PARENTS VISIT US IN MANY WAYS

As you know this last weekend was Parent’s Visiting Weekend at Taylor’s college. Now never having been to college as an actual student, and being a Freshman Mom never having been as a mom either, I was not sure what to expect.
I did receive plenty of emails from the school informing me of all sorts of activities: some that cost quite a lot of money, others like visits to the classroom that were totally free.  These visits are clearly planned to both give you an excuse to see your kid and a chance to see the college and to be so impressed you will find it profoundly agreeable to throw some more money their way.
I signed us up for an evening performance in the theatre, and some breakfast on Sunday morning.
What you learn when you get to the school and meet up with your kids is they do not want you to attend anything – nada, nothing. Niente. They want you to stay pretty far away from any of the “planned activities” – they are considered anything from “lame” to a “waste of your time” and if you are sitting in on a mock Media Class how can you be back at Bed Bath and Beyond buying more stuff?
Or if you are doing the evening show, how can you be taking your freshman to a restaurant they can’t pay for when you aren’t there?  So suffice to say we did none of the planned actives I signed us up for.

I was warned before I left to expect certain things and to “just go with the flow.”
Do you think people think going with the flow does not come naturally to me?
One mom said, “Don’t expect her to spend all her time with you, she will sleep all day and stay out all night. Just go with it – let her lead.”
Another parent who had just returned from their Freshman Weekend said, “Let’s say we saw him a third of the time.”
“This is their place – let them direct the course of the weekend.”
Okay, well, that all sounded like something I would have to work on, but I could pull off if I suppressed my need to control.
The surprise was our experience was different, entirely different.
We got up there on Friday late in the day and Taylor wanted us right away in her dorm to meet one of her many best friends, Taylor, unlike me, makes friends very easily.  I tend to piss people off sometimes. Lots of times!
I had heard much about one Ryan– we are FB friends, we have spoken on the phone, but Ryan was in one of the shows I couldn’t see and would be MIA much of the weekend so this was my only chance. We dumped the luggage and went running over; he was as charming as the conversations we had had lead me to believe, but he was off to rehearsal so it was a hello/good-bye, see you in New York. But at least we got to meet him IRL.
So she was not ashamed of us. We learned that we would not have to walk around Boston with towels over our faces for the weekend. Then we went to her dorm, which was really tidy. This I did not expect. Not sure if it was cleaned for our arrival but it was very clean, even by my standards, which when it comes to cleanliness rival that of hospitals.
Once we did the room look-see, we had to meet Blake, one of her other BFs. I found it amazing that she found a best friend called Blake, after my having had one for my entire life. It’s still kind of hard for me to call someone Blake after mine’s passing so Taylor’s Blake lets me call him B-Boy.  I really appreciate it and in time I think I will be able to utter the name but not quite yet. He too was as warm and friendly as we had heard, but he couldn’t hang out long as his parents were en route and he had to deal with his room. Though rumor has it his room is always impeccable. He and I apparently have the same need for order and love of all things Hermes.
Walking down Boylston this time was a totally different experience, for one I was not sobbing and it was now Tay’s street.  She knew every other person and introduced us as her parents. We didn’t have to hide. She crossed into the place in life where we didn’t have to walk two steps behind.
Which is good as Lucy is approaching that age: she asked Glenn to sit in the back row of the movies the other day and pretend like he had didn’t know her or her friend Jeremiah.
Tay filled me in on the important stuff like which place had the best lattes and which ones had the best chai.  She had made this place hers and she loves it.
And it is a beautiful piece of America to have as your college turf and this weekend was one when the Commons, her park, her Quad was ablaze with New England fall color– it couldn’t have been prettier, it felt like a J. Crew College catalogue.
She then pretty much took off from the dorm and was with us the entire weekend.
Her friend Liz stopped by to meet us and then she took off to be with her family. It was family weekend and the nice thing is these seem to be kids who were happy to spend the time with their families.
Tay did not sleep all day. She did not stay out all night. In fact at night she never left us except for after dinner on Saturday when she joined some friends for drinks and we went to bed.  And at twelve – thirty she called me to come join them. Now, fifty is not the new eighteen and once I’m asleep there is no way I could have dragged myself out of bed, put on the full face and clothes and schlepped out.  But I was very pleased to be asked.
So how did we spend our time– well, how do you think? Eating and shopping. Glenn kept telling me this was what parent’s weekend was for, and who am I to argue?  And it certainly seemed that way as one cruised Newbury Street, parents and freshman in every store. The salesgirls know the score, vulnerable parents who missed their kids plus kids who knew it equaled sales galore.
We only had one hiccup the entire weekend and it didn’t come from any of the obvious places, it came from where else but my mother. She did it, from three thousand miles away she managed in her own inimitable way to somehow shoehorn herself into the family dynamic in a way which does nothing but take me to the edge of my dark hole.
Why can’t she just leave me alone?  Why does she have to be hanging around like the ghost of Hanukah past? Generations of maternal madness, love and money in full spades joined us for dinner at Moo that first night.
I suppose it was all sort of innocent, it starts out that way, but it’s such a hot trigger point for me, and Taylor does know that – though in defense of her she is not in contact with my mother – out of loyalty to me, and because my mother started pulling the same money equals love game with her.

