i’ve had a hard day today. in the past i have felt like my mother-in-law hasn’t respected alex and i as parents, and today i’m having the same issue with my own mother and the result is much more volatile and counter-productive. she seems to have taken it upon herself to “protect” sebastian from household dangers which i have deemed non stress-worthy. this morning she hovered over him as he played around a brick ledge on the fireplace and after about, oh, three seconds of polite discussion on the level of neuroticism i wanted to approach parenting with, we were in a yelling fight, a throw-back to our dysfunctional, unproductive, emotional-train-wreck selves before i hastily left home at seventeen. i had shared my grief over strangers and in-laws with her so many times and she always seemed mutually offended or ready to balk at their nosiness, so i didn’t think twice about staying here for a while, but by the end of our fight she was basically pulling the most insulting power trip she’s ever managed, yelling, “this is my house and while you’re here you have to watch sebastian in this way.”
there is an obvious pattern developing in my life surrounding motherhood. when that happens i usually have the sense to take a step back and ask if it’s me perpetuating the problem or if the people around me are actually ridiculous. i keep feeling trampled on as a mother by the women who i thought would be the most important support figures at this time in my life. being a mother for me has been a long, deeply personal experience of preparation, beginning long before birthing or even conceiving sebastian. it’s something i take more seriously than anything else; that is, it’s a role i don’t want to take for granted. it’s a gift, a privilege. so i guess it’s no wonder that i’m a bit of a volcano when my actions as a mother are questioned or overlooked or misinterpreted. for the sake of everyone, i’m going to try to be more receptive and less defensive. but i’m also going to keep setting my boundaries as kindly as possible.
it must be hard being a grandmother for the first time. it’s a whole new role to adjust to and it’s a communal one, a delicate one. i don’t know for sure, but i suspect that alex and i’s mothers are having a hard time especially because we’re young parents. we haven’t been out of the nest for that long. neither of them have had much opportunity to witness us as adults; we haven’t been at home for long periods that often over the last eight or so year, returning only for boughts of recuperation, or in between aimless wanderings. i think it’s hard for them to comprehend that there is a sacred portion of our lives now, something that can’t and shouldn’t be touched by their need to parent.
i’m not sure what to do in regards to my mother. it’s awkward because she can be a powerfully negativity force, crashing throughout the house, aggressive, embarrassing, childish. and she is powerful. i cower the same way i always have when she’s in these moods. i still don’t know how to deal with them. tonight she came home and tried to tell me about her day as though nothing had happened, and i calmly told her i wasn’t interested in having a casual conversation. i said i didn’t want us to storm around the house ignoring each other, but that i expected an apology for over-stepping her boundaries. she replied we could talk about it if i liked, but she has nothing to apologize for.
oh the endless challenges of relationships, of humility, of communication, of parenting and being parented. normally i would flee from her; that has always been my instinct when i’m afraid of her. not productive but a feeble attempt to cope. now, i can’t do those things. i have to think about what’s best for my own family. alex and i live here; we can’t leave and it benefits us to stay. we’ve traveled across the country and landed here with a pocket of time reserved entirely for my parents to be grandparents. my mother and i need to learn to communicate better and we need to learn how to exist peacefully as mother and mother, mother and grandmother, child and mother. i don’t want underlying tension between us regarding sebastian. he is the purest thing in our lives and i’m not interested in seeing that corrupted by petty behaviour.