FREEDOM IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR BEING A PAIN IN THE ASS?

Well, well, well, here we are…I wasn’t going to blog today as I figured if I did I might end up saying things I would regret. But the last twelve hours have left me little choice. If this is going to be real then it has to be real and real isn’t always pretty.

I have received so many emails this week from people I know to people I don’t know asking me to please keep on doing this – two I found especially touching were from one person I know quite well and someone I never met.

“I have been avidly reading your blog since you started writing it and am loving it. I feel like Taylor is so lucky to have a mom that not only loves and cares for her deeply (about which she already knew) but that can also articulate the way those feelings come out both positively and negatively. It is rare I think for anyone whether they be child, teenager or adult to really be shown their stamp on those around them.”

And from someone I don’t know.

“I read your blog today with interest and I just wanted to drop you an e-mail to say please don’t stop doing it. You are a wise witty and humane person and we need more voices like yours out there.

 

“I am a fifty-year-old Englishman, so I might not be your target audience but many of the things you write about resonate with me. I have two daughters (aged 18 and 13) and I grapple with all the emotions you describe.

 

I am sure you will eventually come to terms with the changes in your life. You will watch your daughter’s success with pride and when she faces challenges, the thought that she has a mom like you to rely on will be an infallible source of strength.”

From what I am experiencing here Taylor does not agree with these assessments of her life.

And of course we have the good professor who feels the opposite as he finds me smothering, needy and destructive. I suppose given the day and the circumstances you can find me hovering somewhere between all of them, though I hope I’m not destructive. Its the last thing I would want no matter how difficult she may get.

But I will say I have tried very hard since Taylor left not to bombard her. I tend to BBM more than call. They tend to be short and very benign:  “how r  u,”  “wassup,”  or  “miss u.”

I don’t know if she has done her laundry, attended her classes, what time she has come home or where she ends up sleeping. I don’t know what if any substances she has ingested. I am taking the don’t ask don’t tell position.  If she wants to offer it up, I’m there; if not, I can live fine without knowing.

I am interested in the classes she takes, but know pretty much nothing about them. She needs her world and her space and when she finds herself between friends and Starbucks or in need of something we are the first people she contacts.

In the beginning it was a call everyday after classes, a text ILOVEU before bed. That died down.  I knew it would and for her to grow and me to adjust I’m a big girl I know it has to.

When we left each other and she was feeling like she would in fact miss me and her life with us she said, “every two weeks, we will see each other every two weeks.” I’m also a big enough girl to know that is totally unrealistic.  She asked me to book a room for two weeks later while I was there, something I didn’t do as I figured let time take its course.

Two week intervals felt like too much to me.

But a week ago she announced she would be home for the Jewish Holiday this weekend. I thought that would be swell, made sense and many of her friends are coming home.

So we planned around it. I never made that plan to go up there and take her to dinner as she was coming here and I do need to work and go to LA next week for my friend Blake’s memorial, thus two trips in ten days was out of the question.

We did make a vow to talk for at least a minute once a day. That did not seem like a lot to me.  I know kids who call home once a week and others four times a day. It depends on the family and the connection.

I tend to miss her around dinnertime. Last night I made her favorite stir-fry and as I was doing the dishes her absence overwhelmed the room, so I called. I didn’t have my needy voice, or my oh-I’m-so-sad persona. I wasn’t sad or needy, just nostalgic for a time gone by and wanted to hear the voice I have become so used to.

We had what has now become her most common form of telephone communication: I on one end, and on the other she utters a few words then carries on simultaneous in-depth conversations with her friends. This is not every conversation but the majority.

I find it beyond annoying.  Either you are talking to them or me.

My father gets rather peeved when I call him and cook dinner at the same time. I am a working mother so multi-tasking is my middle name. But I have learned to respect this request and I call when I’m doing something quiet like stirring, not noisy like chopping. There are ways to accommodate others while still addressing your own needs.

If I called any one of you and was talking to two other people at the same time you would say ,“You know what why don’t you call back when you have less gong on.”  But I imagine a freshman seldom has less going on especially when it comes to her parents, who have somehow in two weeks gone from benevolent caretakers to Attila the Hun in her eyes.

Then she threw in, between the other conversations, that she may not come for the weekend.

Obviously since all of us including Salva our house manager have been talking about it and looking forward to it, this was a bit of a let down.