The backstory to this particular tale which led to me storming out of Moo Saturday night began a few years ago when my mother wrote Taylor out of her will and decided to give it all to Lucy.
This was bizarre for many reasons, number one being that for much of Lucy’s life my mother did not like her and used to announce this in the company of others – including Lucy.  I remember many instances of this occurring, one when we were having dinner with a group of people and she just said flat out, she didn’t like Lucy, she preferred Taylor. Forget the fact that Lucy is my child and her grandchild, Lucy was only three at the time. She had spent a grand total of maybe eleven hours with her, how do you hate your three year old grandchild and one step further how could you announce that to people at a dinner?  But instead of standing up, confronting her, throwing down my napkin and marching out, I sat there and said nothing, probably ordered another glass of wine and took a hit of my asthma inhaler. I remember thinking, why did I bother to come here after I had worked a full day on a script, taught for two hours, then I come to this dinner, where we split the check– I had to pay for myself, I do remember that too, (maternal madness money and love)– only to be insulted and have my child insulted? But in those days Taylor was the golden one.  She adored Taylor, I think part of it is Taylor looks WASPy and Lucy looks Jewish.
One summer my mother came out to the Hamptons to stay with us, a trip I must save for the next book, but the denouement was when she was leaving after three days I was an emotional mess, but right before she was about to leave she called Lucy a witch and refused to say good-bye to her.  She then stood in the middle of the house and said in a very loud voice how she loved Taylor more than anyone in the world; she said this mind you with Lucy and me standing there. Where did that place us? My mother will read this and say it’s a pack of lies, but I have a housekeeper who can attest to the whole thing and said she had never seen a grandmother much less a mother behave that way in her entire life and she is not a young woman.
I didn’t say anything then either, which I should have. But no, I drove her to the Jitney in silence, helped her get a newspaper and some coffee, piled her on the bus, drove away, pulled over on the side of the road and cried for an hour. I then drove straight into East Hampton and bought two handbags, neither of which I ever used. The whole handbag thing I found out is deeply Freudian and has to do with mothers, love and vaginas– not necessarily in that order.
So how did Lucy go from being a witch and the child she detested to being the sole heir?  How do we even know these things? How did Taylor end up in the same soup as me, though now we find out at dinner she is being ladled out?
One question at a time.
Five years ago Taylor did not thank her for a gift. That is the reason- I have it documented in emails.  My mother bought Taylor an ermine shrug off eBay and Taylor did not like it and she never said thank you. Now, she should have said thank you, but ermine shrugs are something my mother likes, left over from growing up in the days of Sonia Henie and Shirley Temple being decked out in ermine. It’s not a Gossip Girl kind of thing. Mind you, one should always thank people for gifts. But if they don’t I don’t think they should be disinherited.  This is one point where both my mother and father agree: you don’t play by my rules and you’re out. Even if I don’t tell you the rules going in. It does not always make for a fair game.
At this stage on both sides of my family  “what you will get when I’m gone” becomes a controlling dynamic of all relationships and one should behave accordingly.
But that first night during dinner Taylor casually dropped that she was no longer in the disinherited soup with me; she was being ladled out and was back in the will.
Now why are we discussing these things? And how does Taylor even know this if she is not in touch with my mother?
As one of the world’s greatest writers said,  “Ay, there’s the rub.”
See, this is where an already fucked up tale gets truly fucked up – Taylor’s father (my ex-husband) and my mother are BFs. Yes, you heard me- my ex and my mother are very close, really close.
It is one of the main reasons I don’t speak to her. It is in fact the reason I stopped speaking to her once about ten years ago.  That siege lasted four years and like always I was the one who went back. And I stopped about three years ago, as I got sick of hearing what a better person he was than I. And how much she preferred him to my present husband despite the fact that Glenn has shown her nothing but kindness and threw her a big book party, which talking about thank you’s she didn’t bother to thank him for until late the next day. But she sent David Patrick Columbia an eight hundred dollar bottle of wine just for showing up.
But I digress – she and my ex are so tight she dedicated a book to him and his wife, and then sent me a copy, which I threw in the trash.
So Taylor found out that she was back in my mother’s good graces because her father told her. How weird is this, he knows all the details of her will.
Does this sound like a slight conflict of interest to anyone else?  It does to me.
So instead of me throwing my napkin down a hundred times  during the years when my mother behaved horribly, like that night in SoHo when she announced to the group she hated Lucy, I threw my napkin down and walked out of the restaurant when Taylor told me she was back in the will.  The exact response my mother and ex want from me, and I gave it to them on a platter and for the world to see.
And it’s not about the money, I accepted being disowned by my mother years ago. In fact when we were speaking, I was still disowned, but I told her it didn’t matter.
One Thanksgiving after we made up, she felt it imperative to announce to my mother-in-law she was leaving me nothing.  I was in the kitchen basting the turkey when she said it that time.
Does it matter?  Sure, in one way. It’s not the money, but it negates your presence and importance in someone’s life.  And it is known by all to be very hurtful and the stuff family feuds are fuelled by for generations.
Part of it is the concept. Part of it is the premeditated cruelty and part of it is this long tradition of puppeteering through finances.
I don’t need her money and I don’t need her stuff. I don’t like stuff and I can’t be bought.
But I did storm out of Moo, Lucy on my heels following me, Taylor back at the table with Glenn who was able to explain to her calmly what is actually going on.

