Anyway, I'm incredibly lucky that at age 30 and still living under the same roof as my mother is not so bad. Usually. The way it has typically worked in our family is that the kids move back home after college, enter into their own relationships, eventually get married and move out.
Que the old joke about Italian children living in their parents' basement until the age of 40.
Okay so, it happened for my cousin, the oldest of the bunch. She moved home after college, within a few years married her sweetheart, moved out and begin building her own life. Same with my brother. He bought a house not long after school and within a few years married his sweetheart and began building his own life. And then there's me. I broke up with my sweetheart when we were on the cusp of getting engaged and any dreams I had of moving out of my childhood home were put on hold for an indefinite amount of time. Just how indefinite never really occurred to me.*
Anyway, once I got my shit together and made a giant effort to calm down with the destructive behavior I was engaging in, Ma and I grew closer than ever, especially after Pop died. I would tell her (just about) everything. She would hold me as I cried over a broken heart. We leave each other notes in morning just to say have a good day. She nursed me back to health when I broke my sternum, when I had walking pneumonia, when I had the flu. I give her pedicures, surprise her with elaborate home cooked meals when I have a day off. She is the queen of the little things - chores or tasks that are so embedded in our brains that we don't usually think twice about them, so I make it a point to do all of those little things - taking out the trash, cleaning the upstairs of the house, picking up milk, etc. We vent to each other when we have rough days at work or triumphant ones, we play fashion consultant if one of us isn't sure about an outfit we're going to wear out. Just the other day that woman spent a half an hour trying to dig out a splinter that was buried almost an inch deep in the ball of my left foot. If that's not love, I don't know what is.
But now I feel the tables turning and I'm pulling away. At first I didn't understand why, but it's beginning to dawn on me...*
Over the years, it has worked out. I've been by my mother's side through everything. For a while it was us against the world - my father had moved out and my brother was busy with his own growing family. We came dangerously close to losing the house. If something broke, guess who fixed it? There was no man out cutting our lawn or taking care of the pool, shoveling our driveway, among other things. Whatever, no big deal because bitches get shit done, right? Ma and I bonded over these kinds of things.
Now that I am finally coming close to truly establishing my own identity, (can we say late bloomer?) Ma and I have begun to butt heads. We are two very different people, regardless of much we look alike. Our mantras, our outlook on life, love, sex, politics - so incredibly different...
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| Ma and I, Thanksgiving 2013 |
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