (I can just hear her huffing
in disbelief, Ugh, Russia, like I made up the Mueller Report) and my
conservative aunts, especially as the four of them were still mourning the loss
of my Grandmom from summer 2019.
This is the story of how helpless I felt, how there
was absolutely nothing more I could do, as my mom was swept away. Or maybe she
was always that far away to begin with.
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