And then there I was with Lucy in the rain, doing what? Acting like a fool. Angry at my mother for letting me down, for manipulating my family from far away or at least trying to and more importantly angry at the betrayal her alliance with my ex represents to me.
These are two people who, when we were married, hated each other with such a passion.
My mother spent much of my first marriage begging to get out of it. My ex at one point forbid me to see her as she accused him of trying to kill her with a golf club.  He didn’t even golf then. He didn’t even own clubs, she was in some Eugene O’Neill moment wandering around her house accusing people of things, she gets this Mary Tyrone look that is non opiate-induced and starts saying things that make no sense, usually at other people’s expense.
My grandmother used to say, “You know Beverley; she gets that wild look in her eyes and you can’t talk sense to her.”
As nutty as my grandmother could be there was a part of her that had common sense and could see through to the craziness of others. No one can identify a crazy person like another crazy person.
Did she make Beverley this way or again, is it a genetic pre-condition? I don’t know. But I’m aching to find out.
My parents divorced when I was three, my mother and father barely speak almost fifty years later. If my grandparents had pulled something like this, taking the side of my mother’s ex, well, I can only imagine her reaction.
But suffice it to say, I was able to come back from the edge.  The incident at Moo did not ruin the weekend. Sure, it put a damper on the night, but when these things happen I insist we talk about them.  After I have my hissy fit  I can explain why and we can talk it out and thus put it where it belongs: in the pile of family stuff that belongs in the trash and not at home or family weekends.

FRESHMAN MOM

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