Part-time daughter
Oct. 21st, 2012 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistToday on the phone my mom asked me lots of questions but none of them were close enough to "Do you have a massive headache that means you'd like to have this conversation at any time other than this one?" for me to answer "YES," but I did.
She was going on and on about a dress she bought for me. Apparently I'm meant to wear it for Christmas? She's obsessed with sleeves now because I couldn't wear the dress she bought for me to wear for my grandpa's funeral because the sleeves were much too tight for my fat arms. So this one is sleeveless, I guess that makes her feel safe.
Of course I had brought plenty of my own, situation-appropriate, clothes when I came back for the funeral. She must know I have my own clothes but I wonder sometimes if it's just a superficial intellectual awareness, she doesn't really believe it. I'll do the same at Christmas; my family dress up for the holiday, so I'll bring dressy clothes.
When I was little, the new dresses at Easter and Christmas were tradition. Nothing I could do about the velvet monstrosities, the Easter bonnets, the lace and ribbons. Now I can do something. I can picture right now the dress I'll wear for Christmas, which unbeknownst to her is more than my mom can say.
I'm worried about this dress she bought because Mom said the friend she was with liked a different one better but my mom wouldn't get that one. I prefer pretty much everyone's taste in clothes to my mom's. I wear a dress my dad picked out all the time; two sundresses she bought me last year were so bad I left them in my closet there.
The one my mom didn't like "had what we call an open zipper," she explained. I tried to imagine what that meant and completely failed. She said it meant the zipper was on the outside. I thought of my leather skirt, which has such a zipper all the way up it, and was thankful that mind-reading doesn't exist.
I have actually worn dresses and skirts much less often than usual lately and I know it's because the first thing she asked me when she heard I had a job is "do you have to dress up or anything?" and, when I couldn't hide my bafflement well enough to answer in a timely fashion, reassured herself (and, for all I know, me) that I usually dress up anyway.
Ha! Do I? She doesn't see that I am dressing in silly t-shirts, shabby chinos and my favorite (thus, oldest and most threadbare) hoodie, but I'm still taking petty pleasure in it. No one else, from my boss to my husband, seems to have the slightest interest in what I wear, so why not use it to spite her, whether she knows about it or not!
Even when I know I'm sounding (or thinking) like a petulant teenager, I can't help it; time spent, even on the phone, with them just rockets me back to itchy feelings of "I can't wait to grow up" and the knowledge that they don't want to let me.
I know my mom buys me clothes because she doesn't get many opportunities to feel she is being tangibly affectionate or helpful to me, but just when I think that's infantalizing enough, my dad gets on the phone and (after a bewildering array of questions; my headachy brain was looking forward to my taciturn dad, but today he was all "what's the population of Scotland?" and "what's Birmingham like?" and "how are Manchester's football teams doing?" (at least I think that's what he meant; what he actually said was "has the Premier League started yet? How's that going?") asks me, again, "Are you working at all this week?"
At least, having heard this before, my incredulity doesn't take as long to get past this time and I'm able to skip swiftly onward to "Yes. I work every week."
"Oh. Part time, though, right?"
She was going on and on about a dress she bought for me. Apparently I'm meant to wear it for Christmas? She's obsessed with sleeves now because I couldn't wear the dress she bought for me to wear for my grandpa's funeral because the sleeves were much too tight for my fat arms. So this one is sleeveless, I guess that makes her feel safe.
Of course I had brought plenty of my own, situation-appropriate, clothes when I came back for the funeral. She must know I have my own clothes but I wonder sometimes if it's just a superficial intellectual awareness, she doesn't really believe it. I'll do the same at Christmas; my family dress up for the holiday, so I'll bring dressy clothes.
When I was little, the new dresses at Easter and Christmas were tradition. Nothing I could do about the velvet monstrosities, the Easter bonnets, the lace and ribbons. Now I can do something. I can picture right now the dress I'll wear for Christmas, which unbeknownst to her is more than my mom can say.
I'm worried about this dress she bought because Mom said the friend she was with liked a different one better but my mom wouldn't get that one. I prefer pretty much everyone's taste in clothes to my mom's. I wear a dress my dad picked out all the time; two sundresses she bought me last year were so bad I left them in my closet there.
The one my mom didn't like "had what we call an open zipper," she explained. I tried to imagine what that meant and completely failed. She said it meant the zipper was on the outside. I thought of my leather skirt, which has such a zipper all the way up it, and was thankful that mind-reading doesn't exist.
I have actually worn dresses and skirts much less often than usual lately and I know it's because the first thing she asked me when she heard I had a job is "do you have to dress up or anything?" and, when I couldn't hide my bafflement well enough to answer in a timely fashion, reassured herself (and, for all I know, me) that I usually dress up anyway.
Ha! Do I? She doesn't see that I am dressing in silly t-shirts, shabby chinos and my favorite (thus, oldest and most threadbare) hoodie, but I'm still taking petty pleasure in it. No one else, from my boss to my husband, seems to have the slightest interest in what I wear, so why not use it to spite her, whether she knows about it or not!
Even when I know I'm sounding (or thinking) like a petulant teenager, I can't help it; time spent, even on the phone, with them just rockets me back to itchy feelings of "I can't wait to grow up" and the knowledge that they don't want to let me.
I know my mom buys me clothes because she doesn't get many opportunities to feel she is being tangibly affectionate or helpful to me, but just when I think that's infantalizing enough, my dad gets on the phone and (after a bewildering array of questions; my headachy brain was looking forward to my taciturn dad, but today he was all "what's the population of Scotland?" and "what's Birmingham like?" and "how are Manchester's football teams doing?" (at least I think that's what he meant; what he actually said was "has the Premier League started yet? How's that going?") asks me, again, "Are you working at all this week?"
At least, having heard this before, my incredulity doesn't take as long to get past this time and I'm able to skip swiftly onward to "Yes. I work every week."
"Oh. Part time, though, right?"
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 12:31 am (UTC)She also thinks I must wear dress shirts and pants for my 'office job'; it's an option, and I can if I want, but it's a cubicle farm and I wear dumb shirts and sneakers, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 02:42 pm (UTC)I'm sure my mom wants me to look nice because she still thinks it reflects on her. I was hoping this would stop as I got older -- does how she looks reflect upon my grandma? No it does not -- but any chance of our relationship morphing into a healthy between-adults one pretty much crashed and burned when my brother died and I got married and moved so far away soon after.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-23 03:12 am (UTC)My mother's a bit in the same way. Once her Swedish-given skinny legs grew into my father's genetic Serbian hips, ain't no how we were staying the same pant size, and I swear, she was so angry about it! Agh! She's always stayed so thin, because she doesn't eat worth anything, and tried to program me into her eating dysfunction. After a year or two, I just learned to pawn off the things I outgrew in college on to her.
Narcissistic mothers, my friend. Old news.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-24 09:43 pm (UTC)My mom has tried to give me all her body shame and hatred too. Sometimes it feels like I've totally gotten over/away from it -- I was pleasantly surprised how shocking it was to hear how a family member was talked about, by my grandma and aunt as well as my mom, the last time I was home -- but in a lot of ways, the good practices of size acceptance I have worked so hard to learn end up applying to everyone but me. I really believe that weight isn't an indicator of health and that the stigma rather than the size is what causes problems for fat people, and I think lots of big/fat people are sexy and all of them are deserving of basic respect...but somehow I can't shake the idea that it's different for me, that I really am appallingly ugly and I want desperately to take up less space. But that's a whole nother blog post :)