It Is This Way

Among the triad of siblings that are here in New York, there is an unspoken rule that at any given time, only one of us are on speaking terms with our mother.  We routinely ignore uhmmah's calls and e-mails, sometimes taking weeks to respond, if at all.  Until, that is, one of us begrudgingly takes pity and makes contact again.  When we finally do, she is usually not very pleasant.  Sometimes, she belligerently attacks with yelling and spitting words.  To drive her point home, click, she dramatically hangs up before the martyr sibling can get a word in.  And then, within a few hours, she will call that child back and pretend like that conversation never happened and carry on with her ridiculous demands.

Take on my mortgage, take me on vacation, buy me a house, pay my dental bill.  The car needs new brakes. 

Listening to her string of requests is the hapless form of conversation that we have sloppily carved out over the years.  I sit silently on the line.  There have been times when I've placed my phone on the counter and poured myself a drink.  I miss nothing during those sixty seconds because she's like a tape on repeat.

But things have changed.

I think Soeur realized that she didn't have any pictures of herself and uhmmah.  Philadelphia.
2012.  June.

As my sister astutely pointed out, we children will never tap into the full potential of having fulfilling, rewarding, and healthy intimate relationships until we come to peace with our parents.  How very true.  (Insight like that?  She must be seeing a therapist.)

You see, both my siblings here are in partnerships that require attention to this sort of thing.  Their other halves value the family connection.  And so, because they both make for excellent significant others (seriously, if you are ever so lucky to date them), they honor their partners' wishes to do right by those who brought us into this world.  They bite their tongues, try with great effort to look past the damaged, and search for some way, any way, to form some semblance of a working relationship with our mother.

I do not know how they do it.

I severed all contact with my mother in November.  I lack the strength and fearlessness that my brother and sister have.  The only explanation I have is that I am not under the spell of love.  That they are in relationships so compelling that they choose to swim in deep, dirty waters that have been unkind to them in the past is a powerful testament.  This is a big undertaking, to answer her calls, to quietly listen to her demands, to tolerate and endure the only way we know our mother.  It is admirable.

Tied into uhmmah's needy behavior is the outstanding issue of my youngest brother's care.  When the Empire shootings happened last week, I thought I was doing the right thing by picking up the phone when she called that morning.  I assured her that all three of us were safe.  As I feared would happen, answering that call opened that metaphorical door again; that very night, she called and left a message on my silenced phone: Can you call and try to calm down your brother?  He has been screaming and yelling non-stop for hours and hours.  After retrieving the message the next morning, I did not return the call - selfishly, for my own sanity.  The guilt of not lending help is there, but I choose to respond in a different way this time because I simply will not survive another round on my own.  This distance that I've created is the one thing, the only thing, that keeps my own head out of the water.