The author recounts several instances where her mother fabricated or exaggerated situations to garner attention, culminating in a story about a supposed intruder at her house.
. But I have a guess. Several years ago, during a few days in Malibu with my husband, Rob, I woke on my birthday to a dozenThe messages had been sent from 30 miles away, back home in Los Angeles, where my mother, then in her 70s, was visiting and staying with my 16-year-old daughter. As she was going to bed, my mother said she saw someone standing on the balcony. She frantically awoke my daughter who then called 911.
Growing up, my mother was “wishy-washy about marriage,” as she put it, and possibly even less thrilled about motherhood. Having me at 22 was unplanned, but it wasn’t going to force her to commit to one partner. Instead, she continued her life as a single person with me as her plus-one. “Why go out with someone your own age when they don’t know what they’re doing, either?,” she said another time. These had been the instructions from her own mother: “Date someone who can teach you something. And make sure they can afford to take you to dinner.” I heeded her advice and mostly dated men at least ten years older than me. Not surprisingly, they expected a lot more from me, sexually, than I knew how to give, and I found myself in situations that I had no idea how to get out of.
Not surprisingly, she wasn’t past hitting on Rob. “Rob, you look so handsome with that beard,” she cooed during one visit. “Wow, doesn’t he look good?” She was so fixated on him that even my daughter complained. “It’s so inappropriate,” she said to me, out of earshot from her grandmother, “Why does she keep saying that?” When my mother learned Rob was about to drive up to Northern California for the weekend, she said, “It’s so lovely up there — can’t I go with him?” He declined.
Dementia was like a warped fun-house mirror that reflected back all the issues I thought we’d buried in the past. “We get along all right but, I don’t know how to get rid of him before my Real Jack comes back. This New Jack is sleeping in my husband’s bed.”She started to laugh. “What? I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. He has different coloring — and he’s a foot shorter.”
Half an hour later he called back to say she was fine now; in fact, she was looking out the window in anticipation of our arrival. Rob looked tense as we drove up. He was not designed for this level of emotional tumult; I was born into it. I had learned not only to survive my mother but to synthesize the elements of my crazy childhood into something livable. It wasn’t perfect, but I was in a good place.
Mother Drama Family Attention Manipulation
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