Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl

Author:Ruth Reichl [Reichl, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chaos

Whenever my mother ’s parents came to visit our cramped apartment my mother flew into a panic. She would go rushing through the rooms like Hurricane Miriam, flinging things from every drawer and closet. Playing with my toys I would find myself surrounded by heaps of clothes, piles of linens, stacks of books and towers of plates, while my mother, her now-graying hair tied up in a scarf, madly ran the vacuum cleaner through the clutter as if that could somehow make it magically disappear.

“They’ll be here in three hours!” she’d cry, terror in her voice. Even at four I understood that “they” were the old people who appeared on our doorstep from time to time. Mom always undertook a cleaning binge right before her parents arrived, a kind of mad last-minute frenzy that never left enough time to repair the mess that she had made.

When the bell rang, Mom’s eyes always went wide. And there they’d be, my grandfather with his elegant shock of white hair and my impeccably regal grandmother. They would stroll in, look at each other in dismay and sadly shake their heads. From the floor I’d look up, hating them but not really knowing why.

I resented my grandmother and dreaded her visits. I used to think it was because they made our crowded apartment feel even smaller than it really was. But now I know that whenever she showed up our apartment turned into a battle-ground where two deeply disappointed women waged a war that was especially fierce because it had been such a long time coming.

The combatants themselves were conscious of the struggle, and they knew exactly where the lines were drawn. After one especially acrimonious visit Mom wrote this letter to my grandmother.

“Mother Darling: You and I always laughed when everyone told me that I acted like a little girl towards my parents. That, at my present middle-age, I can no longer do.

“You continually reproach me when I don’t live up to your expectations. Please try to treat me as a passably intelligent adult who should be mature enough to manage her own, and her children’s lives.”

She was forty-five years old, and she had spent her entire life trying to win her parents’ approval. She had gotten a doctorate just to please them, she had married a suitable man and she had borne her due allotment of children. And yet none of that had been enough. Her mother demanded unconditional admiration, holding herself up as the ideal model and expecting Mom to follow in her footsteps. Mom had certainly tried. The problem was, she was not equipped to do it.

My grandmother did not—or could not—see this. “Thank you for your explanation of your attitude to me,” she wrote back. “I always try to understand, and some of it may be my fault. I am very hard on you because I loathe disorder and just can’t take a harsh voice. I have given you the very best that I know how . . . and you aren’t grateful enough for what you have.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.