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I talk to my mother nearly every day on the phone. I call to ask her whether I can still eat the chicken that has a sell-by date of last Thursday, or whether I should get a new mattress because mine is suspiciously lumpy. We talk about everything—the Gabriel Byrne show on HBO, my boyfriend's new job, her photography, my writing, Oma's last trip to the doctor—the same things we would talk about if we still lived under the same roof.
One of her chatty e-mails—in which she referred to Ed Koch as New York City's "eunuch mayor"—was the inspiration for the book I co-wrote, Love, Mom. It's a collection of e-mails, texts, and instant messages from mothers to their adult children, and the flood of submissions my co-writer, Doree Shafrir, and I got for the book made me realize that the constant, amiable connections I had with my mother were not unique. You could read the book—and I'm sure many people do—as a portrait of an emotionally stunted generation unable to make a move without Mommy's counsel. But there's a lot to be said for this new mother-daughter model we've invented, especially compared with its predecessor.
When my mother was my age, my parents lived and worked in the Bronx, as medical residents and then interns. My grandparents lived 45 minutes north, and every Sunday my mother and father would schlep upstate for dinner, their dirty laundry in tow. Though this may seem like a fair amount of contact, especially by 1970s standards, these interactions were prescribed. My mother and her mother drank my grandmother's infamously lethal martinis and gossiped about the extended family. But there was never a word about anyone's inner life. In between these somewhat formal visits, there were no phone calls, no letters, not a word.
In fact, my mother can't remember her mother ever writing, but that's selective amnesia. I remember the birthday cards Oma wrote my mother, always on genteel stationery from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cards included checks and the instructions that my mother should spend the money on something frivolous for herself.
My grandmother, even in her 90s, has an air of joie de vivre, though there is something circumspect to her charm. She will draw you out with an entertaining story, like the time she met a dissipated John Cheever at the Peekskill DMV before he sobered up. I always got a sense her trifles were intended to distract you from something. My grandparents came to the United States in 1938 from Vienna, Austria. It was an unspoken rule that one did not inquire about that past.
We all knew about the factories lost by Oma's family and that many in my Opa's family had died in the Holocaust. But there were basic facts we didn't know, as we discovered at her recent 95th birthday party. Since my grandfather died in 2005, she had become a little more open about their early years. She'd mentioned the fun they had seeing the original Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya and the evenings out dancing before the Nazis came. On this night, she mentioned, almost blithely:
"There was a brother and a sister."
We'd always known my grandfather had been sent away to Belgium. Apparently, his siblings had stayed in Vienna and had died of starvation. My mother said nothing. I figured she had known about this, that there was more to my grandfather's family than his ne'er-do-well brother, Hugo, whose familial claim to fame was his appetite for hookers. On the way home from dinner, I asked, just to make sure.
"I had never heard about them before," she said, "but there's a lot I didn't know about their past." She didn't seem upset. By then she had already integrated the image of her parents as immigrants who wanted to assimilate quickly and forget the past.
Jessica Grose is the managing editor of Double X and the co-author of Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home. Click here to follow her on Twitter.
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Comments
i like to talk to my mom a
By: itcoll | Wed, 10/07/2009 - 12:06
i like to talk to my mom a lot in fact.she gives valuable insights in to everything.
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It's a very useful post
By: Pepsi33 | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 17:31
It's a very useful post !Thanks.
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Both sides of the spectrum (for Aquariangirl)
By: Shelley | Mon, 05/18/2009 - 21:01
Im a stranger and therefore have little room to tell you what to do. But I will encourage you to forgive your mother and accept that she is human and has and will continue to err. I watch my boyfriend struggle with personal relationships when it comes to family beacuse of the lack of his own family dynamic. For me? I can't understand how someone could not want their parents involved in their everyday lives. The reality is he and I need to meet in the middle. Unfortuantely his parents have dismissed their roles. I don't know their insight, and I can only guess at his. But it is sad for someone who has such an amazing and close family unit to watch. A family tragedy tore them apart. The same tragedy woke mine up. You mention you are sad and you know your mother is too. Sometimes, the children have to be the adults. You may never have that relationship you want with your mother (I hope you do find it in a friend or other relative though!) but perhaps you can try to heal together enough to form a type of bond. Focus on the good, and, I won't say ignore the bad, but dismiss it as much as you can. Realize its not meant personally, regardless of how it seems. I wish you the best!
using anecdote to convey a point
By: Shelley | Mon, 05/18/2009 - 20:56
Loki - The idea behind the authors anecdotes was not to give anyone a history lesson in her families past. The point, I believe, of the tale was to point out how she and her mother share details, both mundane and intimate, as is common in our generations (I, too, call my mother, but I question the deadline of eggs rather than chicken) whereas her own mother knew very little of her own mothers past. How our generation is determined to know WHO our parents are and how they came to be that way, whereas her own, and THAT generation, were more intent on creating new lives and leaving the past behind.
Loki, your comment seems a
By: blondelvish | Mon, 05/18/2009 - 17:08
Loki, your comment seems a little tone-deaf. The article is about connection and disconnection, and the differences between generations in these matters. It is a personal essay, and therefore uses anecdotes particular to the author's life. Does this really need to be explained?
Maybe some tweaking is needed?
By: Loki | Thu, 05/14/2009 - 21:47
Instead of being an article about talking to your mom too much, this came off as more of a story about the author's ancestors. A more appropriate tack may have been to title the article 'holocaust secret' or some analogue. The problem cited seems to concern her grandmother's reticence, but how much of a problem was it really? Obviously the grandmother had her own reasons for keeping that aspect of family history private, but chose to reveal it later on her own time. She may just have been a different person than the author and her mother.
Quite frankly, I believe a better focus should have been the ratio of honest heart to heart conversation versus the banal chicken/tv show conversations. Does being close mean sharing every agonizing detail of your life with someone? Is there a need to do so? Are there gender divides in this sort of thing? Cultural divides? How does it affect the author's relationships? As an early reader of this magazine, it seems that some of the articles have a rather flippant analysis when compared to the original content on slate.
I think that's beautiful
By: AquarianGirl | Thu, 05/14/2009 - 16:02
I envy you and your relationship with your mother. My mother and I are so far apart, I can't even imagine what you have. Its somewhat odd, because we do see each other, and when we do, we converse. There's just no closeness there. I don't even celebrate Mother's Day. I know it hurts her, and it hurts me too. Though past and present hurts prevent me from acknowledging her or the day.