She then said, “Well, I will let you know on Wednesday.”  I said, “You know what, I can’t put my plans on hold for you. I have turned down things and we have to make plans.” I was going to buy theatre tickets and surprise her.  I said, “Either you are coming or you are not. But there are other people to consider.” She returned to her other conversation, which was clearly not as chastising or demanding and in a burst of maturity I hung up the phone and went to the Apple store and bought myself a new iPod Nano. Which I needed like a third head or a third iPod which in this case it was.

Let me tell you, if I were young, hot and not happily married I would go to the Apple store and pick up guys all the time. But I am old, no longer hot and am happily married so I came home with a bright orange Nano that only Lucy can figure out how to work.

The Nano and three hours in iTunes buying new music got me out of my FRESHMAN MOM RAGE and I went to sleep with a Lady Gaga song stuck in my head.

Now the story takes a turn, in the direction of her stepfather who has been emailing her for the last week trying to find out what night she is free so he can take her to dinner as he has to spend twenty-four hours in Boston on business and he would like to see the school he is paying for and see how she is living.  She has been unable to give him a date or get back to him; in fact the only time she emailed him was when she needed a journalist for a paper in her communications class, I think it was that class. But as only he could do, he delivered to her the most famous investigative reporter of this or perhaps any generation.

So last night when I finally told him to give up and just make a date for Boston and if she could eat with him fine, if not he knows a hundred people there he will find someone to dine with, he did just that. Of course once she heard that, an email did come back requesting he take four of her friends to the most expensive place in town. Emails come when things are needed. This is not the way the world should work. Not when four hundred dollar dinners and journalists who few can get to are delivered on a platter.  Forget that, it sounded elitist,  it should never happen…not ever….RUDENESS IS INTOLERABLE. 

Freedom is not just another word for being rude.

There has to be give and take, not take and take and take and take followed by abuse.

Because people reach limits and quite frankly I don’t give a flying fuck that they are trying to find themselves, you can find yourself with a little grace, humility and gratitude the same way you should walk through life.

So while I was out flirting with a twenty year old who was buying the same iPod I was (he was totally ignoring me by the way, it all made me look rather pathetic.  I think I was so mad at Taylor I was pretending to be her. Not a good idea. Note to self, go to Bergdorf’s when angry. The only problem is it’s not open at ten at night.) anyway, while I’m out he emails her and tells her that she “can cancel plans but not when people have gone out on a limb and made others that include you, you do need to think of others.”

Not unreasonable and not uncalled for.

He got back – “Stop emailing  me.”  HUH???

Does this mean the next time she needs money or an A-list contact for her paper he shouldn’t return her request? It’s okay for him to go out on a limb but if he needs a response because he’s leaving the heads of multi-million dollar corporations in limbo while waiting for her to get it together he’s not allowed to contact her?  Or taking it one step further what if he merely wants to say hello?

I’m confused about this one.

Freedom is just another word for everthing on my terms?

He then did remind her, much like Lynnda did Matthew (though from the sounds of it Mathew was just MIA not insulting) that if she wanted tuition, allowance and all the other perks of privilege we provide he did not ever want another response like that again.

And her response was “ This is either spam or you are a confused jackass. Learn how to email correctly.  I don’t know you.”

OK – I didn’t go to college, I have admitted that. I never took drugs– not that she is. But I don’t know exactly what she is doing. My hope is she is not.  But that is so out of left field and so beyond the beyond it quite frankly took my breath away.

 I separated from my mother far too late so when it ultimately happened there was so much muddy water under the bridge we were unable to wade thru it.  My mother quite frankly suffers from this same form of narcissism, which is why it probably irks me in ways it doesn’t other parents. In the years (her whole life)  she treated her parents badly yet continued to take from them, one of them should have taken her by the neck, cut off the money faucet and told her this is not the way life works.   But I guess for fear of losing her love on my grandmother’s part and my grandfather’s, they chose the “see no evil, hear no evil run to the club and play gin rummy  it never happened” philosophy.

So I am left the only child of an 81-year-old narcissistic parent, trust me it doesn’t work on any terms any of the time.

I was never an adolescent and only got rude with my own mother in my fifth decade when her verbal abuse became too much to bear.

But this is behavior is unacceptable under any circumstances.

Freedom is not just another word for being hurtful and belligerent.