Up For Renewal by Cathy Alter

Author:Cathy Alter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2008-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Before leaving for Connecticut, I spoke with Dr. Oskar about how guilty I felt about shutting down whenever I went home. For reasons I still didn’t understand, every time I was around my mother, I reverted back to my sullen high school self. Basically, I went mute, a condition that caused my mother to default into oratory overdrive. In other words, I got constipated, she developed verbal diarrhea.

“It’s so cruel to do to her,” I told him, reaching for a tissue. “Why do I do it?”

As I said before, Dr. Oskar wasn’t a big fan of my mother. His memory was sharp, and the scene of her explaining why I’d always need to wear makeup had not sat well with him. Even though I constantly defended my mother with plenty of examples of her kindness, openness, forgiveness, and intense love—all directed at me—he still wasn’t quick to forgive her for being so emotionally blind to her daughter’s voracious need to be seen and accepted, as is.

“It’s very violating,” he explained, “to have your mother define who you are.”

“That word is a little strong,” I challenged. It bothered me to hear him talking about my mother like this.

“Maybe violating isn’t the right word,” he apologized. “Let me try again.” He looked down at his hands for a moment, maybe running his thoughts through the Swedish-to-English language engine in his brain.

“Okay, we try this again,” he began. “Because your mother has defined you in the past—as klutzy, or shy, or sensitive—you have learned to shut down to protect yourself.”

I thought about what he said for a while.

“It’s not that my mother doesn’t know me as a person,” I said finally. “She knows who I am. She just doesn’t know what to do with me.”

“Yah, okay,” agreed Dr. Oskar, “that’s another way of saying it.”

“So what do I do when I’m home with her?”

“You need to figure out a way to be vulnerable with each other.”

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